'I worry they are trafficked': is the UK's first 'legal' red light zone working?
Exploitation in focus
Global development
Leeds’ managed zone for prostitution was meant to make life safer for women, but, amid a firestorm of opposition, who is benefiting from the radical approach?
Exploitation in focus is supported by
Humanity United About this content
Julie Bindel
managed zone 管理された地域ってのは、性奴隷が売春しても警官にしょっぴかれない地域なわけでしょ。
どうして、オウベイジンって自分たちのやっていること美化するんだろうね？
ガーディアンのマッカリくんはなんで抗議しないんだろうかね？
Exploitation in focus
Global development
Leeds’ managed zone for prostitution was meant to make life safer for women, but, amid a firestorm of opposition, who is benefiting from the radical approach?
Exploitation in focus is supported by
Humanity United About this content
Julie Bindel
Prostitution is not illegal in the UK but related activities, such as soliciting in a public place, pimping and kerb crawling, are unlawful. By suspending these laws and creating a wholly decriminalised market for prostitution, this radical approach – known as the “managed zone” – has transformed a banal square mile of industrial buildings and scrubland into an ideological battleground, revealing the bitter divisions over the response to prostitution in the UK.
Sciré and I fundamentally disagree on what is happening in the zone. She doesn’t consider the work that the women are doing to be exploitation and insists that from their experience those in the zone are working freely and without coercion. Yet she demurs when I ask her whether the managed zone is working out the way she thought it would.
But now he’s changed his mind. He was badly shaken by the murder of Daria Pionko, a Polish woman working in the zone who was battered to death by a sex buyer just a few months after the zone became operational. He says he is dismayed by what he has seen unfold on the streets of Holbeck since, including reports of increased sexual assaults and rapes.
“Murder, serious assault, and rapes have all taken place on the zone. We see condoms and needles all over the place, and even human faeces,” he says.
There have been no arrests or investigations for sex trafficking or pimping since the zone opened. Yet despite this, Staines says that he, like many other locals, are worried about what might be happening to the women working there at night. One woman who used to work in the zone told me that she saw busloads of Romanian women brought into the zone at night and picked up in the morning. Nigel Perry, another Holbeck resident who has lived in the community 50 years in a small terrace house a quarter of a mile from the zone, is also alarmed by what he is seeing.
“Next door to me there are two or three young Romanian women. I have only ever seen one of them leave the house in months, and she was accompanied by a man. I worry that they are trafficked. Men come to the house all hours of the day and night. I don’t think the women can speak any English.”
managed zone 管理された地域ってのは、性奴隷が売春しても警官にしょっぴかれない地域なわけでしょ。
どうして、オウベイジンって自分たちのやっていること美化するんだろうね？
ガーディアンのマッカリくんはなんで抗議しないんだろうかね？