A Prostitute Told Me What the Law Won’t

What a sex worker told me about survival, dignity, and a legal system designed to fail

14 min read

1 hour ago

Listen

A Note on Safety: I cannot name the country, city, or region where this interview took place. Doing so would put Afreen and her children at risk. Everything else you read here is true.

A Note on Context: This interview was not conducted in India. However, I have used Indian legal frameworks, Supreme Court cases, and data to provide context and analysis.

I first saw her near the entrance of a dimly lit alley in one of the country’s oldest red-light districts. She stood wrapped in a faded red scarf, watching the street with the kind of vigilance you only develop when your safety depends on reading people correctly.

When I approached and said hello, she didn't smile. She didn't perform friendliness or curiosity. Instead, she looked at me with eyes that had already sized me up three different ways and said, “Everyone thinks this is easy. It's not. Not even close.” Ten words. That's all it took to dismantle every assumption I'd walked in with.

There was exhaustion in her voice, yes, but also defiance. A refusal to be pitied or simplified. In that moment, standing on a street corner most people pretend doesn't exist, she wasn't a statistic about the sex work problem. She wasn't a moral debate or a policy footnote. She was Afreen, not her real name, but the one she chose for our conversation. And for the next hour and a half, she pulled back the curtain on a life that exists in the impossible space between legal and illegal, visible and invisible, human and disposable. This is what she told me.

The Legal Trap

Before we go further, you need to understand the legal absurdity Afreen navigates every single day. The legal framework governing sex work in her country mirrors the structure found in India under the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act of 1956. In this framework, sex work itself is not illegal. Read that again. A consenting adult can legally exchange sex for money.

But here's the catch. Almost everything surrounding that exchange is criminalized. Running a brothel can lead to imprisonment. Soliciting in public is illegal. Living off someone else's sex work earnings is a criminal offense. Working near public places, places of worship, educational institutions, or hospitals face legal penalties. The result is a Kafkaesque nightmare. You can do the thing, but you can't do anything that makes the thing safe.

You can't work with other women for protection because that's a brothel. You can't advertise your services because that's solicitation. You can't support your children with your earnings without risking them being taken away, because they're living off immoral earnings. It's a legal framework that claims to protect sex workers while actually ensuring they work alone, in shadows, with no recourse when things go wrong. Afreen doesn't use the word Kafkaesque. She says it simpler. "The law doesn't protect me. It hunts me."

I Came Here to Work in a Shop

"I never planned to do this." Afreen said it while staring past me, toward the flickering streetlights that were starting to claim the night. No drama in her voice. No shame. Just fact. "I grew up in a poor region. We were poor, the kind of poor where you don't waste time asking why me because everyone around you has the same story. I came to the city thinking I'd find work in a shop, maybe as a maid. I thought I'd send money home, help my younger brother finish school." She paused. Two men walked past us. She stopped talking entirely, tracked them with her eyes until they disappeared around a corner, then continued as if nothing had happened. I realized in that moment that this isn't paranoia. This is pattern recognition honed by survival.

"Jobs were scarce. The offers that came were different. And I needed to eat. My children needed to eat. It's really that simple." Here's what struck me about that answer. Most people paint stories like Afreen's with exactly two colors. Victim or villain. She's either someone who needs saving from this terrible life, or someone who made bad choices and got what she deserved. Afreen doesn't fit either narrative, and she refuses to pretend she does.

She didn't make worse choices than me. She had worse options. There's a difference, a massive uncomfortable difference that implicates all of us. The distance between her life and mine isn't moral. It's economic. It's the luck of birth, the lottery of geography, the accident of which family we landed in. That's not a comforting thought. Because it means any of us, with different luck, could be standing on this street corner making the same calculations she does every night.

The Myth Versus the Math

"People think we're rich," Afreen laughed, a short sharp sound with no joy in it. "They think it's glamorous. Easy money, fancy clothes, exciting life." She shook her head. "I make enough to eat. Maybe send a little money home if it's a good month. Most days? It's boring. Exhausting. Sometimes terrifying. But mostly just boring." Here's the reality that shatters the Pretty Woman fantasy.

