Sex websites 'are facilitating exploitation of women by pimps and traffickers'
The Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy (SERP) Institute is publishing a briefing document on the role of technology in Ireland’s sex trade.
Pimps and traffickers are offering an “almost unending supply” of women, including some who are pregnant or visibly injured, on websites that cannot be prosecuted due to a legal loophole.
Today, Thursday, the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy (SERP) Institute will publish a briefing document on the role of technology in Ireland’s sex trade which describes the websites as a “shop window” for sex buyers.
The report says the websites offer “an almost unending supply of women whose bodies they can purchase sexual access to, and curating buyers’ preferences by allowing them to choose women from a ‘menu’ of options such as age, nationality, ethnicity, dress size, shoe size, breast size, and sex acts provided, to name but a few”.
It also says that anonymity through the sites helps pimps and traffickers to “avoid detection by law enforcement by advertising their victims as ‘independent escorts’ to create the illusion of free will”.
A daily average of more than 850 individual profiles were advertised on one site which has 3m hits every month.
Just over a fifth of the people advertised are listed as being between 18 and 25 years old.
Ruth Breslin, director of the SERP Institute, which was previously part of UCD’s Geary Institute for Public Policy, said it analysed one of the main websites used to advertise sex workers over four weeks in August and September. She said its research raised concerns, particularly in relation to the age of some of the women who are advertised on the site.
Ms Breslin said: “The way some of the young women are being advertised and the way some of them are being posed in the photos — they really do look like girls. Some of them are in school uniforms and sailor uniforms, and with lollipops, teddy bears for example.”
She also raised concerns about some of the wording on the adverts being almost identical as it could point to women’s profiles being placed on sites by a group who could be involved in organising the bookings of multiple sex workers.
She noted entries about six women who were all advertised as 20-year-old Brazilians.
"The six were only in two locations which was also notable.”
She also highlighted five other young women whose profiles were on the site at the time of the study from Irish, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese and Ukrainian backgrounds who “all had the same profile”.
Ms Breslin questioned how such websites are allowed to operate freely “in this jurisdiction that is selling something that is illegal to buy”.
“We have definitive indications of exploitation on it and we have previously identified that victims of trafficking have been advertised on it,” she said.
“This is facilitating exploitation in such a quick, easy and cheap way.
“Before, if you were a pimp and you wanted to monitor who you were controlling, you would have to set up and watch women on the street. But now that it is indoors and online, there is an infinite possibility to offer these women to as many buyers as you can imagine.”
Ms Breslin accepts that there is a proportion of sex workers who control their own profile and operate independently. But, she said:
The locations with the most profiles typically advertised were Dublin (364 profiles), Cork (76 profiles), Belfast (51 profiles), Limerick (43 profiles), Kildare (30 profiles), Galway (27 profiles), Westmeath (22 profiles), Louth (21 profiles) and Waterford (18 profiles).
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