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

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.

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. []

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.

Prostitution: Living in the Danger Zone

Interview with Laurin Crosson by Francine Sporenda

Laurin Crosson is the founder of RockStarr Ministries, a US charitable organization for helping victims of human trafficking. She runs a Safe House for those who want to exit that life. She is a survivor herself, having been trafficked for over twenty years throughout the United States. […]

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