Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1517916
14 Unity SUNDAY 24 MARCH 2024 People Saga, let's start from here: will we be talking about 'prostitution' or is it 'sex work'? I do not call it 'sex work' because that implies it is 'work' when it is re- ally not. It is violence. It is violence against women and children mostly. By defining it as 'sex work', you are implying that people in prostitution aren't experiencing violence when they actually are doing so, every sin- gle day. It is an act of buying another human's body. This is violence and we need to take a stand against this. Why is this issue close to heart? Well, from my own experience, I was groomed from a young age, so I found myself in prostitution and commer- cial sexual exploitation as far back as childhood. I think it is very important to highlight that I was groomed, and that this was not a free choice. Statis- tics always show that most people are in prostitution not by their free will or to "make easy money" but because many women and children are in fact groomed into it. They would proba- bly have been experiencing rape or sexual assault in the past which even- tually leads them into prostitution and it was the same for me. What changed? Three years ago I got out of this life with help from organisations. I found my way into a better life and what really helped me most was getting access to trauma therapy. It is only then that I could really start to work through this experience. At one point, I didn't realise that prostitution was affecting me badly but once you get out of it you realise that you were in fact exploited and were experiencing a lot of violence every single day. Is it true that people get very rich as prostitutes? No not at all, very few do so. The pimps, the traffickers, they take most of the money. The majority of wom- en in prostitution are homeless, living in poverty, stuck in abuse like drug abuse and so on. It's a misconception that in prostitution that you make easy money. How did you manage to exit prostitu- tion? For starters, I got help from organ- isations that help women in prosti- tution. I managed to get a safe place to live in because until then I was liv- ing around in a lot of different men's apartments. I received trauma thera- py. The fact that in Sweden we have the Nordic model, which implies that sex buyers and pimps are criminal- ized – but that women in prostitution are not criminalized – was also very helpful. Locally many speak about the Nordic model: what is it? It is about criminalising sex buyers and decriminalising the people in prostitution, which means that the government is stating: 'you were not in it by free choice, so you are not a so called sex-worker'. It is men's vio- lence against women and it's a struc- tural problem. We've had the Nordic Model since 1999, the same year I was born. It gives the police better tools to detect sex buyers and helps social services to support women who are in prostitution. I value the fact that you not only talk about a story that happened to you, which created a lot of pain and trau- ma, but you're also involved in advo- cacy. Why are you doing it? Didn't you have enough on your plate already? Thank you and I appreciate your question. I coordinate Scandinavia's biggest survivor network and we co- operate with a lot of other interna- tional organisations that work with these people, on how to criminalise sex buyers, how to develop better guidelines on a European level and so on. I've also co-founded the interna- tional survivor organisation 'Beyond Survivors', an initiative by an organi- sation called Child X, that works with preventing trafficking of children. We have been down at the European Parliament to speak on this subject. There is a report written by German Only Fans? It's men who are reaping the profits. A survivor of commercial sexual exploitation as a child, Saga Brod- erson is at the forefront of the internationalisation campaign for the Nordic model, which seeks to criminalise sex buyers and help women exit prostitution. Here she speaks to Prof. Andrew Azzopardi about her work for Beyond Survivors, and the battle to bolster the fight against sex exploitation and trafficking SAGA BRODERSON SEX EXPLOITATION SURVIVOR, CAMPAIGNER