This week charges of brothel-keeping against me were dropped. It’s enough for two prostitutes to live or work together for us to be illegal. To be within the law we must work alone. After 18 months of campaigning to stop my prosecution, it was suddenly claimed there was not enough evidence to proceed. I think this is because I was on the verge of opening a can of worms and the authorities wanted me to go away. I didn’t plan on becoming a prostitute. I had an abusive and violent childhood leaving me with night terrors and a stammer. As the eldest child I looked after my mother and younger siblings and I learned to be strong. From the age of 11 I worked in a burger bar to pay for bus fares to school, dinner money and school uniform. Like most victims of domestic violence, we had no help to escape. I became pregnant at 21 and a single parent at 23. I trained to become a computer programmer. This meant leaving the house with my three-year-old at 6.45am arriving home at 7pm and doing three hours’ nightly study. It was very hard but it paid off: I got… Read full this story
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