Matt Haworth was paying a visit to a sex worker charity in Manchester when a brightly coloured bulletin board in the corner caught his eye. It was covered with descriptions of bad punters – those who were abusive with sex workers, or didn’t pay up. “One that really stuck with me was a man who drove around in a Vauxhall, throwing hardboiled eggs at sex workers,” Haworth tells me over the phone, several years after the event. “It preyed on my mind for years. Why did he hardboil them?”
There are around 80,000 sex workers in the UK, and they’re statistically more likely to be attacked or raped at work than most other groups. Because of their unsure footing in a country where sex work isn’t criminalised, but many related activities like streetwalking or running a brothel are, sex workers are also unlikely to trust the police – and police can be reluctant to help, or keen to clamp down on the profession rather than protect its workers.
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