Human trafficking is a serious and growing problem all over the world and Northern Ireland is not exempt from its scourges. In Northern Ireland we have witnessed a concerning increase in trafficked people, many of whom end up being abused and harmed. Many are trafficked into what amounts to little more than slave labour, or into prostitution, sexual exploitation and a life of crime. (p. 2)
Similarly, in the recently completed review of legislation on prostitution in the ROI (Department of Justice and Equality [DoJE], 2012; Oireachtas Library & Research Services, 2012), the various written and oral submissions to the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality were dominated by a constellation of feminist, religious, and migrant organizations (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2013b) that included the National Women’s Council of Ireland, Women’s Aid, the Irish Feminist Network, Immigrant Council for Ireland, Act to Prevent Trafficking, and Ruhama. These various groups are part of a much larger campaign—Turn Off the Red Light (TORL, 2012)—that comprises an alliance of 56 networks, umbrellas, unions, and nongovernmental bodies that see prostitution and trafficking as inextricably linked. TORL regards prostitution entirely as the exploitation of women and children and supports the introduction of the so-called Swedish model to regulate prostitution/sex work:
Woman and children are exploited in Ireland’s sex industry that has an estimated annual value of 180 million euros and is present in every county. On average 1,000 women are available for sale on any given day, and the vast majority of them are migrants of poor economic means and other vulnerabilities. Some are children. Trafficking for the purposes of prostitution is a well documented issue in Ireland, and significant efforts are put in place to tackle these problems. (p. 2)
Criminalising the purchase of sex whilst ensuring that people in prostitution are not criminalised but are offered support services, is a well-known and efficient approach to reduction of sex trafficking, child trafficking, organised crime associated with prostitution and prostitution per se. As Sweden is no longer an attractive market for traffickers and pimps, the law banning the purchase of sex clearly works as a deterrent. (p. 7)
In the ROI, a small number of submissions challenging the abolitionist standpoint on sex work and highlighting the fact that men also engage in providing sexual services in Ireland were presented to the Department of Justice and Equality (DoJE). These submissions were made by academics, a sex worker support group, the Sex Worker Alliance Ireland, and the Gay Men’s Health Service.
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However, debates in the Northern Ireland Assembly around similar legislation occurred almost completely without reference to the issue of men selling sex to other men.
The Geography and Profile of Male Sex Workers
Women account for the majority of people engaged in sex work—outdoor, indoor, and online—throughout the world. The DoJE (2012, p. 6) in the ROI has noted that because sex work is a “clandestine activity,” there are “obvious difficulties in reliably estimating its extent” within the jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the DoJE goes on to state that “estimates suggest that more than 1,000 women, mainly migrants, are available or are made available for paid sexual services on a daily basis throughout [the ROI]” (p. 6). Furthermore, a report from the NI Department of Justice (2011) notes that the Police Service for Northern Ireland estimated that between 40 and 100 women were engaged in prostitution in the country in 2010. Based on 2011 population figures for NI (1.8 million) and the ROI (4.5 million), this means that female sex workers accounted for a mere 0.002-0.005 percent (n = 40-100) and 0.022 percent (n = 1,000) of the population, respectively.
Given the similarity in the figures, it seems clear that the DoJE is basing its estimate on that provided by the ICI (2009; see above), which is a key player in the Republic’s TORL campaign, and which claimed that “there [were] a minimum of 1,000 women in indoor prostitution in the ROI at any one time” (p. 23) and that “over a period of a year, there is likely to be twice that number” (p. 109). Belfast and Dublin were identified as the dominant markets for female sex workers in Ireland; as we show below, this is also true for MSWs. This geographic pattern is to be expected, given the size and capital city status of Belfast and Dublin. Ultimately, male and female sex workers work across both jurisdictions, visiting other major regional and border towns and cities such as Londonderry, Newry, and Dungannon in NI, and Cork, Limerick, and Galway in the ROI, as well as more rural towns and counties.
Notably, none of the recent government or advocacy group reports provides any actual data from online escort agencies regarding the number of MSWs in NI and the ROI. In its written submission to the review of legislation of prostitution in the ROI,
Escort-Ireland.com
noted:
In the six months from 1 March 2012 to 31 August 2012 … some 2196 females, 77 males, 72 transvestites, 70 transsexuals, 28 “duos” and 5 couples advertised on their website. (Houses of Oireachtas, 2013b, p. 20)
Based on these figures alone, male escorts accounted for just over 3 percent of all escorts using the
Escort-Ireland.com
website. This figure increases to 9 percent if transvestite and transsexual escorts (who, by and large, tend to be males performing a female role or undergoing gender reassignment) are classified as males. These figures are broadly similar to estimates in the Netherlands, where males and transsexuals each accounted for 5 percent of all sex workers in 1999 (Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 2009).
The size of the male street-based sector in Ireland is also difficult to ascertain, owing in part to the clandestine nature of sex work but also to increasing use of the Internet as the primary vehicle for negotiating commercial sex. Nevertheless, both Dublin and Belfast, as the two largest cities in Ireland, continue to have a small street-based MSW sector. This differs in important ways from the online sector that we discuss below, and as such it warrants elaboration here.
The Street-Based Male Commercial Sex Sector in Belfast and Dublin
As noted above, some research has been done on male sex work in the ROI, but an extensive literature review did not uncover any studies that addressed the issue in NI. This lack of research is symptomatic of the study of the commercial sex sector in NI generally, but one of the authors of this chapter (Ellison) has been involved in an ongoing comparative study of male and female patterns of sex work in NI, which has revealed a number of trends relative to the street-based MSW sector, which is located primarily in Belfast.
