Nia Dark and Lovely, a Black Escort in London

Steve Wright is to be sentenced on Friday for murdering the five women in Ipswich.

A woman who had sex with Steve after the fifth victim, thinks her life was saved because of an unexplained noise.

Steve described himself as a placid person who buried his anger inside.

Well, his buried anger has taken the lives of five women, and hopefully he will remain behind bars, the families of the women feel he deserves the death penalty. He will be given five mandatory life sentences, but the trial judge must decide if and when he can apply for parole.

Blissful desires has been added to my blogroll. Pay her a visit.

Labels: ABC News, guardian, Ipswich Murders, Prostitutes, Telegraph.co.uk, ukpress.google.com

I apologise for not having blogged for a while. Three close friends, and members of my family have had major crises. That has taken priority for me,and my availability has changed as a result.

Some sweet soul thought I had retired, and chose not to tell anyone about it.You will know when that happens.

I was watching the news today and cannot believe the Steve Wright trial has taken so long.

I wonder what his motive was too.

His DNA was everywhere, and yet he says he did not kill these women.

Labels: Ipswich Murders, News, Prostitutes, ukpress.google.com

A pilot scheme is to be launched in Ipswich, for the street workers in response to the murders.

They will also be given an exiting package.

Street workers are to be given bespoke counselling and help to find alternative lifestyles as part of a tough anti-prostitution strategy that is being piloted by the Home Office.

Prostitutes will be told to take part in the programme or risk a harsh regime involving prosecution and Asbos. Officials are also focusing on kerb crawlers who keep the trade afloat; they are being tracked via CCTV and identified from registration plate recognition technology.

All prostitutes will be the subject of a "case conference" so that a strategy can be drawn up which is relevant to their circumstances. Each will be given an "exiting package", or phased programme showing the transition they might make.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The key objective is to challenge the street-based market in the town, focusing on prevention, tackling demand, routes out, and ensuring justice."

But street workers fear the approach could drive women off the streets and into unfamiliar towns or force them to take risks by working alone and unmonitored.

The English Collective of Prostitutes has launched a "safety-first coalition" calling for decriminalisation. "The Ipswich approach will simply drive the prostitution underground," a spokeswoman said.

Quotes from Anti-Prostitution strategy to offer counselling or court, by Diane Taylor and Hugh Muir of the Guardian Newspaper.

It will be interesting to see how successful the counselling is. My understanding of involuntary counselling, is that there is not much behaviour change. The women have few options counselling or court.

Labels: guardian, Ipswich Murders, News, Prostitutes, Resources for Prostitutes, Streetworkers

Kerb crawlers in Ipswich could be sent on rehabilitation courses to get a glimpse of the realities of prostitution. This is in response to the Ipswich murders.

It is a different strategy,as most kerb crawlers, are named and shamed. The course has been successful in Dorset,Hampshire and Nottinghamshire.

I wait to see whether this strategy will have an effect on their behaviour.

One of the ideas being mooted following their killings in the hope of helping women off the streets is to send those caught kerb crawling on a programme known as the Change Course.

It looks at the reasons women are prostitutes and the abuse they face on the streets, as well as questioning men about their reasons for using sex workers.

The course has already had some success in Nottinghamshire, Dorset and Hampshire and Ipswich is considering adopting the programme, although discussions are said to be at a very early stage.

Quotes from Course may explain evils of prostitution by the Suffolk Evening Star.

I wonder what reasons these men will use, to explain their attendance on these courses, to their employers,friends and family.

Labels: Ipswich Murders, Kerb crawlers, Kerbcrawler courses, News, Suffolk Evening Star

Eighteen months ago Ken's partner went to Spain, met a barman and left him, so he began visiting Ipswich's red light district again. Ken lives in Colchester, 17 miles down the A12, but his home town doesn't have an area where women work the streets. So for the past 15 years, on and off, he's always come to Ipswich.
But he doesn't like to think of himself as just another punter. "It was just one night after my relationship finished, I ended up in the red light district," he says.

I really have nothing to feel guilty about an article by Esther Addley of the Guardian newspaper.

This week has seen the conclusion of an inquiry into another tragic death of a young vulnerable women in which accusations, many of them absurd, have been made, not least by one of the newspapers listed above. Pointing fingers is a dangerous game. We can argue about what the best way is to deal with drugs and with prostitution, although both debates have been largely sterile recently, but assigning blame should be a complex procedure.

We do not know the man, or men, who is, or are, carrying out these murders in Suffolk. We do not know what motivates or drives them. We do not know if they are driven into a frenzy by reading regular outpourings of bile about permissiveness in some of our daily newspapers, or by constantly seeing pictures of famous drug-takers in those publications. And Moss and Doherty didn't ask their "friends" to rat on them to the press.

