Sex workers are increasingly at risk of violence, and being forced to do things they don't want to – and the internet is at least partly to blame. That's the frank assessment of women who have worked on the streets and in the legal and illegal brothel industries, and have been interviewed by Fairfax Media.

All say that there is considerably less demand for sex work than five years ago and, as women compete for fewer clients, they are facing demands for unsafe sexual practices and regular violence.

Georgia (not her real name) was a sex worker for 13 years. She is now out of the industry. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer

Project Respect, a not-for-profit group that supports women in the sex industry, is calling for the everyday violence against sex workers to be recognised as just as significant a problem as violence against women more broadly.

Kathleen Maltzahn, the group's founding director, says there was a view that once sex workers had taken a client's money, they consented to everything that occurred with that client.