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This sector, like that of females, was severely disrupted by the violent political conflict in NI from 1968 to 1998. Bomb threats and sectarian violence meant that there were significant dangers in using public spaces, particularly at night, while the highly intensive police and British military patrols meant that transactional sex was displaced to indoor establishments in Belfast (usually hotels or brothels). Since the 1998 peace agreement and the development of a night-time economy in the city, a small and concentrated street-based scene involving both males and females has emerged in the city.
There is no government agency or NGO that deals specifically with the sexual health needs of street-based MSWs in Belfast. However, for a number of years, the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust (BHSCT) has been operating a sexual health outreach service in the city center that deals almost exclusively with female sex workers. Data from an interview with a BHSCT representative indicated that outreach workers do occasionally come into contact with male sex workers.
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They provide condoms, offer sexual health screening, and provide information on welfare and social care provision more generally. As of September 2013, 10 street-based MSWs in Belfast had semiregular contact with outreach workers. As is common in other studies of street-based male sex work (Davis & Feldman, 1999; Leary & Minichiello, 2007), MSWs who come into contact with outreach workers tend to come from disadvantaged backgrounds and have a number of problems in their personal lives. For instance, of the 10 MSWs identified, the majority were age 16-20 and all were from NI; some had criminal records and had spent time in a young offenders institution; some had problems with homelessness; many came from volatile and disrupted family backgrounds and had a history of institutional care; some had a history of substance abuse (glue or alcohol in the main); and most were unemployed and claiming welfare benefits. Only about half self-identified as gay, the remainder as heterosexuals who engage in “gay-for-pay” sexual services. The outreach worker also stressed that selling sexual services is a transient or opportunistic activity for many of these young men, who may work the street for a couple of weeks, only to disappear for a time and then return to the streets several months later. Motivations for the selling of sex also varied. In some cases MSWs engaged in survival sex—that is, they provide sexual services to other men to earn money to meet their basic needs and sustenance. At other times they offer opportunistic sex to raise money for a new mobile telephone or a new pair of trendy training shoes/sneakers.
Of course, it may well be that outreach workers are likely to underestimate the number of street-based sex workers, as some of the sex workers may have no contact with outreach organizations. When this issue of underrecording was discussed with a representative from the Rainbow Project, a major LGBT organization in Belfast, it was stressed that the often sporadic and transient nature of street-based male sexual commerce makes it extremely difficult to estimate their number with any accuracy. The Rainbow Project also pointed out that the bulk of commercial sexual services provided by men has shifted to the Internet, which we discuss below.
The size of the street-based MSW sector in Dublin is equally difficult to ascertain. As in NI, there is no government or other agency in the ROI that responds specifically to the needs of men involved in sex work—a point noted by the Irish Human Rights Commission (n.d.). Our telephone calls to various LGBT organizations, sexual health outreach services, and to An Garda Síochána (the Irish police) in Dublin left us unable to produce even an approximate figure for the size of the street-based male commercial sector in the city. A number of organizations took the view, however, that street-based activity—or, more accurately, park-based activity, given that much of this scene is concentrated around a major public park in Dublin—continues to exist, but that there is simply no reliable way to measure its extent or prevalence. One early study, “Such a Taboo,” by the Irish Network Male Prostitution/East Coast Area Health Board (2001) did deal tangentially with the prevalence of the street-based sex work sector in Dublin; however, given the taboo and clandestine nature of the subject matter, the researchers admitted that they were unable to provide any reliable figures. Commenting on the findings outlined in “Such a Taboo,” the Irish Human Rights Commission noted:
In terms of empirical evidence on the extent of male prostitution, no accurate number or estimate was included in the report, and the authors state that the “information available is based on guesstimates [sic] from service providers and a small sample who have openly identified themselves as engaging in prostitution”. Knowledge on the area is scarce and fragmented. (p. 28)
None of the major social surveys that deals with gay-related issues in the ROI (e.g., Real Lives; Devine, Hickson, McNamee, & Quinlan, 2006) asks questions about sex work, whether Internet based or street based, so these are of little utility when discussing issues around commercial sex. However, some researchers have attempted to provide information on the characteristics of the street sector, based on convenience samples with MSWs. However, since these studies are not randomized, their generalizability and representativeness should be treated with some caution.
One such analysis was undertaken by McCabe (2005; see also McCabe et al., 2011), who identified 12 street-based MSWs in Dublin. Again, the picture that emerges from this analysis is in line with the sociodemographic profile of MSWs in Belfast, although with some important differences. Similar problems were identified as related to homelessness, unemployment, disruptive personal and family circumstances, alcohol and substance abuse, low levels of educational attainment, and a history of institutional care. The median age of the Dublin sample was 29 (considerably higher than that of Belfast), the youngest was 20, and the oldest was 39 (McCabe, 2005). Many MSWs in the Dublin sample were addicted to heroin and used their sex work activities to fund their drug dependency.
Traditionally, paramilitary organizations in NI, particularly the IRA, adopted a hard line on the supply and distribution of illegal drugs within Catholic/Nationalist/Republican communities. They often conducted punishment shootings that included kneecapping and, in some instances, the assassination of those they suspected of dealing. This form of community policing meant that the prevalence of hard drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine has never been a particularly serious problem in Belfast, compared to Dublin and Edinburgh, for example (McEvoy & Mika, 2002). Consequently, it is difficult to argue that addiction to hard drugs has played the same role in the pathway into sex work in Belfast as seems to be the case in Dublin. Again, like the sample identified in Belfast, McCabe (2005) points to the often irregular and transient nature of the work: