#62

Jay from FiLiA in conversation with Sam Walshe – Prostitution and DBS’s

Jay: Hello and welcome back to the FiLiA Podcast this evening. I'm delighted to be talking to Sam Walshe, who spoke at FiLiA in Bradford last year. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us this evening. Just to start out, for those who didn't have the privilege of hearing you in Bradford, could you just tell those who are listening a bit about yourself and your background.

Sam: Well, my background, I was pimped into prostitution. I met a pimp at the age of 14. Got into prostitution at 15, ended up on heroin and ended up on the streets for a long time for heroin, and I've been away from that for 14 years now. I've been trying to get my DBS record right to try and get a job.

Jay: Yes. Which is something recently with the court case. Have you been involved with that?

Sam: Yeah, I have. I've been involved with that with Fiona for about two and a half years now even though I've been trying to do something about it for like eight years, I never knew there was anyone else out there that was fighting it, it took years for me to even hear about Harriet and Fiona fighting. Because it isn't really shouted about, and for some reason services that are helping women didn't seem to know about it either.  

Jay: And it should be something we're shouting about it's so important. So just for anybody who's not heard about it, it's a case being brought by women who were abused as children into the sex trade, who then found themselves with criminal convictions as a result of that abuse and are trying to get that removed from DBS records and I hear it's been successful. Is that right?

 Sam:  I'm anonymous in the case. So there's three women that are named and then three women that are witnesses as such, like backup evidence for what the three named women are saying and the three named women, their DBS’s is now wiped. If they go for a job tomorrow, it will not come up on that. It's gone. Which is amazing because like Fiona Broadfoot, she's been fighting this for 20 years. I've only been doing it a few years and it's draining emotionally. So for her to do it for 20 years, it's like, wow. So hers is automatically wiped.

But for other women, I think Harriet from Centre for Women's Justice, they're going to do a template so that we can apply. And because it's been found unlawful it should just be wiped. So where before you could apply to have it wiped, it was usually a blanket, no, they wouldn't do it.

Whereas now because we won this case and Fiona had hers wiped and the other two women, we can use that as backups to get ours wiped. That's what I understand so far because there's a lot of legal mumbo jumbo as well, to be honest, that I don't get. But that's the grasp of it at the minute. 

Jay: And that is just such fantastic news. I've been following that case and I'm delighted. 

In terms of wiping DBS, one of the things that FiLiA wants to campaign for is for not just convictions for soliciting, but any convictions accumulated whilst a girl is being exploited like that. And I wondered, do you think that's something that we could try to do?

Sam: Definitely. Obviously I meet a lot of women and I know a lot of women where I live now and work. I'm lucky I've only got a couple on my DBS and its only prostitution that I have on that. But I know people who've got credit card frauds, shoplifting, it was because of the relationship they were in at the time.

I was just lucky that I never got caught. I'm a Scouser. I was raised in a way that you know how to beat the system. That's a bad thing to say. That's my chaotic childhood coming into it. That we were raised very young how to talk to the police, how not to talk to the police, which held me in good stead, I supposed for my DBS.

But I know I've done crimes well I wouldn't have done if I wasn't in that situation. Like I said, I started out with a pimp, but then I ended up getting away from him. He's still in the same city I'm in now, so I still see him now and again. But then I got with another guy, because we were both on drugs, it was like a mutually beneficial relationship. He was an armed robber. I was doing what I was doing, so if he didn't have money, I would've money. So it wasn't like that. But I'd done crimes that I would never have done if I wasn’t on drugs, if I didn't get into that. 

When I look back now, my whole view was so distorted. Through my experience, you become desensitised to that way of life. You see that way of life as normal, in them surroundings, in that environment. And if you've got someone who you know, if you don't do it, they're going to beat you. You're going to go and do what you're going to do. And it's not fair. 

I know a girl who, she's gone to uni, she's got a Master's, she's changed her life so much, but still now her DBS will be thrown in her face. She's left that behind, but she's still being judged for it, for being a victim.

 Jay: tThat, yeah, girls who wouldn't have ended up in that lifestyle doing those other criminal activities, I suppose, like if you've got possession of drugs or shoplifting, like you say.

So I think that's something that we would be wanting to campaign for within what we want to do next.

 You said that you were groomed as a child and then you were trafficked around in brothels and parlours. 

Sam: Yeah. When I was young. When you are young, they wouldn't really put you on the street because if you get arrested, even though, to be honest, I did get arrested down south when I was 15, but I was living in a hostel, so they just took my fingerprints and sent me on my way. 

