Hansard

I thank the Minister for Equalities and Older People, Christina McKelvie, who has brought the issue of pervasive violence against women and girls to the attention of the Scottish Parliament in response to the UN’s 16 days of activism campaign. As the motion for debate sets out, we must uproot the cultural acceptance of the various forms of misogyny that permeate Scottish society. Misogyny is hatred of, contempt for or prejudice against women. That is what it means in real life for many.

As deputy convener of the cross-party group on human trafficking, I have been privileged to work with organisations that are tackling one of the worst forms of exploitation of women and girls—commercial sexual exploitation. We often think that that is an issue that is far away from Scotland, but that is not the case. In 2020, the largest group of identified trafficking and modern slavery victims in the UK were British. The Salvation Army recorded an increase of 79 per cent in the number of domestically trafficked people in the UK, and 39 per cent of people who were supported were victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

Globally, 99 per cent of victims of sex trafficking are women and girls, so it is a highly gendered issue. We can anticipate that women and girls of any nationality who are trafficked and exploited in the UK are most likely victims of commercial sexual exploitation, whether in prostitution, stripping or live streamed abuse pornography.

UN House Scotland, which provides the secretariat of the cross-party group on human trafficking, highlighted in its recent “Connecting Women’s Voices” podcast series how closely femicide is linked to sexual exploitation. Retired US attorney Linda Abraham and advocacy consultant for Soroptimist International spoke about violence against women. She told listeners:

“Since the inception of the UN we have been discussing this injustice, but here we are in 2022. In many cases issues have got worse, like domestic violence increasing during the pandemic. A lot of serial killers are targeting sex workers ... girls have to be included too: girls are some of the most vulnerable victims around.”

That is something that we need to listen to today—girls are extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse, especially those who are care experienced. In the Parliament, we took steps to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in order to legally recognise anyone who is under the age of 18 as a child and afford them rights on that basis. However, more needs to be done.

Vice Magazine recently reported on the growing number of British children in poverty who are vulnerable to domestic sex trafficking. The magazine shared the harrowing story of Emily. Emily was coaxed by her friend’s stepfather into moving packets of cocaine for him. He then trafficked her into commercial sexual exploitation. She was 11. When she was 14, she was gang raped by three men in an empty swimming complex. The 14-year-old Emily spiralled into substance abuse, which she said made her even more reliant on a string of sex traffickers. That story shows the complexity of the power that traffickers can hold over their victims through prostitution.

Emily said, “I felt dead”. She went on to say:

“this sounds weird, but it actually felt normal. You start to rationalise everything in your head. It becomes safe in a way ... And you get used to the chaos.”

She said that, if she had to guess a number, she would estimate that more than 1,500 men had raped her as a teenager.

That story of abuse repeats itself again and again. The National Crime Agency estimates that the 1,115 officially confirmed sex-trafficked women in 2017 endured 3.3 million sexual assaults. That means that each of the women and girls was raped almost 3,000 times before managing to find support to exit prostitution and escape their traffickers.

Twenty years after Emily was first trafficked as an 11-year-old, she felt able to report her experience to the national referral mechanism. She is now free from prostitution. She is in her 30s, has a son and is now, incredibly and bravely, working as an advocate in the anti-slavery sector, speaking on behalf of those who are enduring today what she endured as a child.

Women and girls who are subject to abuse and coercion have little power to leave their situation, let alone lobby the Government. We can, however, listen to the survivors who are no longer under coercive-abusive control, such as those involved in the A Model for Scotland campaign.

We must also listen to organisations such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the International Justice Mission, A21, Hope for Justice, Survivors of Human Trafficking in Scotland, UN House Scotland, CARE for Scotland and Unseen, which are combating narratives that legitimise sex trafficking, prosecuting abusers and delivering support for the women and children who are exploited in this £80 billion-a-year global industry.

In this Parliament, we have the power to ban some of the worst excesses of violence against women. Today, criminality falls on women in prostitution—those who are being systematically raped and are living in situations of horrific abuse. Those women, many of whom have been exploited since childhood, have no legal entitlements to help them exit prostitution. However, those who commit the exploitation—the pimps, who, legally, can call themselves sex workers—are, effectively, unchallenged and continue to profit from that cruelty. Moreover, men who purchase sex—who physically and personally commit the violence—have complete impunity. That is an undeniably misogynist aspect of our legal system.

We must criminalise the men who participate in systematic violence against women and girls in Scotland by banning pornography, strip clubs and the purchase of sex.