Based on interviews conducted by journalists and advocacy organizations with sex workers in various countries, earnings are highly variable and unpredictable. Many women report modest monthly incomes that barely cover basic necessities, while others in better circumstances may earn somewhat more, though these figures fluctuate significantly based on numerous factors. Most have no financial safety net. No labor protections. No health insurance. No maternity leave. No recourse if a client refuses to pay.

The brothels that operate in red light districts across many countries, despite often being illegal, exist because enforcement is inconsistent and because women need shelter more than they fear prosecution. The numbered buildings. The tiny rooms stacked multiple stories high. The shared bathrooms. The constant risk of police raids.

Glamorous? No. Necessary? For thousands of women, yes. "On a good day," Afreen continued, "I see three, maybe four clients. On a bad day, none. On the worst days, someone gets violent and I have to choose between fighting back and making rent." She said it like she was describing her commute.

When the People Meant to Protect You Become the Threat

"I screen clients," Afreen said, pulling her jacket tighter even though the night was warm. "I look at their eyes. How they walk. How they talk. I carry pepper spray. I know which streets feel safer at night, which corners have enough light, where people will hear me if I scream." She paused, and for a moment I thought she might not continue. Then the words came, quieter now.

"Men get aggressive. They bite. They slap. Some think because they paid money, I'm not human anymore. I'm just a thing they bought. They don't see that I bruise. That I bleed. That it hurts." Her hand moved unconsciously to her upper arm, where I noticed faint marks disappearing under her sleeve.

"One time a man got really violent. Really violent. I managed to run. But if the police had caught me first, I would have been charged, not him. Solicitation. Disturbing the peace. Whatever they wanted to pin on me that day." Then she told me something that made my stomach turn.

She described experiencing sexual coercion from a law enforcement official who exploited his power over her. The details she shared align with documented patterns of abuse reported by human rights organizations investigating police conduct toward sex workers in multiple countries. "What choice did I have?" she said flatly. "He got what he wanted, and I got to go home. That's how it works."

Let that sink in for a moment.

The people entrusted with enforcing the law, the ones who claim to be protecting women like Afreen from exploitation, are sometimes the ones exploiting them most brutally. As an advocate, I note that such accounts, while deeply troubling, are consistent with patterns documented internationally. Organizations like Human Rights Watch have reported similar abuses in countries including India, where their 2013 report "Treat Us Like Human Beings" documented police violence and exploitation of sex workers. The legal vulnerability created when sex work operates in legal grey zones, where workers cannot report abuse without risking arrest themselves, creates conditions where such exploitation becomes possible.

This is where the legal framework stops being abstract and becomes flesh and blood. Because brothels are illegal, women can't work together safely. Because solicitation is banned, they can't screen clients in well-lit public spaces. Because the entire structure is criminalized, they have no legal standing to report violence. And because everyone knows they have no legal standing, everyone knows they can abuse them with impunity.

For context, India's Supreme Court has addressed these issues in landmark cases. In 2011, in Budhadev Karmaskar v. State of West Bengal, the Court recognized sex workers' rights to dignity and equal protection under the Constitution. In May 2022, the Court issued comprehensive guidelines directing that consenting adult sex workers should not be arrested or harassed by police, that children should not be separated from their mothers solely because of their profession, and that any rehabilitation must be voluntary, not coerced.

These guidelines represent progressive legal thinking on sex workers' rights. Yet even in jurisdictions with such protections on paper, the gap between legal rights and ground reality remains vast. When I mentioned the existence of such legal protections to Afreen, she looked at me blankly. The law, wherever it's written, often fails to reach the streets where women like her work.

Every choice Afreen makes is a negotiation between risk and necessity. Take this client or skip dinner? Work this corner where the light is better but police patrol more? Trust this new face or turn down the money? Report violence and risk being arrested yourself, or stay silent and hope it doesn't happen again?

