Nordic Model Now!
Movement for the Abolition of Prostitution
“I’m a survivor of familial sex trafficking. My father started sexually abusing me before I was even two years old and by age six, he was selling me to strangers for sex. This went on until I was about 16 years old.
He threatened my younger brother and me, saying he would kill our mother if we ever told anyone what he was doing… Read More
This is the text of our submission to a Sheffield University study on human trafficking and online sexual exploitation.
AdultWork and similar sites make it extraordinarily easy for sex traffickers to exploit the prostitution of vulnerable women and girls. In fact it is hard not to come to the conclusion that these sites have been specifically designed for this purpose. If the UK is serious about cracking down on human trafficking, it must hold websites that facilitate sex trafficking and who profiteer from women and girls’ prostitution to account, as it is obliged to under international law. Read More
This podcast explains our grave concerns about how the Modern Slavery Act 2015 frames human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. It asks how this legislation could have been passed when it so spectacularly fails to meet binding obligations under international law and shows that as a result, there is a failure to deal effectively with the forms of human trafficking that particularly affect women and children, and that this has profound implications for how society understands prostitution and how the criminal justice system deals (or fails to deal) with it. A video essay is also available. Read More
Sex trade survivor, Dana Levy, writes from Israel about a sex trafficker, dubbed the ‘greatest pimp in Israel’s history,’ who trafficked hundreds of vulnerable young women and has recently been granted early release from jail. She asks, why does society place so little value on the lives of poor young women? Read More
In this fascinating podcast Siobhan from Nordic Model Now! talks with Dr Jacci Stoyle about a Scottish parliamentary trip to Sweden to find out more about how the Swedish prostitution law works in practice. The trip took place on 22nd and 23rd August 2019.
The trip was part of the work of the Cross Party Group (CPG) on Commercial Sexual Exploitation in the Scottish Parliament, of which Jacci is the secretariat. Read More
This is the text of our submission to the Council of Europe Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) on its call for evidence in advance of its third round of evaluation of the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (the Convention) in the UK. Read More
“He’s here.
A faceless, nameless, terrifying man. He could be anyone really.
I’m trying to hear the music but I can’t. His hands are on me, my skin is screaming at him. Every touch burns.
His lips touch, and ask, and demand, and smile. It’s not a happy smile, it’s a smile of contentment, an “I own you” smile. I’m not here. I can’t be here.” Read More
“I have decided to try this avenue and post here, not my story, not the story of a relative, not even the story of a friend, but the story of a whole country, my country – Romania. It is a gruesome story – in fact, ‘story’ is a misnomer. It is a gruesome reality. Of course, you are well aware of it, but I’ll tell it nonetheless.
“Here in Romania, we’re at the end of our wits and we, as common people, are doing everything we can on our part and I can only hope I can contribute by telling it here in the hopes of making a dent, at least…” Read More
The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) is an umbrella group of hundreds of organisations around the world that purport to represent ‘sex workers,’ while in fact supporting and lobbying for the full decriminalisation of the entire sex trade, including pimps and brothel keepers (who they call ‘third parties’). This article looks at NSWP’s position on the prostitution of children and young adults, and shows how it serves to condone the paid rape of children. Read More
In this important article, Esther, who was herself in prostitution, draws parallels between methods of mass control and subjection introduced during the industrial revolution and the control of women and their widespread subjection to practices of sexual torture during the current technological revolution. She exposes the hypocrisy of the human rights organisations and capitalists who argue for the blanket decriminalisation of the sex trade, which would open up legal mega-brothels such as are found in Germany, and draws on her own experience to argue that the sex industry is rife with racism, sexism and classism, preys on the most powerless women and girls and is inherently traumatising. Legalising brothels benefits only the punters and the profiteers, not the women. Read More
In this article, Dr Stoyle, the Secretariat of the Cross Party Group for Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CPG CSE) in the Scottish Parliament, reports on a Scottish parliamentary trip to Sweden to find out more about how the Swedish prostitution law works in practice. The trip took place on 22nd and 23rd August 2019. Read More
Just as the Internet has changed how we buy books, holidays and electronic items, so it has changed how prostitution is organised. Now the Internet is one of the main ways that punters connect with the women (and others) they pay to use sexually, and it has opened up whole new opportunities for pimps to make vast fortunes while creating a living hell for many of those advertised. Read More
Dana Levy is an Israeli survivor of the sex industry and campaigner for the Nordic Model in Israel, where a Nordic Model-style law has recently been passed. In this article, she reflects on the tenth anniversary of the passing of the Nordic Model legislation in Norway and the work that is still ahead. Read More
The ‘Independent’ Review of the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) has published initial reports on their recommendations. In this article we respond to the report on the MSA’s legal application. We show that the ‘independent’ review abjectly failed to consider the full implications of the MSA’s incorrect definition of human trafficking on women and girls, and instead justified it by clutching at straws that would be laughable were the consequences for the most vulnerable women and girls not so grave. Read More
Advertising for the sex trade is prominent in Melbourne, Australia, where the sex trade has been legal since 1994. In this article, Jacqueline Gwynne explains how WOMEN WANTED flyers offering quick and easy cash lure women into the sex trade. This is what we could expect to see in the UK if the sex trade is fully decriminalised and prostitution is recognised as regular work. Read More