When the perpetrator is finally caught, we can hope to learn some lessons, but one lesson that need not wait for it is that, very sadly, there are murderous people at large now, as there were in the last century and the century before. And we do a disservice to the victims by trying to drag them from the murder scene to display them casually as exhibits for our personal moral prejudices.

These bilious outpourings an article by Duncan Campbell of the Guardian newspaper.


I am sure there is more to come.

Labels: guardian, Ipswich Murders, News, Streetworkers

I got a letter from work(non escort related), and my heart sank. One of the women that I manage is due for an appraisal. She is fairly new, but has very low self-esteem. There are a number of issues that I need to raise with her, with regard to her areas of development. What worries me, is that whatever I say, she will not take it well.

For those of you who know me, I am sensitive to peoples emotions, and tend not to be hard hitting when I need to get a point across. Nevertheless, there comes a time when things need to be said.

I find it awkward when I see clients who have bad breath, or their personal hygiene leaves a lot to be desired. I offer all my clients a shower when they arrive. Some will say they have already had one. That is fine, but what some men do not realise, is that if they have been to the toilet since they had the shower, piss tends to linger on the penis, in some cases. I find this can be the case for men who are not circumcised, and it tends to be just under the foreskin,where you may find other bits too. It is hard when someone is insistent that they are clean, and you can see that they are not.

The breath issue, is problematic too. I tend to avoid kissing in these cases, because I start to feel ill.

I find it hard to raise the issue, although I have done, because of the fragile male ego. It could kill the whole experience for them, but then they are not going to have much fun with me if they are not clean. One of my friends tends to drink a lot of red wine, during the booking so that it kills any bad taste for her.

I have a number of friends who have no problem whatsoever raising the issue.

There are several ways of saying things:
"Would you like some mouthwash?"
"Do you really think I will give you a blow job when you smell like that?" (hard hitting but it has to be done).
"I think you need a shower."
"Your breath hit me as I opened the door, and if you want to kiss, you need to use the mouthwash". (not very polite, but he was insistent)

I know that hygiene can be a problem on both sides. I have read reviews where clients complained about escorts hygiene, but did not confront them. I guess they felt awkward too.

What do you say to clients or escorts who have these problems?


This is article by Catherine Bennett from the Guardian newspaper. She raises some interesting points.

Although detectives are unlikely, these days, to make regrettable comments about "innocent women", they are still happy to use the kerbcrawly, Punternet-approved term "working girls" to describe the Ipswich women. Is this usual practice? You do not hear them pubicly allude to "matey", say, or to "toerags", where other offenders are concerned.

Thus encouraged, the media have followed suit. Every-where in the past week, reporters referred to "working girls" - that is, when they were not describing the women as simply "girls" or "vice girls" or "hookers", as in the Mirror's "Hooker No 2 Found Dead", or "tarts", courtesy of the Telegraph's Simon Heffer.

Elsewhere, less festering, but still pointed, distinctions have repeatedly been drawn, between the state of these ruined, "destroyed", "pockmarked" losers, these specialists, in case you could forget, in "selling sex" and that of the more wholesome - and, you infer, more mournable - women they might have been. Curiously, for these women with no careers, the most significant thing about them is thought to be their careers. You would think they were Nicola Horlick, not prostitutes. But that they were prostitutes cannot be said often enough.

Only in the last couple of days was it revealed that the prostitutes left behind not just prostitute-shaped spaces, but bereaved children and friends, siblings and parents. One dead prostitute, it was mournfully pointed out, is survived by a sister "living a normal life", ie, not a prostitute.

The Ipswich killings have exposed attitudes to prostitutes that haven't progressed in centuries.

Have a good weekend.

Labels: guardian, Ipswich Murders, Life, News, Prostitutes, Prostitution laws, Streetworkers, Thoughts

I was leaving work(non escort related) the other day, and said goodbye to our receptionist as I headed out. I noticed she was talking to someone, who I did not recognise. I heard a voice call my name, as I walked through the car park. I turned round, and it was the woman who had been talking to the receptionist. As soon as she spoke I realised who she was. We had worked together last year, but she looked different.

She is probably in her mid to late forties, but had gone grey overnight. That is why I could not recognise her, and she had cut her hair. What was to follow, was very distressing. She has been diagnosed with Cancer , and has been given eighteen months to live by the oncologist. I was fighting back the tears, as she told me her story, and the rest of the day, I felt low.

My philosophy in life, is that death is inevitable, however we never know how we are going to go, or when. I have had a number of friends and relatives die, over the past few years, including my father. Some of them have died in accidents, had heart disease or cancer. I have friends and family who have cancer, too.I am feeling emotional as I write this, because there is a part of me that feels that I should be able to come to terms with it. I remember how I felt when I got the phone call, saying that my father had died, and how everything became a blur, thereafter.The flight back home. I will always remember the day I went to the morgue to see him.

