This is an edited transcript of Sian’s talk at our ‘Grooming Gangs’ webinar, held on Sunday 27 April 2025. The recording is available on YouTube. Sian talks about how when she was 13, a local white man groomed and pimped her into prostitution and sold her to thousands of other mostly white men. Her experience was not significantly different from what happened to the girls exploited by the so-called grooming gangs – although now the euphemism ‘sexual exploitation’ is usually used rather than the term ‘prostitution’, which we prefer because everyone knows exactly what it means.

Hi everyone, my name is Sian. I was brought up in the Midlands, specifically in Coventry, which like Birmingham has a large sex industry.

I was sexually abused as a child, which is a big factor in many women’s entry into prostitution. It certainly helped to groom me into the frame of mind that I should just get it over and done with, whatever was done to me.

My parents divorced when I was 12 and things weren’t great at home, although it wasn’t a terrible home. It was just the general low-income, hard-working mother, normal schooling kind of background that a lot of children have in the UK.

The pimp

When I was 13, I met a guy who lived near my school. I knew he wasn’t fantastic. I knew he was a drug dealer and small-time car thief. We got talking, and for whatever reason we ended up kind of going out. Not really a boyfriend, just a casual thing. He would wait for me after school.

After a while he started bringing a friend along and he told me to do it with his friend. I didn’t want to, but they were blocking the path so I couldn’t get past them to get home. So, I did it, to just get it over with, as I’d learned from being sexually abused when I was younger.

The next day he turned up with a whole bunch of guys and again there was no way to get away. When I said no, my pimp punched me in the face. After that it pretty much happened every school night for the next three years – until I ran away from home. Running away from home was the only way to get away from it.

My pimp was a white guy. For him, pimping me was an easy way to earn money. It was less dangerous than selling drugs, it was less risky than breaking into people’s houses and stealing cars. It was a great little earner, which is how a lot of pimps regard it.

Most of my punters (‘punter’ is what we often call sex buyers in the UK) were white. There were a few from an Afro-Caribbean background. Punters’ background really depends on where you are. The area where I went to school was a poor working class area, with many Irish and a lot of unemployment and my punters reflected that. My pimp was also unemployed and saw pimping me as the only way he could earn money.

Grooming

It is frighteningly easy to groom a child, especially when there’s a combination of fear and benefit for the child in a really twisted way.

As I said, my pimp used to meet me after school. He didn’t want the authorities involved because it would get in the way of him earning money, so he was careful to make sure I always got home on time, that I had no bruises on my face and that no-one told my mother. He was good at using emotional blackmail and fear: “You wouldn’t want your mum knowing that you had sex with me would you? She’d be really angry about that”.

This is how pimps and groomers operate. They find a girl and give her cigarettes or alcohol, Maybe they’ll take her to a friend’s house, somewhere she’s not supposed to go to, or to see a boyfriend that she’s not supposed to see. Then they’ve got leverage with her: “Your mum wouldn’t want you if she knew you were smoking”, “What if your brother found out that you went to see this guy who lives down the street?”

They’re clever at using all sorts of manipulation, such as: “If you do this for me, I won’t tell your mum”, “It’s only this once”, “But you did it last time”, “You wouldn’t want your dad finding out that you slept with a whole bunch of guys for money, would you?” It can be very difficult for a child to spot that kind of manipulation for what it is or to get out of it.

Pimps don’t usually start directly with violence, and even if there’s no violence involved at all, it doesn’t mean that the child wants to do it. What it really means is that the child has no way out. It’s terrifying. It’s very frightening as a child. Everybody in my school knew what was happening, everyone on the estate where my school was knew what was happening, and as far as they were concerned, I was just a slag and ‘I’d asked for it’.

Poverty was a real driver. I never got any of the money – my pimp took it all. The punters always paid him before they used me. I never got anything from it. But from the pimp’s point of view, it’s a fantastic earner.

Poverty is absolutely behind prostitution, money is a real driver of it and it’s why I don’t think you can separate child prostitution from adult prostitution because the drivers are the same. It’s the same thing.

I had nowhere to go. I had no-one to speak to about it, partly because of my background – because I’m Catholic, my school was Catholic and sex outside of marriage was frowned upon – but also, who would I talk to when everybody thought I was a slag? And the official places were very much, “We can’t help you or give you the pill or condoms because you’re under sixteen”. They basically washed their hands of me.

If we’d had full decriminalisation in the UK, I would have been regarded as a ‘youth sex worker’ and it would be considered my own agency, my own choice, and I should be supported in that. But the reality was I was terrified of my pimp, and had nowhere to go and no one to talk to.

This is why the Nordic Model is so helpful because it provides help, it provides a way out, it provides people to talk to, it provides a way to get out of this hell which was all I wanted. I just wanted to get away, and the reason I didn’t run away earlier was because I knew that if I did, I’d have to work as a prostitute again on the street and I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted a place of my own and a regular job like a normal person.

