Ex-prostitutes’ criminal record ‘bar to helping Brownies’
FORMER prostitutes are to sue the Government over criminal record checks that stop them from volunteering with Brownie groups.
A group of women will argue that policies that leave convictions for soliciting on their records are discriminatory and intrude into their private lives.
The women, most of whom are unnamed, said their convictions became known many years after they stopped working as prostitutes and have prevented them from taking up volunteering and other job opportunities.
One anonymous claimant said: “It doesn’t matter what it is – trying to help out at my kids’ school or the local Brownies’ coffee morning, trying to be a governor or a councillor, applying to
‘I never chose that life, and I fought hard to get out of it but I’m always being pulled back to it. It’s not who I am’
education or training or employment, even volunteering with children, with the elderly, with vulnerable people, with youth work, with social work. They all need a DBS [Disclosure and Barring Service check] and then you get treated like a pariah or sex offender. But it’s not fair – I never chose that life, and I fought hard to get out of it but I’m always being pulled back to it as though that’s who I am. But it’s not who I am.”
The women’s case, set to be heard in the High Court later this week, also argues that the policy to retain and disclose their conviction history goes against the Modern Slavery Act because they were trafficked and forced into prostitution as teenagers.
One claimant, Fiona Broadfoot, who began selling sex after meeting a pimp when she was 15, has a conviction for loitering for the purposes of being a common prostitute. “After more than 20 years out of prostitution, I am still having to explain my criminal record to any prospective employer. It feels like explaining my history of abuse,” she said.
Harriet Wistrich, a solicitor at Birnberg Peirce who is acting for the women, said the current law “continues to punish victims”.
The Home Office is understood to be defending the claim. The Daily Telegraph has approached the Government for comment.