Jay: Did they ever offer you help? 

Sam: No, well, I'm 45 now, so this is going back 30 years. But no, I was 15. I'd been a runaway for a while, and I was living in the hostel. They just let me go.

I wasn't dressed in no way a 15-year-old should be dressed. I was out at what time in the morning. But it's that thing if they see you as that kind of girl, I think it is changing a bit now but really they still see it as, oh, you're that kind of girl. They don't really care. It's your choice. It's them bad girls, you know. 

Jay: So they're not seeing you as an abused child. They're seeing you as someone who's making an active choice. 

Sam: Definitely, definitely. I would say that, that even the police said if this is the way we're picking you up now, you are going to be in a lot more trouble as you get older. But didn't offer me no help or ask me any questions of what or why I was doing it, they just took me back to the hostel. And that was that. And I was 15. I don't understand how, because I got my fingerprints taken and everything. That does not come up on my criminal record, but I think maybe because I only got a caution. I don't know, but I did have my fingerprints taken, so there should be some record of it.

 But then it's like one of my convictions that I have got on my DBS and this is what kind of winds me up more than anything: One of the times I was convicted is not something to be proud of, but I was caught in a car so I couldn't really lie about it.

I'm laughing but I laugh when I get a bit nervous. I was caught in a car, a police van pulled up, I got took into the van, I got took to the police station. I got took to court the next day and got a conviction. The guy drove off. He didn't get taken in the van with me. He didn't get arrested with me like, so you're telling me in that situation, I'm the criminal. But then if it's illegal for that man to be doing that, why didn't you arrest him as well? Why did you let him go? But you take me. 

Jay: That seems really bad double standards. So men would be just allowed to go on their way and then it was you that was being taken action against.

Sam: That was actually one of my convictions is that that exact scenario happened, and I even said it in court, but the judge was not interested, are they? They wasn't interested in that. But yeah, that was one of mine, and that's why I've got a, not a vendetta, but kind of what gives me that fight as well because I think, hang on, if what he was doing was illegal, which it supposedly is, to be curb crawling and what I'm doing was illegal. So why was I the one arrested and criminalised? Why hasn't he got a criminal record as well? And why hasn't he got to sit down when he goes for a job and say why he done what he done?

Jay: Do you think that's something that would help if the men who were making the choice to buy sex if they were criminalised? 

Sam: I don't call it arguments; I call it debates. I have with people who claim that it is their choice. No, we're not. You're not. If you are a female and you are doing that, you're not doing it because you want to. I think the statistics of people doing it because they want to is so low, it's not, it's for financial reasons. It's for being coerced. It's for being a woman in the way society is set up that you think that's a choice.

 But the men, if it's such a choice like this pro lobby like to go on and say, oh, it's work. If it's such great work and it's such a choice, where are all these men? Why aren’t these men shouting about how great a job it is for women that who are paying for it? Why aren’t they standing up and saying, - yeah, we pay for it. We're proud. We're proud to support these business women - But none of them stand up and say it because they're embarrassed because they know what they're doing. They're preying on vulnerable women and girls. Sorry, I went into a bit of a rant now. 

Jay: No rant away. I mean you can't argue with that really if your experiences are of men praying on vulnerable girls and I think that's really powerful to hear that because we hear quite a lot about - it's a choice and it's a job - but we don't as often get to hear women who've been through those experiences saying, that's not what it felt like. 

Sam: No because that's what people want to hear. People want to believe that Pretty Woman, sanitised glamorous version. They don't want to hear the reality of it because then you have to look at wider society as a whole, like we all know the reality of it if we're being truly honest.

If we're being truly honest, any man or woman who's got a daughter, if you said, would you be happy and would you be supportive to support your daughter to do that as a career? I don't know anyone, whether you've got experience of it or not, that would be like, yeah, cool. Yeah. Yes, I'm very happy that's what my daughter is. No, they're lying. And they can stand in my face and I'll tell them they're lying. 

Jay: One of things that I also hear people say is, oh, well, it's not safe for women to be working on the streets. So it would be safer, it would be better if we license brothels. What do you think about that?

Sam: Come on, like 30 years ago, maybe 28 years when I was in London in flats because places in Bristol that are just so blatant they get robbed all the time. These girls are getting robbed. You don't know who that person is or you are.

Most of the time through the week, it'll be all right. The only thing that's getting damaged is your soul and your brain and your mental health, even though you might not realize it at the time, but there does come times when you don't know, whether it's a hotel room, a flat or whether it's out there on the street where that danger is there, and what are you going to do then? 