This is the text of our submission to the Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act. It focuses on our grave concerns about how the Modern Slavery Act frames human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and how its failure to deal effectively with the forms of human trafficking that particularly affect women and children can be viewed as sex discrimination and a failure to protect children. The implications of these failings in the Act have profound implications for how society understands prostitution and how the criminal justice system deals (or fails to deal) with it. Read More
Exit! is the harrowing true story of Grizelda Grootboom’s journey into and through prostitution. Many people justify prostitution on the basis of the prostituted person’s choice. Grizelda’s story reveals the shallow irrelevance of this idea in a life blighted by childhood neglect and abandonment, rape, racism, poverty and lack of opportunity, coercion, betrayal and abduction. While Grizelda’s story is unique, there are many elements that are common to many of those who are prostituted worldwide. Read More
This is a new selection of #MeToo stories we’ve received through our Share Your Story page, where women can enter their experiences of the sex trade anonymously. Each story is important, moving and powerful, and reveals yet again the awful truth about prostitution – that it has no place in a society that aspires to equality between women and men, and fundamental human rights for all. Read More
This is the text of Anna Fisher’s talk at the CEASE UK summit (#CEASE18) on Wednesday 14 November, 2018. She explains that the Modern Slavery Act 2015 fails to follow international law in how it defines the offences that mainly affect women and children, why she thinks this happened and why it matters, and what kind of legislation and policy we need to effectively address the issues. Read More
Francine Sporenda interviews Yasmin Vafa, co-founder and executive director of Rights4Girls, which works to end male violence against young women and girls in the United States. She is a lawyer and her work focuses on the intersections between race, gender, violence, and the law. She educates the public and policymakers on these issues and how they affect the lives of marginalized women and children. She has successfully advocated for several anti-trafficking laws at the federal level, has testified before Congress and international human rights bodies, and co-authored a seminal report mapping girls’ unique pathways into the justice system: The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story. Read More
Arinze Orakwue, Director of Public Enlightenment at the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) in Nigeria, sent this message of support for our campaign for the Nordic Model in the UK. He explains that it is only when men in Europe stop buying women and girls in prostitution that the tide of human trafficking from Sub-Saharan Africa, and all the suffering that entails, will end. Read More
Simon Häggström talks with Francine Sporenda about his work as a Swedish Detective Inspector in the Prostitution Unit enforcing the Sex Purchase Law in Stockholm. He now heads the Swedish Police Trafficking Unit, which tracks trafficking and pimping networks. He is the author of “Shadow’s Law: The True Story of a Swedish Detective Inspector Fighting Prostitution.” Read More
The London Mayor’s VAWG strategy no longer commits to targeting men’s demand for prostitution and does not even mention sex buyers once in its 100 pages. Meanwhile the men who bought children to rape and sexually abuse in Telford are mostly excised from the media reports. How can we address the heinous crimes of CSE, sex trafficking, and the pimping of women in prostitution if we refuse to look at the men who drive it and the culture that creates this behaviour and gives it impunity? Read More
This is the text of our submission to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade’s inquiry into ‘pop-up’ brothels. We argue that pop-up brothels are not a new phenomenon, permanent brothels are operating with impunity all over the country, prostitution is damaging to both individual and community, the UK is not meeting its international obligations in this area, the police too often pursue vulnerable women involved in prostitution rather than the ruthless profiteers, and we provide 13 recommendations for a complete overhaul of the law and policy. Read More
Francine Sporenda interviews Manuela Schon about the legalised sex industry in Germany and the impact of new regulations. Manuela is a sociologist and political activist in Germany. She co-founded “Abolition 2014 – Für eine Welt ohne Prostitution” and “LINKE für eine Welt ohne Prostitution.” She is a blogger at the radical feminist blog “Die Störenfriedas.” Read More
This guest post responds to Juno Mac’s 2016 “The Laws that Sex Workers Really Want” TED Talk, showing that her insistence that ALL “sex workers” want the blanket decriminalisation of the entire sex industry is only believable if you are irritatingly shallow in your analysis. It shows how such blanket decriminalisation leads to an upsurge in the sex trade and sex trafficking, and takes us on a whirlwind tour of the economic disaster that engulfed the former Warsaw Pact countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and shows how this disproportionately hit women. In their efforts to escape the direst poverty, many women and girls fall victims to traffickers and become ensnared in the sex industry – particularly in the decriminalised brothels of Western Europe. The result is tragedy on a vast scale. Read More
A report on efforts to bring some balance into the British Medical Association (BMA) debate on decriminalising the sex trade. Read More
This article takes a hard look at prostitution, and how it affects people, taking in its intrinsic links with porn, sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation, its inherent racism, and why we should hold those who drive it accountable. Read More
This is a response from Nordic Model Now! to the report of the research commissioned by the Scottish Government on the available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland. Read More
This is a response from Nordic Model Now! to the report of the research commissioned by the Scottish Government on the Impacts of the Criminalisation of the Purchase of Sex. Read More
