women in london

Join Rights of Women, Eaves and OBJECT to Support Clause 13 of the Policing and Crime Bill

Dear friends and colleagues,

We have been providing women with free, specialist legal advice for nearly 35 years. Our areas of expertise include all forms of violence against women (including domestic and sexual violence), family, immigration and asylum law and we operate the UK’s only legal advice line for survivors of sexual violence. On this line we advise hundreds of women every year who have experienced rape and other forms of sexual violence, including women involved in prostitution and trafficked women. We have also produced From Report to Court: A Handbook for Adult Survivors of Sexual Violence, ten thousand copies of which have been distributed across England and Wales over the past year to survivors and professionals in the criminal justice system.

I am emailing to ask whether your organisations can join us, Eaves and OBJECT to Support Clause 13 of the Policing and Crime Bill. Clause 13 will discourage the demand to sexually exploit individuals in prostitution by making it a criminal offence to pay, or attempt to pay, for the sexual services of a woman (child or man) who has been subjected to force. Force includes coercion by threats and other psychological means including exploitation of vulnerability.

Click here to view our position statement (pdf file) which explains what Clause 13 is and why we need it. Please read it, and if you can, contact us to endorse it.

Our position on Clause 13 is directly informed by the experiences of the women we support and from our commitment to secure equality, justice and respect for all women. We support Clause 13 because we believe that it offers a unique opportunity to discourage the demand to sexually exploit through prostitution vulnerable women, men and children as required under international human rights law.

Very best wishes,

Catherine Briddick
Senior Legal Officer
Rights of Women