Pathways into Sexual Exploitation and Sex Work ― The Experience of Victimhood and Agency

This book explores the accounts of 24 sex workers to identify risk and protective factors influencing routes into, through and out of sexual exploitation and sex work. It considers the meanings ascribed to key experiences in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, parenting and relationships, and how these influence the women's ability to manage a series of roles and identities. In doing so, it identifies the choices they feel empowered or forced to make.

Pathways into Sexual Exploitation and Sex Work suggests that those who are likely to be most vulnerable and those most likely to manage life experiences is determined by the accumulation of particular risk factors. These can be especially identified in early childhood, the personal, familial and wider ecological resources available to individuals from childhood, and the meaning attached by individuals to early experiences of adversity. Importantly, it identifies the need to take a holistic, strengths-based approach to policy and practice with those involved - whatever their age.

Jane Dodsworth is Director of the BA in Social Work in the School of Social Work at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her current research interests are in child sexual exploitation, risk and protective factors and issues of victimhood and agency for those involved in sexual exploitation and sex work and in sex workers as mothers. She is a member of the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People and a member of an LSCB Child Sexual Exploitation Sub-Group.