“Disabled people will be the first to be affected by the law” October 30, 2008

Home Office plans to tackle demand for prostitutes by criminalizing clients are likely to affect disabled people who pay for sex, UK Sex workers have said.

“The way they want to change the law is to make it illegal to pay for sex. Disabled people will be the first to be affected by the law”, says Tuppy Owens, founder of the TLC Trust – a voluntary body that provides opportunities, advice and support to disabled men and women to find appropriate sexual and therapeutic services.

“Most clients will continue to see sex workers, but if you are blind, you cannot see if you are being watched, and if you employ someone to push your wheelchair, it is probably against the contract to be engaged in illegal acts! Disabled people have little privacy or chance to be naughty.”

In a letter to the Home Office, Alan Taylor, a 35 year old disabled man, has said: “the only sexual pleasure I can have is by paying sex workers for sexual experience (when I can afford it that is), as that is my only option”.

Douglas Fox, a sex worker and campaigner has said: “Many of my clients are disabled. Their carers or their parents make the appointment for them. Some of them are paralysed; others have suffered strokes or are deaf and dumb”.

Alan Campbell, MP is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Home Office is currently leading the government’s initiatives and has responded: “If the client is exchanging sexual favours with someone that is being controlled for gain he will be persecuted – no matter what his condition might be”.

The British Council of Disabled People – a campaigning organisation that strives to achieve full independence and human rights for the disabled- currently has no position on organisations like the TLC Trust. The spokesperson Julie Newman has said: “We are against the perpetuation of the stereotype of Disabled People as sexually infantilised or the passive recipients of actions being done to them”.

The TLC Trust was funded in 2000 and is run by volunteer sex workers, disabled people, academics, health professionals.

Better known as surrogate partners, their practice is not unheard of. In the past both the Australian and the Danish government has come under attack for paying prostitutes to have sex with disabled clients under the ‘Sex, irrespective of disability” campaign.

Belgian care homes also provide prostitutes for disabled residents in order to grant them “the right to their sexuality”.

The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007 envisions the criminalization of the buying of sex. On the 26th February 2008 disabled members of Outsiders, academics and sex workers decided to demonstrate against this. Around fifty people lined the south side of Westminster bridge, many in wheelchairs. That afternoon, the clauses that would have banned people using sex workers were dropped from the Bill.

“The battle was over but sadly the war was not won” says Tuppy Owens, “as the Home Office is planning to find other ways to pursue this strategy”.