‘Winning the lottery is the only way I am going to get out of this game’

“I HAVE been split open, raped, beaten up. But I have been out here for 10 years because I am on gear.”

That is the stark admission of Clare*, who at 2.30am on a cold January morning had just come on to the streets around the red light district in the Fitzwilliam area of Dublin to sell her body.

She expected to stay out until 6.30am to try to get men coming out of clubs who were willing to pay €50 for hand relief, €80 for oral sex and €100 for full sex.

Clare admitted she had kids at home, who did not know what their mother was doing. As she disappeared off to get a coffee, her friend Ann* admitted her son thought she was out for a few drinks with her mates. Ann has been on the streets for seven years. She too has been raped several times and she too accepts less than €100 to prostitute herself.

Both women hope to see anywhere up to 10 clients in a night, though the post-Christmas lack of money has hit their industry too.

“We get all ages, 18-19, 80-90 once they get through puberty they are down here,” said Ann. “Winning the lotto is the only way I am going to get out of this.”

She said she needed the money to put her son through college.

The same son thinks that when his mother leaves home she is going out on the town drinking.

Just 20 minutes before I meet Ann and Clare, a lone garda on patrol points out one of the women slipping off down a side street with a punter and then points to the canal where the shadow of a slight girl is barely visible away from the street lights.

While the first two seem hardened as to what they have to do, Emma*, with only three months experience on the game, is still exceptionally nervous.

“I am all the time scared of who I am going with and if I am going to come back alive. Most serial killers, the first person they come after is the girls on the street,” the attractive young woman said. She looks little more than 20-years-old but does not tell me her real age.

Like so many others, Emma is having sex with up to 10 men a night — and earning more than €1,000 daily on occasion — to feed her crippling heroin addiction.

“Every girl on the street is involved in drugs.

“It is the only reason they are down here,” she said.

She is determined to stop what obviously disgusts her as soon as possible. “I am waiting to get on a methadone programme. Whenever I get on the programme I will be stopping all this. But there is a three year waiting list to get on the methadone so I don’t know when that is going to happen.

“My family don’t know I do this. If they found out, I would be better off dead because I would be killed anyway one way or another.”

The seedy underworld of the area has been well known for years and one of those who has been here the longest is Paula*. She has worked the streets for 23 years ever since she lost her job.

Paula is reminiscent of the old image of prostitutes, women who have sex for money to pay the bills but do not let it rule their lives.

“Most of the guys I know are regular clients who will tell me everything that is happening in their lives, about how their wives are spending too much money,” she said after telling me she charges €100 when she thought I was a client.

She does not work past midnight because that is when “the junky ones come out to feed the habit”.

“It is Catch-22 for them. I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs. If I don’t do anything tonight I can go home quite happy. I do not need a fix from the money.”

Working in Fitzwilliam Square, she said it had earned a reputation as the more upper-class area among the clients and where the clients did not give trouble.

“I have only had one bad client. He was violent, but I got out of it OK. It shakes you up,” she said.

All the women are united in their dislike of the women working behind closed doors and said they would not work in that environment.

“The amount we would earn indoors, we would earn twice as much on the street,” said Emma.

The women also condemn the way the escorts and those in brothels offer services without a condom.

“I would not touch his d**k without a condom,” said Ann. “As soon as I did I would pick something up.”

Another thing that unites the women is the way the gardaí look out for them.

Emma said: “They would not let us go away with a punter in front of their eyes, but at the same time if we went away with a punter and something happened they would be behind us 100%.”

Paula said it depended on the unit as to how much hassle the gardaí would create, but she also said it was the client who would be given the attention.

“If you were a punter and the gardaí pulled up, most would just say ‘Oh I was just looking for directions’. There is nothing they can really do.”

Nevertheless, as I am speaking to Ann, Emma and Clare, the three split up quickly when a garda car containing two female officers pull up. Yet, once the officers have ascertained I am not kerb crawling they move on, and the women come back.

One person who is a constant presence around the streets and who remains anonymous is a motorcycle rider. He constantly circles throughout the evening, pulling up where the women are. It is unclear whether he is a drug dealer or a pimp — none of the women will talk about the subject of whether they have to hand over their money to a third party after each “trick”.

The unidentified biker is just one of a number of men who circle the area, but for the most part the rest are looking for sex.

From 7pm they circle the Pepper Cannister church, one of the favoured hangouts of the women. They drive slowly, hoping to catch one of the women starting work. They barely keep their eyes on the road in front of them as they hunt for a sighting.

Some will continue to circle the area for most of the evening and night.

Paula jokes: “They probably spend more on petrol than they would simply by stopping at the first one and having sex with her.”

Another frequent presence on the streets is the Ruhama van which offers support to the women.

However, not all of them welcome the support service.

“We are being portrayed in a very bad night by Ruhama. A lot of us have stopped talking to them They did us a lot of damage. They really did. They portray us like we are drug addicts and alcoholics. They say we have all been sexually abused and we have no intelligence.”

*Names have been changed to protect their identity.