R. Richard
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Leeds has established a permanent 'managed area' where prostitutes can freely operate in the city, but danger remains on the streets
Anna is a waif-like figure no more than 20-years-old. I meet her loitering under a dilapidated railway bridge where her platinum blonde hair and pale face are all that stand out from the gloom. Mascara is smudged around saucer-like eyes clearly dilated by drugs. She is shaking from the cold and heavy concealer fails to mask a sore on her chin.
Before we have a chance to speak, a silver Vauxhall Vectra stops in a cobbled alley opposite. She runs after it and following a brief conversation with the single male driver through the window, jumps in and disappears into the darkness.
It is 5.11pm on a road near the centre of Leeds. In one hour and 49 minutes the authorities will deem this transaction perfectly permissible.
Holbeck, a rundown suburb overlooked by the glittering tower blocks of the city, has become Britain’s first official red light district after a 12-month pilot project that effectively legalises prostitution has been made permanent. Every evening between 7pm and 7am, sex workers can operate without fear of arrest, so long as they stay within the confines of a dozen or so streets circumventing desolate industrial estates known as “the managed area”.
Kerb-crawlers are similarly permitted during these hours to prowl for women like Anna. And there are many women like Anna. Some evenings it is claimed up to 30 a night work here.
Those behind the managed area (West Yorkshire Police, Leeds City Council, and various support agencies) have hailed it a success, one that could – and perhaps will - be replicated in other towns and cities across Britain. But there are numerous horror stories among the shadows.
In the early hours of December 23, Daria Pionko, a 21-year-old Polish sex worker was found beaten unconscious on Springwell Road inside the managed area. She died of her injuries later in hospital. A 24-year-old man was charged with her murder a fortnight ago and is currently awaiting trial.
In September Abdul Fulat, 48, of nearby Batley, was jailed for eight years for raping a sex worker he had picked up in the managed area. Two months after that attack in November 2014, Anthony Riley, a 24-year-old living in a homeless hostel, raped and robbed another 27-year-old sex worker at knifepoint on nearby Bath Road.
A memorial to Daria Pionko remains on Springwell Road where this week fresh carnations and long-stem roses were still lying among tea lights and cards. One visible message reads: “Daria. Too young. Too soon. Always in our thoughts”.
Her death still weighs on Catherine’s mind. The 40-year-old is a veteran of these streets and knew Daria by face and name, although like many of the Eastern European girls that have started coming to work in Holbeck, she says her English was very limited.
Catherine wasn’t here the night she was killed – prior to Christmas she had decided to give up sex work, but the “easy money” on offer soon dragged her back. She shares a terraced house in south Leeds with her two teenage sons. When she leaves on an evening she tells them it is only to go and visit a friend. If lucky, she can make £50 in less than an hour and return home before anybody notices.
“I spend the money on bills – gas and electricity,” she says. “I’m not on drugs like a lot of girls on the street and my brain isn’t frazzled when I’m out here. There are good and bad bits about that. It’s much harder to block out what’s going on.”
Catherine used to be a receptionist and only got into sex work after agreeing to accompany a friend as back-up on the street. That was 15 years ago.
As we speak while waiting on the corner of Silver Street, her phone rings. It is her niece – the only family member who knows of her other life. She calls throughout the evening to make sure Catherine is safe.
“Luckily I’ve never been attacked because I’ve got the right instinct about who I choose,” Catherine says. “I get young guys and people in smart cars and 50 to 60-year-olds. But if somebody asked me when was the last time I had sex, I would say it was years ago.”
As horrific as the stories are, the recent court cases concerning attacks in the managed area are a sign of progress. Prior to its implementation only six per cent of sex workers in Leeds would report a crime against them to the police. Now more than 60 per cent do. West Yorkshire Police have established a dedicated liaison officer to deal with attacks against sex workers. Outreach workers say they have been able to obtain greater access as a result.
These findings are in a recent independent evaluation of the scheme conducted by Leeds University academic Dr Teela Sanders. In her report Dr Sanders also claims there have been reduced complaints from residents and “overall a more positive attitude from the local community”.
Walking these streets, however, one hears a different story. Businesses in Holbeck say the managed area has allowed organised prostitution gangs to thrive with an ever-increasing number of women from Eastern Europe and sex workers driven in from across the north east and north west.