These aren't the anxieties of someone living dangerously. These are the calculations of someone trying desperately to stay alive in a system designed to make that as difficult as possible. When she finished describing these experiences, she said something I can't stop thinking about. "My courage isn't dramatic. It's just exhausting." I didn't know what to say to that. I still don't.

The Price Her Children Pay

I almost didn't ask about her family. I'd assumed it was too personal, too painful, territory I had no right to enter. But when I finally worked up the courage to ask, her whole face changed. The wariness dropped for a second, replaced by something that looked like both love and anguish. "I have two children," she said. "Nine and eleven. Getting them into school was one of the hardest things I've ever done."

She explained that most schools wouldn't admit her children once they learned about her work. The applications would get lost. The admission lists would mysteriously fill up. The reasons given would be polite and bureaucratic, but the message was clear. Your children don't belong here. "An NGO finally helped me. They worked with a school that agreed to take them. I was so grateful I cried." But getting them into school was only the first battle.

"The other students found out. I don't know how, maybe their parents talk, maybe someone saw me. Now the other children call my kids terrible things. They say their mother is a prostitute, a slut. They say my children are dirty because of what I do."

Her voice cracked slightly, the first time I'd heard it do so. "My daughter came home crying last week. Some boys cornered her and said she'd grow up to be just like me, said she was already a slut just like her mother. She's eleven years old. Eleven." Afreen wiped her eyes quickly, as if angry at herself for showing emotion.

"I work this job so they can eat, so they can go to school, so they can have a better life than me. And they get punished for it every single day. Tell me how that's fair. Tell me what I'm supposed to do differently." I couldn't tell her. Because there is no good answer. The system offers her no legal way to work safely, no alternative employment that would pay enough to feed her family and then punishes her children for her survival.

"My son asked me last month if it's true what the other kids say. If I really do that work. I lied to him. I said no, I work in a shop, they're just being mean. But he's getting older. Soon he'll know the truth. And then what? Will he hate me too?"

Stop for a second. These aren't abstract policy debates. These are real children being traumatized, not because their mother is doing something wrong, but because society has decided that survival itself is shameful when it takes certain forms.

Research from multiple countries, including India where the Supreme Court has explicitly stated that children should not be separated from mothers solely because of their profession, shows that children of sex workers face severe discrimination. Yet legal protections say nothing about shielding those children from social ostracization, from bullying, from carrying the weight of their mother's stigmatized work into every classroom and playground. Afreen's children are being punished for a crime their mother didn't commit and a job she took to keep them alive.

The Parts People Forget

"I love cooking," Afreen said after a long silence, and I watched her deliberately shift the subject to something that brought her even a small measure of joy. "I video call my niece back home on Sundays. She's seven. She still thinks I work in a shop." She smiled, a tired smile this time.

"I dream of opening a small food stall. Maybe selling snacks and tea near a market. Nothing fancy. Just normal. I don't want pity. I just want a normal life. I want my children to go to school without being tortured. I want to walk down the street without being spit at. I want to be able to call the police if someone hurts me without being terrified they'll hurt me worse."

She cooks. She has children she would die for. She has a niece she adores. She dreams of running a business. She gets tired. She cries when her daughter cries. She plans for a future that seems impossibly far away but hopes for it anyway. None of those changes because of her job. But we forget it constantly. We reduce people to their labor, especially labor we're uncomfortable with. We see sex worker and stop seeing mother who stays up at night helping with homework, who saves every bit of money she can for school fees, who lies to protect her children's innocence.

The edges between us and them aren't sharp. They're not even real. They're just stories we tell ourselves, so we don't have to confront how fragile the scaffolding of our own lives actually is. Afreen isn't a cautionary tale. She's not a tragedy. She's a woman who wants exactly what everyone wants. Safety. Dignity. Enough money for tomorrow. The chance to love her children without them being destroyed for it. The fact that we've built societies where that's too much to ask, that's the real tragedy.

