Youth transitions pathways from child to adult sexual exploitation: the voices of female street sex workers and agencies

This original thesis examines the pathways from child sexual exploitation (CSE) to street-based sex work. The concept of adult sexual exploitation is developed to emphasise the links between child sexual exploitation and continued exploitation of these women as they move into the most precarious form of sex work, underpinned by the failure of services to support these survivors of CSE. The thesis identifies interventions that could support women to make positive pathways out of sexual exploitation. The voices of female street-based sex workers and key voluntary sector professionals who support these women are prioritised, by examining the narratives of 20 street-based sex workers and five key professionals from the voluntary sector, alongside a critical policy analysis. This research focuses on whether it is possible to identify some of the key transition needs for young people affected by sexual exploitation, to disrupt or stop the continued pathway of sexual exploitation into adulthood.

This qualitative study adopts an ethnographic approach, incorporating semi-structured interviews and in-depth observation with 20 female street-based sex workers affected by CSE and five key professionals from the voluntary sector. The ethnographic study focuses on the lives of street-based sex workers accessed from two inner-city voluntary projects in the UK that support female street sex workers to work safely or exit sex work. All of the street-based sex workers were affected by CSE and had continued the pathway into street-based sex work. The findings expose the diverse ways in which early childhood experiences of CSE affect the transition to emerging adulthood. At the heart of this thesis is a range of social, personal, and structural issues that beset young women affected by sexual exploitation on the cusp of emerging adulthood. As girls they were (in)visible to statutory services – being presented as deviant agentic young women rather than vulnerable children in need. This thesis critically analyses the legislation, policy, and practice from late adolescence to emerging adulthood to question why statutory services failed to implement transitional care pathway plans for this vulnerable group. The statutory authorities failed in their duties under the Children Act, 1989.

The research exposes a lack of understanding of the long-term effects of CSE and argues that professionals require a deeper critical lens when supporting the young person who is affected by the long-term effects of CSE. In particular, the thesis presents an analysis that is critical of statutory practice, which has failed to support these women. Predominantly, young people figured as agentive social actors in which their sexual exploitation was ignored or regarded as a life choice or identified as beyond the boundaries of transitional care pathway plans due to a misinterpretation of the legislation. These women needed sustained intervention of mental health, housing, social and other services to support them when they experienced CSE. Instead, they were repeatedly failed by every service. CSE was not recognised as exploitation and abuse, but as a choice enacted by these women when they were girls. These failures were repeated. Instead of being given transitional support as the children in need that they were, they were provided housing in which they were expected to live independently, often in close proximity to their abusers and/or hubs of street-based sex work. Inflexible mental health, housing and other services and a focus on the women’s behaviour (e.g., drug taking) as deviant rather than expressing the level of trauma they had sustained through CSE meant that the women did not get support in transitioning out of sexual exploitation. The voluntary sector projects were the only support available to the women and provide examples of how statutory services could more effectively work with the women to help them to transition out of sexual exploitation.