However, when I saw my ex colleague a few days ago, it shook me up in a big way. A number of issues came up for me, around how uncertain life is, and it is something that I grapple with daily. The fear of losing those close to me, which has happened and continues to happen.

Then I watched the news yesterday and felt for the women who were missing, and dead.

Paul Lewis of the guardian newspaper writes:
Don't go out alone women told.

One sex worker, who gave her name as Suzy, who knew at least one of the murdered prostitutes, said neither she nor her colleagues would heed the warning to stay off the streets. She said they were unlikely to approach police. "With Christmas coming up we don't have the choice to stay off the streets," she said. "The police make it sound like it's our fault if we get attacked."

She added: "Two women I know recently reported attacks. One was hurt badly, but police did nothing. They told her there was no chance it would come to court. That attitude gets around and so other women don't come forward. You have to ask how many women have reported violence and nothing was done?"

A serial killer is on the loose, yet these women still feel that they need to go out and work. I cannot believe it.

Why are they not concerned about their safety?

Another article by Paul Lewis of the Guardian newspaper.

Police warn prostitutes to stay off the streets.

He believes the killer uses his local knowledge to conceal the body for long enough to destroy forensic evidence, but still ensure that his crimes will be discovered, which could be an important motivation for him.
"He is clearly organised and clever. He is unlikely to be obviously weird because the prostitutes are getting into the vehicle with him."

Prostitutes made easy targets, he said, because of the nature of their work. "If a guy is smooth and hands over the money and she is comfortable, she is likely to take him somewhere away from cameras, nearby. She will protect him by doing this. That's when he kills her."

The murderer is likely to be white, because killers tend to select targets within their own racial group, he said. He is also likely to have a history of violence, but not necessarily convictions.

"It is not at all an impulsive crime to pick someone up and kill them and drive a distance away with a body. He would have to feel comfortable and not panic. There is also a drive he has got - to kill in such a short space of time."

Karen Mcveigh of the Guardian newspaper writes:

Killer is probably white, in his late 20s or 30s with local links.

The murder of one sex worker rarely makes headlines. Two within days, and in the same part of the country, will begin to attract the attention of the press, but it is only when the magic words "serial killer" can be used that the story is likely to make the front page. Those conditions were fulfilled at the weekend when police announced the discovery of the body of a third woman in woodland in Suffolk. Yesterday two more women were reported missing.

Deep-seated prejudices are at work. The press can never quite decide whether murdered sex workers are tragic victims, like any woman targeted by a serial killer, or have chosen a lifestyle that means they are partly responsible for their deaths. It is a mindset which actively gets in the way of tracking down the killer, and one simple point needs to be shouted from the rooftops: most men who kill sex workers do it not because they hate prostitutes, but because they loathe women full stop.

Joan Smith of the Guardian newspaper writes:

Prostitutes deserve as much sympathy as any murder victim.

The parents of the two girls who are dead were not aware that they were prostitutes. This does not come as a surprise to me. What upsets me is having to take that on board,as well as their children being murdered. I am aware that the type of death an individual is faced with complicates the grieving process. It becomes more complicated when the bereaved cannot talk about the death, because of the stigma attached to it.

The majority of us are not open about what we do. The last thing I would want, if I were to die in these circumstances, is for my mother to be given that information.

I have clients who have heart disease, who are all under forty! Some who have had numerous strokes, and I worry about something happening to them, while they are with me. I have had a conversation with one of my client's and asked him what he would like me to do if anything were to happen. He told me that he wanted me to call an ambulance, and then leave. I see him, when his wife and kids are away.

This is one of my greatest fears, as well as being caught in the act, which I raised yesterday.

Last year I read an article about a client dying after he saw an escort. I hope I am never in this situation, and feel I would be reduced to a giberring wreck. The police and journalist were quite sensitive, and I believe the escort called the client's wife!

I have heard that a lot of men would love to go out on the last stroke.

A related article from BBC news.

Woman quizzed on ex AM's death

I would rather whoever found me, just came up with a story. What story I do not know. If I was conscious I am happy for a client to call a friend or family, if I am unable to do it myself.

I watched the news yesterday, and thought I need to think about what to do, if anything were to happen, and to think about how those close to me would be affected.

What would you like a client or escort to do, if you were to have an emergency during a booking?

How would you want the discretion issue to be handled?

Bear in mind that the person may have passed out, before you can ask them who you can call.

Do you ever envisage a time, when you will have these types of discussions with clients or escorts who you see regularly?

I am happy that I had the discussion with my client, and feel less anxious when I am with him. This does not take away the fact, that I could be reduced to a gibbering wreck if it were to happen.

Make the most of the life you have while you can.

Labels: bbc news, Death, discretion, guardian, Ipswich Murders, Prostitutes, security, Sexworkers