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

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Decriminalising “sex work” may sound sensible until you think more deeply about what it means in practice. This article explains why.

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Prostitution survivor, Jenna, responds to reports that Labour MP Samantha Niblett is campaigning to promote sex toys under the guise of sex education.

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Reflections on the ethical failure of telling kids to respect others while our culture soaks them in violent porn and glamorises the brutal prostitution system.

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The parallels, the failure of the authorities & how treating females as commodities that men can trade and abuse with impunity reveals connections with the wider sex trade.

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To mark our tenth anniversary, this article explains how Nordic Model Now! began and what we did in the very early days.

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Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Megan King

The high-class escort

My name is Megan King and I am a survivor of prostitution. I was advertised as a “high class escort”, pitched as a middle-class, well-educated young woman choosing this as a ‘career path’ out of my own free will.

Michelle Mara

Michelle Mara started in prostitution in New Zealand when the sex trade was illegal and she continued after it was fully decriminalised there in 2003.

In the 90s I worked at quite a few brothels. The police used to take our names off a register that the brothel kept.

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. []

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.

Sick of all the ‘Happy Hooker’ myths?

Want people to know what prostitution is REALLY like?

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