The punters

Although race is obviously relevant in some of the grooming gangs, grooming is not only a Pakistani or Muslim problem. It’s not just Pakistani Muslim men who are running all the brothels, it’s not just Pakistani Muslim men who are all the pimps. This is a male problem. Men all over the UK are very happy to exploit women and girls in prostitution. If they weren’t, prostitution wouldn’t exist.

Sexism is absolutely behind it. Men’s access to sex is seen as a right. Pornography is an enormous driver of it. One of the main things that happened to me when I was being exploited in prostitution as a child was men wanting to act out what they had seen in pornography on me. It was the commonest thing they wanted to do. It was a huge driver. Girls and women in prostitution are seen as someone that men have the right to do anything they want to. They think that because they paid their money, they can do whatever they want.

My own experience of it was always in a group. My pimp would organise everything while I was in school, and then he would wait for me after school and take me to a group of men. So it would be just me and a group of mostly adult men. The vast majority of them were white, and they were of all ages, and mostly, but not always, from poorer backgrounds. The vast majority had girlfriends, children, wives, homes. They would never admit to their wives and partners, what they’d done, but they were very happy to do it.

In a group situation like that, when one man does something violent, nine times out of ten the other guys will laugh and if they don’t excuse it, they all carry on and do it too, and it gets worse and it can snowball horrifyingly fast until you’re in what can be a life-threatening situation. It’s terrifying. It’s terrifying for an adult woman, and it’s even more terrifying for a child, and what those girls went through – any girl who’s been groomed into prostitution – it’s absolutely horrifying.

But I have to say, the source of the problem lies with the men who pay. You cannot have a pimped child, you cannot have a child groomed like that if you don’t have someone lined up to pay to use and abuse her. Because it’s about money. Money and control, but first it’s about money. People want to earn a profit and child grooming is no different from when adult women are pushed into prostitution through poverty or men coercing them into it. Men need to be held to account, men need to know that it’s wrong to pay for sex. It’s wrong.

Every single punter knew I was under sixteen because I was in my school uniform. My school had a specific uniform for under sixteens and it was by far the biggest school in the area so everybody knew the uniform. They were all “It’s so cool that you’re into it so young. It’s really hot”. Sometimes they even asked if I had a younger sister they could use too. And yet if anybody had asked them – police or anything like that – it would’ve been “She told me she was over sixteen, how was I supposed to know?”

They were the same men that would be out with pitchforks if they thought a paedophile was living in their street, but when it comes to paying for sex with a ‘little slapper’ (which is how they regard the girls) they have no issue with that.

This is what needs to be called to account – the male attitude that if they pay, they can do as they like and get away with it.

It’s wrong, it has to stop. Again, this is where the Nordic Model is so crucial because it holds men to account, it tells them that it’s wrong to pay for sex, it’s wrong to groom children, it’s wrong to groom adults. You cannot pay money and expect someone to completely suspend their human rights and then do whatever you like to them. It’s wrong.

My heart goes out to the girls that were involved in the ‘grooming gangs’ because it’s horrifying. It takes a lifetime to learn to live with – because you don’t get over it. All you can do is to learn to live with it, and that’s not an easy thing. It leads to long-lasting problems. Gynaecological problems, broken bones that don’t heal, breathing problems, definitely mental health problems. It leaves horrifying devastation in its wake.

To pin responsibility on Pakistani Muslim men alone is misleading and obscures the real problem – that men from all social classes and ethnicities are involved. People who buy sex and those who want to profit from women’s and girls’ prostitution are the problem. They need to be held to account and it needs to stop. And frankly, I think the Nordic Model is the only way that we can do this.

I think that’s about it from me. If anyone would like to ask any questions, you’re more than welcome. Thank you very much for coming this afternoon. It’s been wonderful to talk to you all.

Questions

After Sian spoke, there was a Q&A session. Here are Sian’s responses to some of the questions. (Questions in bold.)

Do you know of any groups working to support female victims?

Rape Crisis were very helpful to me. They have a large waiting list at the moment, but they are good at signposting onto other places. In South Yorkshire, Snowdrop are good at helping survivors of trafficking. They’re there for all survivors of trafficking, men, women, children, but they’re particularly good at supporting women who have been trafficked, including those who may not have been brought in from other countries, but who have been trafficked internally in Britain. I can recommend them.

How do we stop this and bring in the Nordic Model, when it’s mostly still men and privileged women in power in the police and parliament etc?

I echo what Anna said. We need to start at grassroots level, basically talking about it with people that are around us, family, friends, neighbours. I know it’s not an easy subject to bring up. Don’t excuse the sex industry as, ‘It’s just something that happens’ or ‘It’s a great way to earn money’ or similar, because it not, it’s really not.

