Hungarian journalist Nóra Miavecz has worked as a volunteer in London and South Africa for various civil society organizations specialized in helping prostitutes and victims of sex trafficking. Borbála Juhász from the Hungarian Women’s Lobby interviewed her about the interconnections of prostitution, porn and violence, their effects on children and the situation of Hungarian prostitutes in the UK for merce.hu.

BJ: How did you end up in South Africa?

NM: Earlier in Hungary I had already written about topics related to prostitution, porn and gender-based violence. A few years ago, when in London, I saw a BBC documentary about British footballers’ wives who, having accompanied their husbands to the soccer World Cup, do volunteer work in South Africa. One of the civil society organizations introduced in the film was working in the infamous Hilbrow district of Johannesburg, where prostitution is very strongly present. They impressed me so much that I wrote to them immediately, and a few months later I was already volunteering for them. Later I transferred to another organization in Cape Town, which is lobbying for the introduction of the so-called “Scandinavian model”: this approach considers prostitution as a form of gender-based violence and a barrier to gender equality, so it penalizes the users of these services, while helping women who want to get out of prostitution and using school sex education as a preventive measure.

It was around this time that American psychologist Melissa Farley published her study on men who buy sex, which was a completely new research area at the time. It inspired me so much that I started interviewing male clients of prostitutes in Cape Town and its surroundings along the same lines. I would not call it a classic research, but I did learn a lot from it.

BJ: What did you learn?

NM: Most of these men were living in some kind of a relationship. Only one of them was aware that prostitution is completely illegal in South Africa, so clients and prostitutes are both punished. I must add that up to 2018, altogether only 11 men were arrested on such charges, compared to thousands of women prostitutes.

All my interviewees referred to their biological needs as the reason for “using” prostitutes – as if they were talking about lack of oxygen. Most of them did not care – even if they knew – whether the person they had paid for sex was a minor or was forced to do it. They only cared about getting their money’s worth and talked about this as some kind of fundamental right. This resonates with what Farley and other studies have found.

The growth of the porn industry definitely plays a part in men taking advantage of prostitution at an increasingly younger age and considering it increasingly normal. Pornhub writes on their website that they have an average of 115 million visitors per day – this equals the population of Canada, Australia, Poland and Holland combined. As internet access has become almost universal and children use smart devices and social media at a younger age, they meet pornographic content well before coming of age: when I started researching this topic, the average age of first seeing porn was 13, by 2016 it had lowered to 11, and now it is 10 or younger.

In the past 10 years problematic sexual behavior (including, but not limited to, sexual abuse) by children against children has been growing to a worrying degree. The RedCap database of Children’s Mercy Hospital (Kansas, USA) says that in 2017, in almost half (43.9%) of all the sexual abuse cases (444) the perpetrator was a minor, most of them boys of 11-15 years of age. In 2018 there were 408 sexual abuse cases and 86% of the victims were female, almost half of them babies or small children, a quarter of them teenagers. Data from the Australian Statistical Bureau shows that the number of sex crimes committed by schoolchildren has almost quadrupled in four years. Other Australian studies have found that the majority of children with problematic sexual behavior consume porn regularly. Global data show that such behavior usually takes place in the kindergarten, at school, at the playground or between siblings – this also suggests that the children are not aware that what they are doing is not OK. These boys are not really “perpetrators”; they just imitate what they see on the screen. If they do not get help, they become addicted and follow these models during their teens and adulthood – except they become more violent because nothing else stimulates them anymore.

Porn usually contains much violence – a research analyzed 304 porn scenes, and 88% of them contained some form of physical violence. A study comparing men who use and do not use prostitution revealed that much more of the former learnt sex from porn, and they liked to imitate what they had seen with their partner or prostitutes. The women I helped at British organizations often told me that their clients usually wanted them to “replay” violent scenes from porn movies.

Other research has also revealed that men who “use” prostitution are more likely to be sexually aggressive and to have committed rape (on their partner and/or prostitutes) and admit that they would commit it again if they knew they could get away with it.

So porn culture may produce abusive men, and this is one reason why porn and prostitution cannot be separated from intimate partner violence and sexual violence.

BJ: Let’s talk about the other side, the prostitutes themselves. What was your impression of them?

NM: Besides having little or no chance to get an education or a job, many of these women were victims of sexual abuse in their childhood, committed usually by men who were close to them. This sent them the message that love is conditional and is connected to abuse; therefore, they can only receive love and care if they make themselves available all the time, sexually and otherwise. Unless a sexually abused child gets help, this will be the model for them. Therefore, later they have a higher chance to get involved with their pimps or boyfriends – and the two are often the same.

They usually get involved in prostitution in their teens. By that time, they are so used to violence and so alienated from their bodies, that even without direct pressure they use it to obtain things they need, be it cigarettes, accommodation, money or food. In my experience, unfortunately even professionals working in education or child protection speak about these teenagers with disdain, though the real responsibility lies not with them but with the men who take advantage of them – they are the ones who have real choice.

The number of murders committed against prostitutes, usually by male clients, is shockingly high. It is telling that in Sweden, where clients are punished, in the 18 years between 1999, when the law was introduced, to 2017, there was not a single murder case against a prostitute, whereas in Italy, where prostitution is legal, there were 72 in 7 years.

BJ: What nationalities were the women you helped in London? Were there any Hungarians?

NM: I met women from many nationalities: some were street prostitutes, others worked in brothels, rented private flats or massage saloons, but there were escorts too.

And there were Hungarians too, and more and more over the years. However, with few exceptions, I was not able to help them efficiently on the long run, because in the UK the state social welfare system is aid-based. As an EU citizen, you are only entitled to an aid if you pass the so-called “habitual residence test”, which means you must prove that you habitually live and plan to stay in the country.

Hungarian prostitutes in London often have no pimps but rent a private apartment together with several others. However, it is illegal for two or more prostitutes to work at the same place, because that would qualify as a brothel, which is outlawed in the UK. Therefore, these Hungarian women have no trace in the system and are not entitled to aid or housing support.

Many arrive as so-called economic migrants but fall victim to sex trafficking. For instance, one of my clients applied for a cleaning job through a Hungarian agency, because she did not speak English. These jobs really existed; they paid less than the minimum wage, but a new arrival to the UK may not realize that, often she is happy to get a job without knowing the language at all. The agency also promised her accommodation, saying they would deduce the rent from her wages – this is part of the trick. For some, even their trip is paid by the agency, so they owe much more to them. Of course, my client could not pay the instalments from the minimum wage. Then, almost casually, they mentioned to her that they knew a brothel in case she wanted to earn some extra…

We must not forget that most of these women are single parents, whose children are looked after by grandma back in Hungary, while Mum tries to earn enough in London to send some home. They need the money badly for that, too, so eventually they agree to sell their bodies – seemingly their own choice, but do they really have options? This particular client was then kept under inhuman circumstances, most of her money was taken away, she was locked up and transferred from one place to another. This already qualifies as sex trafficking, but it is hard to prove, especially as victims are afraid to turn to the police.

Now after Brexit, these women may be identified as illegal immigrants and deported. As a result, in their home country, without any local help, they will find themselves in a similar or even worse situation than what they started from, and they are likely to be revictimized. The dividing lines between economic migrant and illegal immigrant, “voluntary” sex work and victims of sex trafficking are blurred.

However, it is a cause for optimism that British activists lobby for the introduction of the “Scandinavian model”. I think this would be a good first step.