‘I see them in broad daylight behind my van doing their business’
a stone’s throw away from her stomping ground, I was abruptly told to stop talking to her because a pimp was nearby.
You hear talk of the places that people – gay men, gay women, straight women – have been raped or attacked: in the marina, near the Kingsway, in blocks of flats all over Swansea. Earlier this year, a middleaged man was charged with attacking a sex worker on St Helen’s Road, another hub for the city’s sex trade just the other side of the city centre.
The women warn each other of the men to avoid: the one who left a woman black and blue last night and then robbed her, the one who strangled another. A scheme called Ugly Mugs allows the women to share information about a punter who might have attacked or raped them. Unity shares that information, including a car registration number if they have it, with leaders of other organisations. That information is sent out to all the women, so they know who to be careful of.
“It’s a regular occurrence... one rape a day – six or seven a week,” says Mr Davies. “The majority of the working girls get raped once a week and just get back to work.”
But, ultimately, once the car door slams shut, anything could happen. It’s the risk the women take for the money to feed addictions or numb the pain of abortion, abuse and domestic violence. Leah, who earned her money charging £20 for sex, says she’s been dragged through trees, pushed to the floor and punched, had someone try to rip her handbag off her.
“I’ve done sexual things with some person and they haven’t paid me for it, they’ve just done a runner from me,” says Leah.
“All I would do is sex and b*** j***. One man pulled the condom off and I got pregnant – I ended up having an abortion. I was so scared when the condom came off that I had HIV or something. I have never done it without a condom – girls would charge more for that. I have had a lot of men want to do it without one but I was scared I would have HIV.”
Her test results came back all clear, which left her “buzzing”.
All this is happening on Swansea’s streets, where families and workers live out their everyday lives. Dozens of flats overlook the little interchange on High Street and the police know about it, saying the local community has informed them of “illegal sex worker activity taking place in public”.
But it seems like no-one’s really talking about the women who are there, out in the open. I’ve sat in a parked car in the rain and watched them. There was one woman with dishevelled hair, brazenly shouting and screaming for booze in the day as she clutched a bottle of cider. There was a trio in thigh-high skirts and long boots, chatting away the time. One of the boys in my office gets accosted all the time. Another stared into a mobile phone and I’ve seen one sitting on a dining room chair.
In the drop-in centre, a stone’s throw away from her stomping ground, there was a girl with a face like a porcelain doll, with a piercing on her upper lip. She was wearing skinny pink jeans and crying her eyes out, which made mascara run down her face, making her look like Alice Cooper. She was crying because she couldn’t have a “burn”.
Until the moment a tiny mound of tobacco arrived in the palm of her hand, she was refusing to work that night. A man pretended to comfort her, telling her she has to work. I was told it was her pimp – an ordinary guy in jeans and trainers lighting a cigarette like he owned the street and told not to speak to the girls in front of him. The girls allegedly range from 14 years old to a woman knocking 50, and they’ll apparently pull in around £50 to £60 a night.
The owner of one High Street business says her husband has been approached as he waited for her outside in his van.
“Some woman came to the door and asked if he needed any business, he was mortified,” she says, adding that there are sometimes smashed eggs on the street in the mornings, she presumes from people throwing them at the women on the street.
“Behind my shop, there’s been underwear left. I do feel sorry for the women who are in the position to do that, they can’t make their money any other way to feed their drug habit or drink habit.”
Another business owner on the same street says that when workmen dug up a car park up behind the empty pub they turned up an “unbelievable” amount of used condoms. She says women - who she thinks are Welsh and Eastern European – and their clients also use an alley by the flats nearby and that the problem gets worse in summer.
“The weather is out and they come out, they do not care who sees them,” she says. “There was a really young girl out at 3pm. I see them in the day going around, there’s quite a few of them.”
The owner of another nearby business says he has to check on his business “two or three times a night”.
“I see them in broad daylight behind my van doing their business – they are there at 4pm,” he says.
“I want to put a message saying, ‘You will be live streamed on social media and your wives can see you’. But I was told I couldn’t. There are condoms continuously outside. I have had cameras on the building for my own security, I’ve had to invest in lighting. Sometimes I feel threatened, especially if there is a customer outside with a window open. What happens if they have a needle and ask for £1? You have to give it to them.”
Leah says she never struggled to make money to cover the cost of her heroin habit. Friday, Saturday and, oddly, Monday nights were always the best.
For half her life she has been living in the shadows of Swansea’s dark alleys. If she wasn’t pregnant, she would still be out there plying her trade. She’s never had a regular job working the streets has always been her income, though that life is a secret to her parents and her current partner.
She says she was driven into pros-
I’m disgusted in myself, to be honest with you. So I feel really depressed all the time thinking back what I’ve been through, what I’ve put myself through because I’ve been abused and that