Why safe housing is the best gift for sexually exploited women this Christmas

Charity co-director, Emma Goulds writes about the importance of a safe home for the women she works with this Christmas.

The run up to Christmas can come with a dizzying amount of choice - decisions on who to buy presents for, how to manage family politics, whether to brave the office Christmas party (!) However, for many women across the UK this Christmas, the “choice” is between selling sex or homelessness.

The word ‘choice’ implies there are two or more reasonable options available to choose between and that you have the means and freedom to choose. Within a national housing crisis, we are seeing an increase in women selling sex for the first time, being unable to exit or returning to it just to cover their rent and utility bills, their food bills even. This situation is being further exploited by landlords offering sex for rent.

In 2007, I began volunteering in the chaplaincy at Holloway Prison and met many women with stories of sexual exploitation. Some were self-harming in a bid to avoid being released to a worse life outside, because life outside meant abuse and coercion to sell sex – a life they could see no way out of. A key barrier to moving forwards was that they had no safe place to live and no real spaces to process the trauma they had experienced.