Why I owe prostitution survivor an apology and am backing Ash Regan's 'Unbuyable' Bill

Thirty years ago, she was trapped in prostitution in an Edinburgh brothel. As she told this newspaper, she was raped every day by “ordinary men”. “These were not dirty old men in raincoats. They were teachers, doctors and lawyers, and they could do exactly what they wanted because there was no accountability,” she said.

Thirty years ago, I was a young Edinburgh councillor and a member of the city’s licensing committee. To my now shame, my colleagues and I – from all parties – would regularly grant saunas an ‘entertainment’ license, knowing full well they were brothels. Everyone in the magnificent committee room knew what they were doing. We were giving permission to men to abuse vulnerable women.

READ MORE: Prostitution Scotland: Former prostitute says 'multiple' MSPs from Scottish Parliament bought her for sex

Convinced by ‘lipstick’ feminists

The police and fire chiefs who gave their reports on the health and safety aspects of the application knew. The council officials on hand to guide us through any potential legal hiccups knew. And the councillors, elected by the people to ostensibly build a better city, one where all its citizens were valued, knew. I certainly did.

We had been persuaded by the prevailing wisdom of the time that women like Fiona were safer in a brothel on the ground floor of a city centre tenement than walking the dark streets of Leith. Senior police officers told us so.

And as a young woman, I was convinced by ‘lipstick’ feminists, fashionable in the 1990s, who argued that a woman’s sexuality was empowering – hers to do with what she liked. I swallowed the lie that prostitution was valid work, no different to selling make-up in Jenners or cleaning offices. How wrong I was. How naïve. How careless.

READ MORE: Plans to overhaul prostitution laws in Scotland branded 'disastrous'

When I read Fiona’s description of life as a young woman trapped in prostitution, in part because of my well-meaning naivety, I was distraught at the damage I helped wreak on her life and on those of hundreds of other women, abused with the explicit permission of the city council.

“We were treated like animals, and this was all licensed by Edinburgh City Council, but not one person came to check on us,” she said this week. I am profoundly sorry Fiona, and I hope one day to meet you in person so I can apologise to you properly for the hurt and damage caused by our misguided views on prostitution.

Nordic Model

Today, I agree with the Scottish Government’s approach. Its violence against women strategy could not be clearer – prostitution is abusive and will not be tolerated. “Those perpetrating exploitation (such as sex buyers and profiteers) will be held to account,” promised the government in a policy paper published three years ago.

Impatient for change, Alba MSP Ash Regan this week unveiled her private members’ bill which, if passed, will make buying sex a criminal offence. It follows the principles of the Nordic Model, first adopted in Sweden in 1999.

As well as criminalising the purchase of sexual acts, it decriminalises selling, removes previous prostitution offences from a woman’s record and promises support for women to exit and recover from “the life” as many describe it.

Some Tory, Labour and SNP MSPs have already backed the bill, but as yet no ministers have expressed public support, even though Regan’s bill is effectively government policy. However, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes did confirm her “long-standing interest” in the Nordic Model this week.

Opponents of the bill insist that it is dangerous and will expose women in prostitution to even more violence and exploitation. Campaign group Scotland for Decrim say that only full decriminalisation will protect women’s safety and human rights and give them the power to “choose when and how we work”.

Trafficked and raped

But what power does a vulnerable teenage girl have over a man who has paid her a few pounds for oral sex? What power does a woman with a costly drug habit have when she is forced to have sex with 20 men in a 12-hour shift for fear of being beaten by her pimp?

What power did 15-year-old Fiona Broadfoot have when she was trafficked for sex, raped every day by men whose lives were not affected by buying sexual services, while her mental and physical health was at severe risk?

There may be some women who are able to disassociate themselves from the act of being abused for cash. Lily Philips achieved notoriety after live-streaming herself having sex with 101 men in one day. She told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire that people don’t need to worry about her.

“It really is my choice and I’m not being abused,” she said. Except she is. Sauna. Back streets. Online. The venue may change; the sexual exploitation doesn’t.

Daughters, sisters, mothers

As Regan said when launching her bill, prostitution is not a job like any another. “It is a system of commercial sexual exploitation that targets the vulnerable, is driven by demand and is enabled by silence… buying sexual access to a human being is a form of male violence.”

Holyrood has from time to time grappled with the ethics of prostitution. The late Margo MacDonald lodged two bills in parliament to better manage street prostitution. Both failed. In 2012, Labour’s Rhoda Grant introduced a bill similar to Regan’s which also failed through lack of cross-party support.

As Regan gets ready to take her ‘Unbuyable’ campaign across Scotland over the summer months, Scotland’s politicians need to consider their own position. Would they want their daughter or mother or sister to earn a living by selling sex to strangers?

If the answer is no, then they have no choice but to support Regan’s bill. Every woman in Scotland deserves the same respect. None of us are for sale.