This isn’t a great article, and it won’t win me any prizes or plaudits, nonetheless the issue addressed is important. After two weeks of calling newsrooms (left & right) and pestering Editors, I’ve given up trying to get this story placed in a mainstream outlet.

I am publishing it here because I can’t quite accept that the NHS suggesting that some people choose to engage in ‘sex work’ to pay tuition fees isn’t newsworthy. Whatever the sneering dudebros at Guardian say, the normalisation of commercial sexual exploitation is worthy of proper investigation.

Once this bloody chest infection shifts rest assured readers, I will send a sea of FOIs to find out exactly how this has been allowed to happen. Fuckers. But for now, here’s the the story….

NHS Public Health Team Insult Sex Industry Survivors

Having recently waved their children off to universities parents might be shocked to learn that at least one NHS Trust considers sex for cash as just another way to ‘fund University or pay off a debt.’ The local authority funded ‘Safer Sex Berkshire’ website describes prostitution as ‘Commercial Sex’ and includes information on a range of issues from ‘sexting’ to ‘chem sex.’

Public Health Consultant Jo Jefferies, who is responsible for website content explained:

“SafeSexBerkshire aims to be non judgmental (sic) and to provide accessible sexual health information and advice to people to help them stay safe this includes anyone participating in sex work.”

In response to concerns raised about branding prostitution as ‘commercial sex’ Jefferies acknowledged SaferSexBerkshire “recognise that there are many complex social issues surrounding sex work” but that “a website is not the most appropriate forum to discuss these in the detail that is required.”

Sex Trade Survivor Fiona Broadfoot explains why she thinks the website is misleading:

“I felt sick when I saw the Safer Sex Berkshire website, and angry when I saw it had NHS approval. Clearly the people that produced this advice have been taken in by the ‘sex work is work’ myth as promoted by the powerful sex industry lobby. I know from my experience that half of girls enter prostitution as children, and the over-whelming majority desperately want to leave but cannot afford to do so due to dependency on alcohol and drugs. To reduce the brutal reality of pimping and prostitution to a ‘lifestyle choice’ is an insult to women like me.”

Dr Sasha Rakoff, CEO of Not Buying It, which campaigns against the porn and sex trade, added: ““the information on SaferSexBerkshire is dangerously misleading. For example, it says on the site that ‘sex workers’ ‘may come from many backgrounds’ but overlooks the fact a third of those in the sex industry were in care as children. Prostituted people are twelve times more likely to die than the general population and suffer post traumatic stress disorder at rates comparable to war veterans. Yet these significant industry-related health risks are not referred to. This is a dangerous step towards normalising the commercial exploitation of vulnerable young people. The only choice 90% of women in prostitution would make, if they could, is to get out. If SaferSexBerkshire is genuinely concerned for women in prostitution, it should be creating and advertising exit strategies and working with social services to get women out. Instead it almost seems to be running nothing short of a publicity campaign for the pimp lobby”

The NHS are apparently not alone in their blasé attitude to students turning to prostitution to pay tuition fees; last week Brighton University were criticised for allowing the Sex Workers’ Outreach Project Sussex (SWOP) to have a stall at the Freshers’ Fair.