We have to demand better for our young people and children. I don’t want young people feeling that this is the only way they can earn, especially not young women, especially not poor young women. They deserve better. They deserve proper jobs, they deserve decent housing, and they have every right to demand and work for that. And yes, absolutely, talk to your local MP, and union leaders.

How would the speakers relate internet ‘manosphere’ attitudes and social permissiveness surrounding men buying sex, and thinking in particular of characters like the infamous Andrew Tate and probably many others that glorify the image and role of a pimp as a lifestyle to be emulated, and often target boys and young men?

I think we need to have very honest conversations with boys and young men about porn and prostitution and how terrifying it can be. How these images that you see on screen, they’re real people. You wouldn’t treat your school friends like that, you wouldn’t treat your little sister like that, you wouldn’t treat your mother like that. I have sons and I would like to hope that they wouldn’t want anybody to treat me like that, so why would a young man act that way?

It’s a shame that we have to make it so personal for them to understand, but it’s so easy to ‘other’ that person on the other side of the screen. And so I really think we need to have very honest conversations with our young people about this.

I used to be part of a sexual abuse service for women under the umbrella of the NHS mental health service. Sadly the NHS tried to wreck this therapy service run by women of various professional backgrounds and eventually it came to an end, closing in 2020. How do we get services to provide if both men and women managers see everything in the short term, providing only behavioural therapies and if women aren’t getting better ‘it’s their own fault’?

I’ve had experience of both NHS mental health support and support run through various charities and I found the NHS support to be less than ideal. It was always time limited and it was always – I don’t know how to describe it… I had one psychologist who laughed when I told her about prostitution as if she didn’t believe me. It was very difficult.

Whereas the charity-based support was with women who were there to support me no matter what. And while I know a lot of charities are struggling because there’s not a lot of money around, it really got me though. I was in and out for twenty-odd years of counselling just to get the stability that I am at now, and that’s what we’re looking at. That kind of commitment needs to be made.

The Government needs to look at the costs of NOT providing effective and holistic services. It costs so much money for women to be in and out of hospital, on benefits when they could be working, depressed and maybe with other illnesses that might be preventable if they were given support, whether it’s with self-harm, whether it’s with addictions, with education so they can do a better job so they don’t have to stay in an environment that’s harmful to them.

But again, it comes back to grassroots. I think we have to start pushing for this locally. I mean, that’s how Rape Crisis started back in the day, isn’t it? Women organising. And maybe that’s what we have to do. It is difficult, I’m not saying there’s an easy answer. It takes a long time and a lot of support, but women reaching out to other women, and for male survivors as well, men reaching out to other men, would be wonderful.

And it’s that kind of long-term, holistic support we need, not just saying, “If you don’t get over it within twenty weeks, I’m sorry we can’t help you any more”. That’s not how this works. There needs to be commitment over time. If you’re thinking “We want quick results” you’re never going to get to the root of the problem. So yes, I think the NHS needs a more long-term focus, more commitment to it, absolutely.

What types of behaviours or patterns [of being sexually exploited] should I look for in my son or daughter?

It can be difficult, you really need to know your child. I personally went about hiding it as much as I could because I was frightened. But there absolutely were signs. I was very withdrawn in school. My school work nosedived completely. I was very quiet when I came home. I had a very specific routine of washing and doing certain things, and if you’re on the ball you would see that happening and wonder, “Why does my daughter come home and wash everything? That’s not normal”.

On the flip side it can be acting out. There were other girls in my school who were involved in prostitution (not with the same pimp), and they would stay out very late and drink alcohol, typically not something that they had done before. That could be an indication. Also, any marks or bruises on the body.

I’m not saying to jump on it, but it can be embarrassment around certain subjects, or really not wanting to deal with or face anything about prostitution or the sex industry, that could be a sign. I would’ve run a mile if anything about it had come up because it felt shameful and embarrassing – and frightening.

My mum actually met and spoke to my pimp at one point. He made a point to go up to her – he only asked the time, but he wanted me to see that he could contact her at any time. My mother would’ve thrown me out if she’d known what I was doing, for sure, and it was obvious that I was terrified. She asked if I knew him and I had to lie and say that I didn’t.

Those kinds of things. If you sense that your child is frightened or ‘off’, definitely at specific times of the day or in specific situations, it’s a good idea to ask. Your child might not be able to come out with it. It might just be, “I’m uncomfortable around this person”, but at least there’s a door there for you to begin talking about it.

So the best I can offer, is to know your child and always ask, “Is this okay, how are you doing?”, or “I noticed you’re not feeling well today, why is your stomach hurting when you come home from school?” This kind of thing doesn’t have to be direct and accusatory, but be open to discussion. And be aware that your child may talk around it a lot, because directly confronting it may be too frightening for them.

Our Raising Kids in a Pornified World webinar provided advice on talking to children about these issues.