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 >>

(more…)

Find out more
Posts

Latest Posts

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

Continue Reading

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

Continue Reading

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

Continue Reading

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

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading
Read More
Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Beth

My name is Beth, I was a prostitute for five years. I never thought it would happen to me, but debt and almost becoming homeless can drive people to do things they usually wouldn’t do.

Body Shell Girl by Rose Hunter

I was in the sex industry for ten years, including brothel, escort, massage parlours and outcall massage, with the majority of my time spent in those last two. My experience was mostly in Canada, where I was living at the time.

Anna’s Story

This is an edited transcript of a podcast, in which Anna talks about being groomed into prostitution as a teenager in 1989 and pimped on the streets of Leeds over the next 11 years.

WARNING: Prostitution destroys your soul

By Geneviève Gilbert

I was a shy young girl. My gymnastics training helped me beat the boys at sport. I loved drawing and everything creative. Raised Catholic, I was gregarious and a book lover. I didn’t ‘choose’ prostitution: a mixture of the culture I lived in during the 1990s, ‘sex-positive’ feminism, and a longing to be loved by my biological papa who had abandoned my siblings, mother and me, chose it for me.

Sick of all the ‘Happy Hooker’ myths?

Want people to know what prostitution is REALLY like?

Share your story