I feel uneasy writing that piece of tabloidese, but I suppose it's slightly preferable to the Ipswich Ripper.
I'm just about old enough to remember the Yorkshire Ripper. He was arrested when I was thirteen.I can remember exactly what I was doing when that news came on the TV. My opinions were youthful and uninformed, hand-me-downs from the media. The Yorkshire Ripper targeted prostitutes and women he believed were. All five victims in Suffolk were sex workers.
I feel uneasy entering the debate about language. Is it right that the media are so firmly referring to them as prostitutes? Is it better the way that the police refer to adult women as 'girls', stripping them of dignity even in death?
As it happens, I think it's important that the message does stress that the women murdered were prostitutes. The words used are another issue. There are a lot of derogatory slang euphemisms and, at least, they are not being used. The police have to keep hammering the message out that sex workers are not safe in that area. It is clear that many women in Ipswich who are not sex workers also feel vulnerable. I know I would if it was round here. I have lived in or near 'red light' areas for fifteen years. That in itself does not make me feel vulnerable. In that time I have been cruised no more than twice, which is not nice, but I feel more threatened by potential robbers on a weekly basis.
When the Yorkshire Ripper was at large and later during the trial I had a very fixed view of prostitutes. Although I didn't articulate it I think I had an assumption that they were different, certainly not the sort of people that nice girls from a nice town in Cheshire would mix with. I wondered how anybody could live with the shame of being one, or being related to one. But knew that they could because they were 'different' from the sort of people I knew.
Times have moved on and I've grown up. It was a bit of a shock to learn that someone I knew had been at teacher training college with the wife of the Yorkshire Ripper and had socialised with him on numerous occasions. Three degrees of separation.
And I also know that very many women from all sorts of backgrounds are on the game. Thinking exclusively of 'street-level' prostitutes I have seen the changes in this area. Back in the old days in Streatham, it was women in their twenties or thirties, often commuting from Wolverhampton, who chose to sell sex in order to earn a living to support their children. It was business, and I admired that while simultaneously being grateful that, becaus eof qualifications etc, I would never end up in that situation.
Nowadays many of those who operate round here are from 'good', stable backgrounds, with 'respectable' parents. The main impetus is drugs. Very few are from stereotypical broken homes, childhood 'in care', history of abuse. A lot more started using drugs socially and spiralled into a pit of desperation. I can't condemn them: if they were men they would be robbing and burgling, and I think that a 'business transaction' between consenting adults is morally preferable to robbery and burglary. Because they are drug-dependent, because they have vicious 'boyfriends' (pimps and dealers) they are far more vulnerable than I am. I know that when I am coming home of a night to take sensible measures to minimise risk. I usually take a longer route home because I perceive it to be safer. I remove my earphones before I get off the bus and I conceal my jewellery. If I am in heels (ha!) I get a cab.
They do not have the luxury of that choice. They go where the punters take them - often up my drive, but that's another story. They go off the beaten track, away from the street-lights and the CCTV, and the passers by and the traffic.
And, when it boils down to it, each of those women murdered in Suffolk was a human being. Somebody's daughter, somebody's sister, maybe somebody's mother. There may be people who condemn what they do for a living (but say silent about the punters without whom there would be no prostitution). But literally screwing for a living is no worse than those who figuratively screw the public. If they were 'normal' women murdered on the way home from the office party we would be in national mourning by now. The media are being relatively sensitive but I still sense an underlying unspoken feeling of 'they were asking for it'.
What's the betting the murderer turns out to be a brainwashed extremist religious freak. I bet he's not a bogus asylum seeker. And I am absolutely certain he isn't a woman.
