Former prostitute backs Alba MSP’s Bill to criminalise those buying sex

A former prostitute has told how she feared she would be murdered “every day” as she gave her backing to a Bill that could see men jailed for buying sex.

Alba Party MSP Ash Regan has introduced a member’s Bill at Holyrood which, if passed, would criminalise those buying sex, while decriminalising those selling it.

Under the proposals, those convicted of buying sex could be fined up to £10,000 if the case was prosecuted in the sheriff courts – with these courts also able to impose jail sentences of up to six months.

Fiona Broadfoot, who was forced into prostitution at the age of 15, spoke out in favour of Ms Regan’s Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill.

She said she spent 11 years “entrenched” in the sex trade, initially being “trafficked” to London but also working in a brothel in Edinburgh.

Speaking to journalists in Holyrood, Ms Broadfoot, who described herself as a “sex trade survivor”, said: “I spent 11 years entrenched in the life.

“Every day I thought I would be murdered, every day I experienced rape, by ordinary men, ordinary men whose lives were not impacted for one second like the women and girls who were being used.

“I was criminalised, my perpetrators weren’t, none of the men who bought me, none of them who trafficked me about and profited from me.”

Ms Broadfoot, who now works to prevent young women from entering the sex trade through her Build a Girl project, said: “I can’t even begin to think of the number of men who bought my body and used it for their own sexual gratification.”

She added many of the men she dealt with had a “lot of sexual deviant behaviour and fetishes”, saying a “big request was for me to put on a schoolgirl uniform”.

Speaking about the men she encountered, she said: “None of them were dirty old men in rain coats, not one of them. They were teachers, they were doctors, they were lawyers, no doubt MPs, no doubt police officers.

“They knew they could do exactly what they wanted with no accountability, and we were the ones left feeling like pieces of meat the end of the day.

“Men’s lives are not impacted, we have to bring them into the public eye and hold them accountable for what they are doing.”

Ms Regan’s Bill, which the MSP hopes will be passed before Holyrood breaks for next May’s Scottish Parliament election, would also quash historic convictions for prostitution and create a statutory right to support for leaving the trade.

The MSP said: “Between 6,000 and 8,000 women we think are involved in prostitution in Scotland, which is not an insignificant number.

“I don’t want to live in a country where you can order women like a pizza, with no consequences for the people that do it.

“We know that this is not a victimless crime, the damage that is perpetuated on to women who work in the sex trade is extreme and I don’t think any civilised society should be either looking away or condoning it with a legislative approach.”

She said research had shown women who have been involved in prostitution can have “higher rates of PTSD than combat veterans”.

Linda Thompson, national co-ordinator of the Women’s Support Project, said Ms Regan’s Bill is “the first time in Scotland that women potentially will have a legal right to receive the services and support they need”.

Ms Thompson said: “The women I have worked with describe rape, sexual violence, abuse and exploitation every day.

“The women we support, the vast majority of them do not want to do this, and if they had viable alternatives and real choices they would never have started, but they find they are trapped.”