Martina Devlin: There is no happily ever after in the red light zone
The CSO has recorded a leap in the number of cases as the recession bites deep for some women
Society is comfortable with the happy hooker image. 'Pretty Woman' was a lucrative romantic comedy, in which a tart with a heart was wooed and won by her Prince Charming.
Predominantly female audiences smothered every last smidgen of their critical faculties to thrill at the deliberate fairytale evocation, in which Richard Gere leapt from a white limousine in lieu of a white steed and climbed a fire escape to rescue his damsel.
It was far-fetched, but it was box office. 'Pretty Woman' was the third highest grossing film worldwide in 1990, the year of its release, and its frothy escapism ensures it is still screened on television regularly.
Society is less at ease with representations of prostitution that are true to life. The violence, drug addiction, poverty and coercion elements of life on the game don't tickle our feel-good fancies.
And so we continue to look the other way. To tell ourselves that sex between consenting adults, even if money swaps hands, is none of our business -- it might even be more honest, in its way. After all, as that exchange between Woody Allen and Jodie Foster went in 'Shadows and Fog': "I never paid for sex in my life." "You just think you haven't."
But for a blast of reality about what can drive women to sell themselves to strangers, tune in to Paddy O'Gorman's radio report for 'Today With Pat Kenny'. It was aired on Tuesday, but listen back to the podcast. Non-judgmental, yet harrowing, it discloses more about what's happening in Ireland today than a dozen news conferences with the troika.
Mr O'Gorman ventured on to Dublin's streets after dark to see who was putting a price on a piece of their flesh, and why. There were drug addicts doing it to pay for their fixes. Nothing new there. But the recession victims were a revelation.
One former secretary, a single mother, told how she went out every other weekend, hoping to raise about €200 in a night, to help meet her rent and bills. The longer she was out of work, she said, the harder it became to get a job -- an observation every unemployed person would recognise.
Only a fool could call this easy money. The risks of attack and infection are ever-present. Another woman described keeping a can of spray deodorant near-hand for protection, a pragmatic piece of advice given to her by a guard.
Streetwalking is regarded by these women as an instant solution: a quick source of cash. Groups working to end prostitution indicate key times when financial pressures mount are Christmas, back to school and -- fast approaching -- First Communion. Not even Tommy Tiernan could rustle up a joke about a woman going on the game to buy her child a white communion dress as a symbol of innocence.
There was a sense of camaraderie among the women. But an undercurrent of shame, too. The world's oldest profession is hardly a lifestyle choice.
The Central Statistics Office records a leap in the number of cases where the gardai are satisfied prostitution is taking place. They climbed from 93 in 2009 to 205 in 2010. In view of the deteriorating economic situation, it seemed a safe assumption that 2011 would indicate a further increase.
Figures are only available to the end of September 2011, but when I spoke to the CSO in Cork it confirmed what I suspected. Figures for the first nine months of the year showed 197 cases. Of these, the lion's share relate to soliciting.
At 18, I had a summer job in an office near King's Cross in London, then a notorious red light district. All of the girls in the office were regularly propositioned, in daylight hours.
Most of the men who made approaches were middle-aged, in pinstriped suits, often wearing wedding rings. Looking back, what particularly troubles me is that I looked some years less than my age. These men thought they were offering to buy not just sex, but very young and possibly underage sex.
However, a number of them also wanted someone to talk to. I remember one man with a public school accent, heavy silver cufflinks showing beneath his suit sleeves, walking almost all the way home with me. I couldn't shake him off, and wound up going into a shop and pretending to browse there till he was gone.
He wasn't really a pest, to be honest, except at the beginning and again at the end when he suggested sex. The rest of the time he just walked along chatting about how busy it was at work (he said he was a lawyer). It struck me afterwards that he might have been lonely and looking for companionship as much as sex. Then again, he could have tried a dating agency.
Did I ever feel sorry for these men? Yes, they appeared to be sad and rather desperate. I pitied the men in Limerick, too, caught recently in a sting by female gardai posing as prostitutes. Many were well past middle age, with rural addresses. It takes no leap of the imagination to consider how joyless some of their lives might be.
But it's a myth about prostitution being a victimless commercial transaction. The sex trade is controlled by criminals.
Campaigns to end prostitution and sex trafficking, such as 'Turn Off The Red Light', highlight how trafficking, in particular, enslaves women -- often young foreigners, perhaps with limited English, who are brought to Ireland and isolated, commodified and treated like a sub-stratum of the human species. These women are making a lot of money, but for others.
One person's loneliness, and another's need to raise cash, are not reason enough either to legalise prostitution, or to turn a blind eye to it. People get hurt, both physically and psychologically.
"I want the fairytale," Julia Roberts says in 'Pretty Woman'. The actress got it: the film made her a star. The character got it: she was offered marriage, after turning down the offer of being set up in an apartment.
But there are no happily ever afters for women who are prostitutes -- whether more or less willingly, or because they have been traded by criminals. Let's stop pretending.
- Martina Devlin
Irish Independent
