Instead of advertising in telephone boxes, pimps have harnessed the internet (Image: PA)
PIMPS have gone online and made it as simple to “order a woman to exploit” as it is to order a takeaway meal, a former rugby international who now champions women’s rights in Westminster has warned.
Tonia Antoniazzi, who played international rugby for Wales, is fighting for a change in the law to stamp out “predatory pimping websites”.
The Labour MP has won support from across for the political divide. She wants to make it a crime to “enable or profit from the prostitution of another person, whether online or offline”.
She warned that laws “against adult sexual exploitation are outdated and ineffective”. Pimps and human traffickers, she added, have “moved online where they are free to advertise their victims, enabling sex buyers to order a woman to exploit as easily as ordering a takeaway”.
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Former Conservative MP Miriam Cates also pushed for change, saying: “We must update sexual exploitation laws to provide vital protections to vulnerable women and crack down on the enormous amount of sexual predation that exists online.”
Ms Antoniazzi wants paying for sex to be criminalised alongside measures “decriminalising victims of sexual exploitation”.
She said: “We know that sexual exploitation is fuelled by demand. Men who pay to sexually exploit women are making a choice, and that choice is influenced by a range of factors, a key one being the risk of criminal sanction.”
The Not for Sale campaign claims that “pimps and punters enjoy near impunity” because “convictions for exploiting people through prostitution have plummeted since 2010”. It claims England and Wales are seen as “low-risk, high-value destinations for sex traffickers” because of a lack of “Government action”.
Home Office minister Jess Phillips acknowledged that “adult service websites are now the most significant enabler of trafficking for sexual exploitation”.
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She said that the Online Safety Act means companies will need to “put in place systems and processes to identify, assess and address these offences”.
“We must ensure law enforcement use every tool to pursue perpetrators and that victims are supported to recover from this horrendous abuse,” she added.
A further priority is ensuring that people who want to leave prostitution are “given every opportunity to find routes out”.
Last year a cross-party investigation by the Home Affairs select committee warned of the “sheer scale of trafficking for sexual exploitation” that is facilitated by websites advertising prostitution. It condemned the “flagrant facilitation of trafficking” enabled by allowing individuals to “advertise multiple women for prostitution”.