Movement for the Abolition of Prostitution

What is the Nordic Model?

The Nordic Model (sometimes known as the Sex Buyer Law, and the Swedish, Abolitionist, Survivor or Equality Model) is an approach to prostitution that has been adopted in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, Ireland and Israel. It has several elements:

1. Decriminalisation of selling sex acts

Prostitution is inherently violent. Women should not be criminalised for the exploitation and abuse they endure.

2. Buying sex acts becomes a criminal offence

Buying human beings for sex is harmful, exploitative and can never be safe. We need to reduce the demand that drives sex trafficking.

3. Support and exit services

High quality, non-judgemental services to support those in prostitution and help them build a new life outside it, including: access to safe affordable housing; training and further education; child care; legal, debt and benefit advice; emotional and psychological support.

A holistic approach

A public information campaign; training for police and CPS; tackling the inequality and poverty that drive people into prostitution; effective laws against pimping and sex trafficking, with penalties that reflect the enormous damage they cause. Read more >>

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A template letter to ask your MP to encourage local police, councils and NHS trusts to do more to support women and crack down on pimps.

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Jenna reviews the Disney crime series, Furious, and is impressed by the way it deals with difficult themes.

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Jenna explains why the idea that prostitution is a normal job does not align with her own experience spanning several years in the sex industry.

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A harrowing account of being groomed and coerced into involvement in OnlyFans and the struggle to escape.

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Infographic explaining what decriminalising sex work means in practice, along with background information and full references.

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Jenna reflects on a recent interview with Russell Brand and the importance of telling the truth about the prostitution industry.

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Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Sara Smiles: My Story in the World of Paid Rape.

Sara Smiles started in prostitution in New Zealand in 1988 when she was a homeless 14-year old. She eventually escaped in 2010 when she was in her late thirties. She therefore experienced life in the sex trade in New Zealand both before and after it was fully decriminalised in 2003. […]

Alice Glass

“It is hard to unravel ten years of prostitution into non fictional coherence. To put all the years of confusion and compromise and cognitive dissonance and bent consent onto a page. One year (this month, as it happens) after my last ever ‘appointment’ with a ‘client’, I am trying to retrace my steps through prostitution, with the clarity that comes from distance.

A Piece of Me by Andrea Heinz

Time heals all wounds. Time does little for scars. They permanently stick to you as a vivid reminder of your vulnerability and the time you faced some form of harm. I carry over 4300 emotional scars with me every day from each man I sold my body to during seven years of prostitution.

Wendy Barnes

Two excerpts from Wendy Barnes’ brilliant book “And Life Continues: Sex Trafficking and My Journey to Freedom”, in which she tells the story of how she became a victim of human trafficking, why she was unable to leave the man who enslaved her for fifteen years, and the obstacles she overcame to heal and rebuild her life after she was rescued. […]

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