The detritus of drug use and paid-for liasons are regularly dumped outside shop-fronts while the streets themselves remain poorly-lit and free of CCTV. Even the sex workers themselves say they don’t feel safety has improved.
“It is bringing the wrong crowd here on a daily basis,” says Glenn Avery, 48, who runs a garage on Braithwaite Street. “I’ve been here 21 years and whereby people used to regard it as an industrial area, now they see it as a red light area.”
Karen Hargreaves, the owner of Sunrays nail station and tanning salon on Holbeck Lane, agrees. “They are calling it managed but there is hardly anybody official ever here,” says the 54-year-old. “There is no proper protection.”
Hargreaves has reported numerous incidents to the police over the years, not least when a prostitute tried to operate in the doorway of her shop and then spat in her daughter’s face.
Many involved in the sex trade still come to Holbeck during daylight hours and she says clients have been accosted as they leave her shop. But even though it is having a dramatic effect on her business she no longer bothers reporting to police because she feels any concerns raised over the managed area are simply ignored.
Hargreaves is one of several business owners inside the managed area who feels that rather than establishing a red-light district for uncontrolled street sex, a brothel would be a far better idea.
“That way the girls would be safe and they would get help,” agrees Robert Paterson, who runs a nearby timber yard. Paterson regularly finds “disgusting” things outside his business and encounters sex workers at all times of day. He plans to apply to Leeds City Council for reduced business rates and says it should establish a dedicated cleaning service for the area.
“I don’t understand how the police and council can justify being complicit in a crime.”
Except in Holbeck, sex work is no longer deemed a crime. Approaching 11pm, as rain sluices along the cobbled streets, a trio of Hungarian women stand out under the same bridge where Anna was whisked away earlier in the evening.
Two of them cannot speak any English whatsoever and Diana, a 25-year-old brunette, manages only a few broken sentences. She tells me they started coming “a few months ago”. When I ask if a group of Eastern European men lurking nearby brought her here she firmly shakes her head.
“We come because the police are very good to us,” she says. “I am only doing this to save some money and then I want to go and get a normal job like cleaning or washing. If people stay here too long, they get into trouble.”
As Diana speaks another car cruises into view. She looks towards the faceless man inside, but there is fear behind her smile.
Anna is a waif-like figure no more than 20-years-old. I meet her loitering under a dilapidated railway bridge where her platinum blonde hair and pale face are all that stand out from the gloom. Mascara is smudged around saucer-like eyes clearly dilated by drugs. She is shaking from the cold and heavy concealer fails to mask a sore on her chin.
Before we have a chance to speak, a silver Vauxhall Vectra stops in a cobbled alley opposite. She runs after it and following a brief conversation with the single male driver through the window, jumps in and disappears into the darkness.
It is 5.11pm on a road near the centre of Leeds. In one hour and 49 minutes the authorities will deem this transaction perfectly permissible.
Holbeck, a rundown suburb overlooked by the glittering tower blocks of the city, has become Britain’s first official red light district after a 12-month pilot project that effectively legalises prostitution has been made permanent. Every evening between 7pm and 7am, sex workers can operate without fear of arrest, so long as they stay within the confines of a dozen or so streets circumventing desolate industrial estates known as “the managed area”.
Kerb-crawlers are similarly permitted during these hours to prowl for women like Anna. And there are many women like Anna. Some evenings it is claimed up to 30 a night work here.
Those behind the managed area (West Yorkshire Police, Leeds City Council, and various support agencies) have hailed it a success, one that could – and perhaps will - be replicated in other towns and cities across Britain. But there are numerous horror stories among the shadows.
In the early hours of December 23, Daria Pionko, a 21-year-old Polish sex worker was found beaten unconscious on Springwell Road inside the managed area. She died of her injuries later in hospital. A 24-year-old man was charged with her murder a fortnight ago and is currently awaiting trial.
In September Abdul Fulat, 48, of nearby Batley, was jailed for eight years for raping a sex worker he had picked up in the managed area. Two months after that attack in November 2014, Anthony Riley, a 24-year-old living in a homeless hostel, raped and robbed another 27-year-old sex worker at knifepoint on nearby Bath Road.
A memorial to Daria Pionko remains on Springwell Road where this week fresh carnations and long-stem roses were still lying among tea lights and cards. One visible message reads: “Daria. Too young. Too soon. Always in our thoughts”.
