Sex workers are 18 times more likely to be murdered than the rest of the female population, according to experts, revealing the terrifying reality of violence in the sex work industry.

Dr Fiona Vera-Grey, an expert in violence against women, based at London Metropolitan University, believes this is reflective of the fact “violence against women is so woven into the fabric of society”.

“We don’t find it surprising or outrageous anymore,” she says. “Sex workers are more likely to be targeted for sexual violence because they’re not valued as much by society so there’s not going to be a huge public outcry.”

There is a well documented history of violence against sex workers, from Jack the Ripper – who murdered sex workers in Victorian London to Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper who killed 13 women, including seven sex workers.

“Jack the Ripper was able to do what he did because he was killing sex workers, and nobody sees these people as people,” says Vera-Grey.

She believes attitudes have hardly changed since the 19th-century murders, stating the men who solicit sex workers often think “you’re not a real person, you’re an object that I’ve just bought and you have to do what I tell you”.

Dr Vera-Grey pointed out the sex workers who are the most exploited are often an already marginalised group such as people of colour or those facing homelessness and substance abuse. 

“We’re in a patriarchal society, and a racist society,” she says. “This means sex work is often the purchase by white men of black and brown women.”

Research suggests that ethnic or racialized minorities make up a substantial proportion of the sex worker community, up to 22.8% in the UK and USA.

Women of colour are among the most marginalised in the industry, yet it is the stories of white, middle-class women that are more readily framed as empowering or glamorous.

Dr Vera-Grey, who teaches on the Women and Child Abuse MA course at London Met, says: “As a society, we are comfortable with the image of a white middle-class woman who’s selling sex to put herself through university, but we don’t think so much about the homeless woman who’s clearly a drug user. 

A study, published in BMJ Journals, on London sex workers showed those who work on the street experience over double the amount of violence from clients than off-street sex workers.

“Who are the men who are buying sex off this woman? They can see that she’s in an exploited situation,” says Dr Vera-Grey. “What are their motivations? Those men are the most dangerous.”

In the UK, “curb-crawling”, which is the act of driving along the streets in search of a sex worker or going to a brothel, is illegal but Dr Vera-Grey argues that the current legal framework fails to address the real issues at hand. 

“The men that are buying street sex workers in this country are committing a criminal offense and they’re some of the most dangerous men because they don’t care about the fact that they’re committing a criminal offense,” she says.

Dr Vera-Grey believes the proposed Nordic model, which criminalises the purchase of sex but not the selling of it, will harm sex workers’ safety. “It’s going to make the women less safe,” she says. “It’s going to push everything underground. What needs to happen alongside the Nordic model is the introduction of really well-resourced exit services to support women to be able to exit prostitution if that’s what they want to do.”

Calls for decriminalisation of sex work also do not address the issue of violence, Dr Vera-Grey believes. “In areas where there is a fully legalized sex industry, there are still really high levels of sexual violence against sex workers.” She believes the effects of increasingly violent pornography fuels sexual violence, especially for sex workers.

The Childrens’ Comissioner Study in 2023 found 79% of young people had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18 and 47% think girls ‘expect’ sex to involve physical aggression such as airway restriction or slapping, and a further 42% believe most girls ‘enjoy’ acts of sexual aggression.

Dr Vera-Grey spoke to a sex worker, who was in her 50s, as part of her research. “The sex worker noticed younger clients wanted practices that were taken from pornography and wanted to treat her much less like a person,” she says.

“She was quite taken by the fact that there was a difference in ages in terms of her clients and the younger ones wanted to do some more dehumanizing stuff. With one of them in particular, she had said ‘that’s not how you treat your girlfriend. That’s not how you treat women’.”

This widely accepted violence against sex workers is perpetuated by true crime, such as Netflix’s ‘The Ripper’, believes Dr Vera-Grey. “It becomes unextraordinary, and that has a huge impact on how much the public then puts pressure on the government to do something to stop. 

“Some women are sexually murdered. It’s just something that we kind of accept as a society.”