What She Actually Needs

"If the law let us work safely," Afreen stopped, choosing her words carefully. "If police couldn't abuse us. If our children could go to school without being tortured. If men couldn't beat us because they know we can't report it. If people saw us as humans and not problems to solve or monsters to fear, that would help. That's all. Just let us work without hunting us."

Activists and legal scholars across multiple countries have been saying this for decades. Decriminalize the things that make sex work safer. Let women work together. Let them advertise. Let them screen clients without fear of arrest. Treat consensual adult sex work as work. Provide labor protections. Ensure health access. Give legal recourse against violence.

Stop separating families. A mother's profession should not be grounds to take her children, and it should not be grounds to torture those children in schoolyards. Hold those in power accountable when they abuse it. Officials who exploit sex workers are committing crimes. Treat them as such. Implement progressive legal frameworks like those articulated by India's Supreme Court. Not just on paper, but on the street, in police stations, in courtrooms, in schools.

To provide scale, in India alone, government data from the National AIDS Control Organization reported over 650,000 female sex workers in 2016 to 2017, though advocacy organizations suggest the true number is considerably higher when accounting for informal and part time work. Globally, the numbers are in the millions. What's undisputed across jurisdictions is that the vast majority work in conditions of legal vulnerability, with limited access to healthcare, financial services, or police protection, and that their children often face severe discrimination in schools and communities.

The question isn't whether sex work should exist. It does. It has for millennia and will continue for millennia more. The question is this. Will we keep criminalizing survival and punishing children for their mothers' choices, or will we finally offer dignity to people who've been living without it?

Just See Me

As I prepared to leave that evening, Afreen asked me what I was going to write. I stumbled through an answer about telling her story, humanizing the issue, challenging perceptions, hopefully making people understand. The words felt inadequate even as I said them. She nodded slowly, then said something that's been echoing in my head for days.

"Just see me. That's it. Just see me. Not the work. Not the shame everyone puts on me. Not the headlines about trafficking or morality. Just see me. See my children. See that we're human." Not save me. Not rescue me. Not fix me. Just see me.

I walked away that night, past the buildings and women standing in doorways, and I kept thinking about those words. How rarely we do it. How much easier it is to look away, to simplify, to reduce complex humans into clean categories that don't make us uncomfortable. Afreen will be back on that corner tomorrow. And the day after. Not because she loves her job or because she's trapped by some Hollywood villain, but because rent is due and her children need school fees and food and life doesn't pause for society to evolve.

The legal framework will still be broken. Some in positions of authority will still abuse their power. The clients will still come, some respectful, many not, some violent. Her children will still go to school and be called the children of a slut. And she'll still be making impossible calculations between safety and survival, between protecting herself and protecting them.

The question she left me with wasn't how we save Afreen. It was this. Why does she need saving from a life we've made illegal for her to live safely? Why do her children need to suffer for her survival? Why is the violence she experiences treated as an expected occupational hazard rather than a crime? I still don't have a good answer. But at least now, I see her.

Author's Note

This piece represents research and personal commentary after studying legal frameworks affecting marginalized communities internationally. It is published in a personal capacity, not as professional legal advice.

Afreen's identity has been protected through the use of a pseudonym and complete omission of all identifying details, including the country, region, and city where this interview took place. The interview was conducted with her informed consent in January 2026. The conversation lasted approximately 90 minutes. She was compensated for her time.

The legal framework and data referenced throughout this piece are drawn from India, specifically the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act of 1956 and Indian Supreme Court cases including Budhadev Karmaskar v. State of West Bengal (2011) and the 2022 guidelines. These are used to provide analytical context and demonstrate how similar legal structures operate, as the jurisdiction where Afreen works has comparable legal frameworks governing sex work. The systemic issues she describes mirror patterns documented in India and other countries.

The accounts of police misconduct and violence from clients represent her lived experiences. These are not isolated to any single country. Reports from organizations like Human Rights Watch document systematic patterns of abuse toward sex workers by law enforcement across multiple jurisdictions, highlighting the barriers they face in accessing justice globally.