Mystery surrounds missing woman

THE plight of a young Irishwoman, who disappeared without trace five months ago, has formed the centrepiece of a hard hitting investigation into Britain’s murdered and missing street walkers.

Lynne Carroll, a drug addicted prostitute, fled her native Dublin four years ago and ended up on the streets of Sheffield.

But, after featuring as one of the main players in a documentary made by an Irish investigative journalist, the 21-year-old disappeared. No-one knows where she has gone or if she is alive.

Maggie O’Kane spent four months working on the Channel Four documentary about the street sex industry. Questions were asked about the murder of at least 60 prostitutes in the last 10 years and why many more have gone missing.

Carroll, whom O’Kane met shortly after beginning work on the programme, told her disturbing story and talked of her fears, then became one of the latest to vanish.

She was living in a dingy squat, feeding a £150 a day heroin and cocaine habit by working the streets.

O’Kane revealed she met Carroll shortly after the murder of Michaela Hague, a prostitute working the same streets as Carroll. She was stabbed 19 times. “The ambulance arrived to take her to die in hospital, word of her murder got around the street and Carroll went back to work,” O’Kane said, before adding: “Heroin is not a patient master.”

Few of the murders merit any attention in the national newspapers, according to O’Kane.

She argues tougher laws against kerb crawling are forcing prostitutes to work in more and more dangerous areas.

Carroll told the programme makers that it meant taking clients to out of the way, unlit places, away from the CCTV cameras that at least give the prostitutes some protection.

They take them to a swamp a half an hour'’s drive from the centre of Sheffield.

“What would happen if you were attacked down here?

“God only knows what would happen,” she said.

Her disappearance has added weight to that question. Her long time boyfriend, Alan, also originally from Dublin, went looking for her went he got out of a young offender’s institute where he spent time for shop lifting.

In contrast to the get tough policy in Sheffield, the documentary highlighted Glasgow as one of the more progressive cities. Prostitutes are allowed work in a specified eight street area between set hours, after the offices are closed.

The streets are well lit and surrounded by CCTV cameras.

Money has also been invested to help women leave prostitution.