Look at Leeds. They started that off saying it was a safe zone. Then they realised, oh, oh, people are still being attacked and oh, we best not call it a safe zone cause it's not actually safe, we'll call it a managed zone now.

If you go up there and have a look, you go up there and drive around, it's just a market of misery. People are dealing in women's misery like, but you want to replicate that around the country. Really? Okay. Okay. Replicate it. And then the people who are singing and shouting, let their daughters go down there and work there.

Let's see if they still want to replicate it. Sorry. 

Jay: Don't be sorry. Please don't be sorry.

Sam: I understand that girls have got to be safe. I understand that, but you know, a lot of girls that I know now they're out there for drugs. Your safety doesn't come into it when you’re on drugs.

I was, you know, like I said, I was doing heroin for 15 years longer than that, but I've been off it 14 years and when you are on it you're not thinking about nothing. You're not worried about whether it's safe or not. I got in a guy's car and I knew in my stomach I knew my intuition told me, do not get in this van. I knew it. I did. I can honestly say I knew it, but because I needed drugs I couldn't listen to that. I shoved it away and didn't listen to it and yep, that was the guy who attacked me but I knew it getting in that car. That's what I'm saying. The need for the drugs was so much that my own safety didn't come into it and nothing came into it.

So what managed zones does is, it gives you a target area where you know they're going to be. You can't keep them safe. There's people, there's men out there who enjoy the power, enjoy the control, and enjoy having that control over someone. They know that women are not enjoying what they're doing.

I was never an active participant. I wasn't one of them people who make noises and make you feel good about yourself, mate, no, I'm like ‘hurry up’ sorry to be crude but that's the reality.

Now I think as a woman, I think I couldn't have sex with someone knowing they wasn't fully a part of that and wanting that, but men seem to be able to do that.

They seem cool with that. It doesn't matter if the girl's six stone, got a heroin habit. 

Jay: You didn't find that anybody said, oh, you're obviously not enjoying yourself.  

Sam: Come on. That doesn't even happen in many relationships, let alone …

I can honestly say no one actually said, are you okay? Is this what you want to do? No.

 You’re a commodity. For me, I wasn't there. I was so disassociated because I'd learnt that from a young age that I was so disassociated, I wasn't there. I was thinking about the money or I was thinking about the drug.

I wasn't, so I'm not going to act like I was, and I never, ever, I can honestly say, I don't know, to be honest how I ever made any money because I just never would pretend I was enjoying it. It was a means to an end. 

Jay: So the men who say that they would never, ever pay for sex with an unwilling woman are probably lying?

Sam: Oh my gosh. They know they're lying. Obviously I can't talk for every woman. All I can say is however much I was being paid, whether it was the top end of the scale or the bottom end of the scale, I never enjoyed it. And I never acted like I enjoyed it. 

And to be honest, the men didn't really care, they were just doing what they were doing.  It’s a transaction. They might want to kid themselves because it makes them feel better about themselves. It makes them feel better about themselves when they go back to their wife and kids that are always not a vulnerable woman. This woman enjoys it. It's their choice. No, you say that because it makes you feel better about yourself. That's why they pretend that it isn’t about the money, if it was about the women, wouldn't you say, oh, I'll tell you what would you like to orgasm first? Never. It's a commodity.

I've had regular customer who think they've got a relationship with you, but they haven't. And you know, really they haven't. They know you haven't. It's an agreement. It's an agreement for how long that last, and at times I fought in them agreements. I'm in control of this. No, I wasn't, because even though I had something he wanted, he had something I needed more. He could go wherever and get what he wanted. So it's like they've got that power over you like, they're not worried about your wellbeing,  

Jay: And you were able to get away from your pimp when you were still a child yourself. You were still 17 and much later to exit the sex trade itself. How were you able to exit? 

Sam: For me, like I say, I always knew I didn't want to do it. I knew I didn't enjoy it. I've got a funny relationship with sex and to me it was just something that was a means to an end.

It wasn't something private or that could be nice or joy. It was just what it was really. So that made it easier and I think that's all I thought I could do. I'd done it for so long and kind of as sad as it sounds it felt like that's how people liked because I did that. So then as crazy as that sounds it was a bit crazy.

Jay: When you did manage to exit, did you get any help to do that? Were you on your own?

Sam: No, what it was more because I had my child, he was getting older and like I said, I had a heroin habit and I was just, I'd had enough I think, because I'd been in it from so young I knew I was going to lose my kid. I was going to lose my life. I was like four and a half stone and thought I looked okay. So I think it was more about I wanted to stop the drugs and then because I stopped the drugs, there was no need to do it. There were times when I'd go out and I didn't have heroin, but the thought of doing that, and sometimes I went home.

