Exclusive interview: sex workers refuse help

The NEWS interviewed a group of sex workers in an effort to expose a different side of the recently reported drug and prostitution trade in Krugersdorp.

Police frequently are criticised for not providing sex workers with a way out, but in an interview with three women active in the trade, the NEWS soon found that in some cases the offer to help was turned down.

The women varying in age sat down with journalists after being arrested for loitering the previous day and spending the night in a cell.

Their hair and clothes were dirty, they had dirt under their fingernails and complained that they needed a bath, but agreed to complete the interview.

All three were asked the same questions.

When asked how they were introduced to the trade, two of the women claimed that they had the wrong friends from an early age while the other admitted that her addiction to both heroin and Rocks (the freebase form of cocaine that can be smoked) forced her into prostitution.

It became clear that the women were caught up in different stages of the trade. The youngest, aged 22, told the NEWS that she had been using drugs for more than three years and that she had reached a stage where she won’t be able to do “her job” without it.

The second, slightly older, admitted that her addiction was still in an early stage and that she had been a prostitute for only a year. The third woman, in her thirties, told the NEWS about her eight-year-long battle with both heroin and Rocks, and how prostitution had helped her to support her habit.

Asked for the first time in the interview whether they would use the opportunity police had just offered them to be placed in a local safe house and get rehabilitated, all three women refused.

The interview continued during which two admitted that they had young children.

Al three said that they charged between R100 and R150 per client and that the rate depended on what customers wanted.

“Only 50 per cent of all customers want intercourse. Some just talk, others just want to see your private parts and some give you money because they feel sorry for you,” one of the women explained.

When they were younger, all three aspired to have careers and wanted to become a veterinarian, a doctor and a lawyer respectively. They said that while they never would be able to have a normal relationship with a man they sometimes dreamt of having an average life with a husband and children.

Asked for a second time whether they wanted to be placed in a shelter to make their aspirations a reality, they once again refused.

Krugersdorp police offered the women the option to appear in court and pay a fine, and one last time to be placed in a shelter, but they refused.