Prostitution is not sex and it’s not work. Its reality is far from complex – in fact, it’s simple. Trust me, I’ve done it.
I left home three weeks past my 14th birthday, a few months after my father’s suicide, to escape the abuse of a schizophrenic mother who was in the throes of an ever-escalating mental health crisis. I was homeless by the summer of that year, and street-walking by the year after that. I got out of prostitution at 22, returned to education at 24, and the following year took a place in Dublin City University studying for a BA in Journalism.