IT WAS as disturbing and terrifying an ordeal as anyone could find themselves in.

A complete stranger sitting on the end of the bed in a hotel room demanding sex. But what made the situation all the more confronting for Ryan Cole was the fear that she was the one who could be arrested. And the man staring at her knew it.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Ms Cole tells news.com.au.

“He was just sitting there patiently and calmly threatening to call the police. He seemed to think he would get away with it.

“I said ‘this is my room, I’ve asked you to leave and you’re not and if you won’t then I’ll call hotel security’.

But he said ‘well fine, I’ll call the police’. I didn’t know what would happen.”

Ms Cole’s predicament occurred in Melbourne but, she says, she’s confident the same thing wouldn’t have happened in Sydney due to major differences in the laws governing sex work between the states.

However, a possible toughening up of regulations has her, and other sex workers, concerned NSW may soon take a “massive leap backwards” that could put them at risk of sexual blackmail.

“I wouldn’t classify him as a client because he never paid me and he never agreed to any of my terms, but he made a booking and came into my space and then refused to leave my room,” she says.

“He was shocked when the security guard removed him, he started yelling, ‘she’s the one breaking the law’.

“I was fortunate that the hotel understood that it was my space and it didn’t matter what accusations he made. But there was that threat that if he called the police I could get charged, yet he could get off even though he was trying to blackmail and threaten me,” Ms Cole says.

“There’s a misconception that violence is something that just happens in sex work, it’s something which is par the course and to just accept it.

“But in any other job, violence isn’t accepted,” she says.

While sex work is permissible in Victoria, it is heavily regulated with those operating outside of a brothel, such as Ms Cole, forced to register with a licensing authority and meet a myriad of other requirements. For many in the industry, jumping through all the red tape is just too hard and they can end up working on the wrong side of the law.

“In Victoria, you can’t legally offer [services] in your own hotel room; it has to be into the client’s hotel room or in their home,” says Ms Cole who eventually moved to Sydney.

“I was forced to choose between working in the way I feel most comfortable and most in control but not being compliant or be compliant but having to make other compromises which I decided outweigh the benefits.”

Victoria’s Brothel Licensing Authority has previously confirmed to news.com.au that it would be illegal for an independent sex worker to operate from home in the state unless they registered with the authority, something that could never be scrubbed from the history books even if the person later left the profession.

Laws around sex work vary widely in Australia. In South Australia, sex work is completely illegal and in Western Australia it’s heavily restricted. In Tasmania, brothels are illegal while Queensland has a licencing model with some similarities to Victoria.

‘I FEEL SAFER IN NSW’

NSW is the only state where sex work is fully decriminalised, a move which followed the Wood royal commission in the mid-1990s that heard evidence of the mistreatment of sex workers and corruption between illegal brothel owners and the police.

“I feel safer in NSW because there are systems in place. If anyone tries to do anything that I don’t want to do, I have the law on my side and they can’t blackmail me,” says Ms Cole, who is also the president of the Scarlet Alliance, the national peak body for sex workers.

On 17 December, sex workers and their supporters gathered in Sydney’s King Cross to mark the international day to end violence against sex workers, an annual event marked around the globe.

In November, a review into the regulation of NSW brothels, promised by Premier Mike Baird, recommended a licensing authority be created as a measure to combat sex trafficking, staff in brothels be vetted to ensure they are “fit and proper” and the police be given sweeping new powers, similar to those already in place in Victoria, to enter and inspect brothels to ensure their compliance and that no illegal activities were taking place.

The report does not suggest re-criminalising sex work, stating it would be “retrograde and serve no public purpose”.

Committee chair, Liberal Ku-ring-gai MP Alister Henskens says the system proposed is based on one used in New Zealand where brothel owners are licensed which was “universally praised by the sex workers that gave evidence to the inquiry”.

New regulations, like the ones proposed, will help crackdown on brothels connected to outlaw motor cycle gangs and the abuse and exploitation of women, mostly from overseas, who are pressed into sex work, he says. Unlike Victoria, however, under the recommendations sex workers will not have to register themselves and therefore have to choose whether or not they conduct business “outside the regulations”.

“That is a critical difference and an issue that the committee was alive to,” says Mr Henskens.

VULNERABLE

However, sex worker groups have reacted with alarm to the proposals saying any new regulations and an increase in police powers could create a two-tier system of brothels, put barriers between those in the industry and the authorities and leave sex workers vulnerable to exploitation.

Independent Sydney MP, Alex Greenwich, was on the NSW select committee but has distanced himself from a number of the recommendations. Talking to news.com.au, he says the Government needs to be reminded that corruption in the sex work industry was once rife.

“Decriminalisation has proven to be the most successful form of regulation. Imposing more red tape and increasing police powers does risk compromising the health safety and privacy of sex workers.”

While he is concerned with sex trafficking and slavery, he says, this was more prevalent in states with tighter regulations.

Ms Cole says she is worried any changes to the governance of sex work in NSW could turn police from their protectors to persecutors and lead them open to threats and unsafe situations.

“In NSW, if we do experience violence it can treated like in any other job. You can report it and take appropriate steps and not put all your energy into worrying about being charged yourself and instead receive support.”

In contrast, Victoria is a “nightmare”, she says and the position it puts sex workers in “shocked me in the worst kind of way.”

“It’s sickening that they could be thinking of introducing a system like Victoria, it’s a massive leap backwards.”

The NSW Government has yet to give it’s view on the reports findings.