I'd go back home and I'd say, oh, the police were out all night. Like it's crazy - The police were out - and they wasn't. It was just I didn't want to do it. The thought of just doing it, even though I knew I'd be ill, but then I knew I wouldn't because I knew he'd go and get it. 

I just knew I didn't want to do it. I was fed up with it. I felt crap when I did drugs. I felt crap when I didn't do drugs. I just felt crap. Even though I'd done it for quite a bit of my son's early life, I think if I wouldn't have had my son, I might not have done it for myself.

I don't think I thought enough of myself to do it for me. You know? I think I felt enough of my son to do it, and then doing it kind of made me sort myself a bit.  

I went to the doctor and got help but I didn’t really go anywhere else. There was a couple of support workers I knew, like there's a charity in Bristol 125. There was a support worker there called Karen and bless her, she used to come and take me out for a coffee and talk to me and, but it's difficult when you're coming out of that, there's so much judgment and stigma. I didn't feel like I could go to the usual drug groups or you know, people say, take your kid to Stay and Play. I can't go there to Stay and Play and I'm sat there, my head is messed up with the thoughts and trauma that I've got. I can still have triggers. It is not easy. And I think what it is, there's not enough people that have been there that you can talk to.

When I met Harriet and Fiona. Harriet was the first person ever, and I've been clean 11 years then, so I'd been off heroin for 11 years. I've been through drug services and done different stuff and volunteered and all that. But Harriet was the first person who actually asked me how I got into it. No one had ever asked me, and it was when she asked me that I thought, oh my! Yeah. No one has ever asked me. And then it was when she put it to me - you know, that's trafficking and you know that that's grooming -  if people said to me, oh, how did you end up in Bristol? I'd say, oh, oh, I ran away when I was 15. But no, I was a runaway. Then I got in with the wrong crowd who I didn't know was kind of into that kind of thing. And the pimp was attached to them. So I used to think it was a choice. I used to act like it was a choice.

Jay: Do you ever feel angry, I suppose, with the authorities who saw a child being exploited, being abused, and they were picking you up and letting the men abusing you, go free. I'm angry on your behalf that that happened to you. 

Sam: That's why I started to fight this case because I'd gone for so many job interviews, got through them and then they'd see my DBS.

I thought, you know what? That man. Not just that man, but all of the men, it was just that one arrest, I think because I was caught in that position, neither of us could deny it. It was what it was. Let's be honest there was no getting away with it, but he did. I didn't. Why am I the one who is criminalised but he's not and it makes me so angry and mad. But then it's a good thing because that anger just sends me to Harriet and Fiona and like going to FiLiA last year and all. Now I've got somewhere to channel that anger in a positive way. Before it was kind of overwhelming. I'd get quite depressed about it, where now I feel like it's a positive anger and I feel like I'm trying to do something about it, which is good. 

Jay: With Fiona and Harriet, you've changed the law for other people, which is amazing.

So you, you've already contributed to bringing about a massive legal change. If you had the Prime Minister in front of you, any Prime Minister, and you could get them to introduce any law that would help people who are going through what you went through, what would you do?

Sam: I wouldn't criminalise the women. If any woman that you arrested out there is not out there because she enjoys sex. That's the bottom line. They're not out there because they want to quick fumble. Do you know what I mean? They're out there because needs must, so surely you should look at it more as a exploitation.

It's financial exploitation, economic exploitation. And it's just because you are a female. I'm not saying males don't get arrested for it. We all know men get arrested, blah, blah, blah, blah. What about the men? But sorry, but no. 

I go around doing talks everywhere and I say, you know, when you meet these women in services or at probation, you just see this woman stood in front of you of this angry street worker, as you like to call them and you see this angry kind of inner mess woman who's made this choice. Don't you just look and think, what led her to that? What led any woman to that? Instead of seeing enough of what she's presenting as, look behind that and think everyone got a story. No one wakes up in the morning when they're a teenager and thinks oh, I know what I want to be when I'm older. I want to be a drug addicted prostitute.

That's what I want, where do I go? Which careers officer do I see for that? Please? 

Jay: Thank you. Such a powerful interview. 

Sam:  I started rabbiting and ranting a bit there, so you might have to cut a load of rubbish out. 

Jay: No, I wish we could have an entire podcast of you just ranting. It would be absolutely epic. It is world changing ranting. So thank you so, so much for the interview. 

Sam: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.