What I will never be able to forget is that, as I was leaving a tiny, sweet faced nun pressed a stiff white envelope on me and thanked me for coming. I assumed it was a mass card, and didn’t open it until I go stuck in traffic along the quays – and nearly ran into the car in front. Inside was a crisp £20 note in a blank sheet of paper. Make no mistake, I had no income at the time and needed thar money desperately but I felt truly “prostituted” for the first and last time in my life.
Ruhama and the Women’s Health Project (now the Women’s Health Service) always operated in tandem in those days with the part EUROPAP funded WHP as lead politically. Since then the health service has changed dramatically and project managers were given an ultimatum to choose between their HSE status and external funding or lobbying, after which Ruhama became the lead politically.
In 1994 I found these two groups already much too condescending for my temperament, and totally irrelevant to my needs. Since the foundation of Ruhama in 1989 and the WHP in 1992 the women were polite with both when they could not avoid them, but only a small group most of whom originally worked on Wilton Place and Herbert Place, ever really engaged with them.
Even then the majority of sex workers in Dublin seemed to regard them as utterly irrelevant to their lives and their needs, on a par with Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons at the door, something which has never really changed. If I had to give one reason core why that was, I think it was that, right from the beginning, sex work was not the core defining factor in most sex worker’s lives that Ruhama and the WHP needed it to be and they were addressing their mission to people that did not exist, and that we had no intention of becoming, something does not seem to have changed except to get much worse and resort to indirect coercion.
Their entire ongoing strategy has it’s roots in their 2005 “Next Step Initiative” a report based on research with 19 women who regularly engaged with Ruhama, and no others. I am of the opinion that research excluded the majority of sex workers in Ireland.
Even so, when I read this again today, in 2020 the staggering deterioration in the respect and relevance of Ruhama’s outlook and intentions over the past 25 years is profoundly shocking to me.
(RUHAMA leaflet)
See Appendix B page 41
- To work with and on behalf of women in
prostitution.
- To provide an outreach service to these
women.
- To aim at building trusting relationships
with them in the context of their particular life situation.
- To build up their self-esteem, by helping
them to become aware of their potential and their ability to make
choices.
- To engage in individual/family group work
with the women, as requested.
- To gradually encourage the active
involvement of the women in the running of the Project.
- To provide amenities to facilitate the
Project.
- To endeavour to respond to the real needs of the women in accord with the mission of the Project.
- To develop liaison and networking with
other agencies, with a view to disseminating information and
encouraging the use of suitable community services.
- To assist in the area of prevention and
rehabilitation, either directly or in liaison with other agencies.
- To raise awareness of the discrimination,
prejudices and injustices experienced by women in prostitution and try
to influence policy to change this.
- To engage in research in matters
relating to prostitution.
Sexual Offences Act 2017 Review 