Her death still weighs on Catherine’s mind. The 40-year-old is a veteran of these streets and knew Daria by face and name, although like many of the Eastern European girls that have started coming to work in Holbeck, she says her English was very limited.
Catherine wasn’t here the night she was killed – prior to Christmas she had decided to give up sex work, but the “easy money” on offer soon dragged her back. She shares a terraced house in south Leeds with her two teenage sons. When she leaves on an evening she tells them it is only to go and visit a friend. If lucky, she can make £50 in less than an hour and return home before anybody notices.
“I spend the money on bills – gas and electricity,” she says. “I’m not on drugs like a lot of girls on the street and my brain isn’t frazzled when I’m out here. There are good and bad bits about that. It’s much harder to block out what’s going on.”
Catherine used to be a receptionist and only got into sex work after agreeing to accompany a friend as back-up on the street. That was 15 years ago.
As we speak while waiting on the corner of Silver Street, her phone rings. It is her niece – the only family member who knows of her other life. She calls throughout the evening to make sure Catherine is safe.
“Luckily I’ve never been attacked because I’ve got the right instinct about who I choose,” Catherine says. “I get young guys and people in smart cars and 50 to 60-year-olds. But if somebody asked me when was the last time I had sex, I would say it was years ago.”
As horrific as the stories are, the recent court cases concerning attacks in the managed area are a sign of progress. Prior to its implementation only six per cent of sex workers in Leeds would report a crime against them to the police. Now more than 60 per cent do. West Yorkshire Police have established a dedicated liaison officer to deal with attacks against sex workers. Outreach workers say they have been able to obtain greater access as a result.
These findings are in a recent independent evaluation of the scheme conducted by Leeds University academic Dr Teela Sanders. In her report Dr Sanders also claims there have been reduced complaints from residents and “overall a more positive attitude from the local community”.
Walking these streets, however, one hears a different story. Businesses in Holbeck say the managed area has allowed organised prostitution gangs to thrive with an ever-increasing number of women from Eastern Europe and sex workers driven in from across the north east and north west.
The detritus of drug use and paid-for liasons are regularly dumped outside shop-fronts while the streets themselves remain poorly-lit and free of CCTV. Even the sex workers themselves say they don’t feel safety has improved.
“It is bringing the wrong crowd here on a daily basis,” says Glenn Avery, 48, who runs a garage on Braithwaite Street. “I’ve been here 21 years and whereby people used to regard it as an industrial area, now they see it as a red light area.”
Karen Hargreaves, the owner of Sunrays nail station and tanning salon on Holbeck Lane, agrees. “They are calling it managed but there is hardly anybody official ever here,” says the 54-year-old. “There is no proper protection.”
Hargreaves has reported numerous incidents to the police over the years, not least when a prostitute tried to operate in the doorway of her shop and then spat in her daughter’s face.
Many involved in the sex trade still come to Holbeck during daylight hours and she says clients have been accosted as they leave her shop. But even though it is having a dramatic effect on her business she no longer bothers reporting to police because she feels any concerns raised over the managed area are simply ignored.
Hargreaves is one of several business owners inside the managed area who feels that rather than establishing a red-light district for uncontrolled street sex, a brothel would be a far better idea.
“That way the girls would be safe and they would get help,” agrees Robert Paterson, who runs a nearby timber yard. Paterson regularly finds “disgusting” things outside his business and encounters sex workers at all times of day. He plans to apply to Leeds City Council for reduced business rates and says it should establish a dedicated cleaning service for the area.
“I don’t understand how the police and council can justify being complicit in a crime.”
Except in Holbeck, sex work is no longer deemed a crime. Approaching 11pm, as rain sluices along the cobbled streets, a trio of Hungarian women stand out under the same bridge where Anna was whisked away earlier in the evening.
Two of them cannot speak any English whatsoever and Diana, a 25-year-old brunette, manages only a few broken sentences. She tells me they started coming “a few months ago”. When I ask if a group of Eastern European men lurking nearby brought her here she firmly shakes her head.
“We come because the police are very good to us,” she says. “I am only doing this to save some money and then I want to go and get a normal job like cleaning or washing. If people stay here too long, they get into trouble.”
As Diana speaks another car cruises into view. She looks towards the faceless man inside, but there is fear behind her smile.
