Over the last decade sex work projects, the police and other agencies in Liverpool (United Kingdom) have been addressing violence against sex workers, encouraging reporting and taking crimes committed against sex workers seriously.
Our staunch moral judgment of individuals who by choice or circumstance participate in the sex industry results in the shattering silence around incidents of rapes, assaults, and murders of sex workers.
The state consistently fails to punish police who commit violence against sex workers.
Aboriginal sex workers are subject to dual discrimination, experience high rates of violence, including murder, and high rates of HIV among other outcomes associated with violations of their human rights.
Little attention is given to violence experienced by sex workers from those closest to them: their husbands, boyfriends and partners.
Doubly stigmatised, transgender sex workers experience violence from the public, customers, their ‘sisters,’ and the police.
