Case study - Street sex worker

This page contains an interview with a street sex worker named as 'Donna'.

It is one of two case studies in this section.

Drugs lead to life on the streets

Donna is a slim, bright, articulate 27-year-old. She has two A Levels and a GNVQ and once had her own flat and a good job in a Job Centre in Nottingham. She could be any-one’s sister or daughter. Donna is also a recovering heroin addict who funded her £80 a day habit by shoplifting and working as a prostitute in the red light district of Wolverhampton. Her rapid spiral into drug addiction began when a friend offered her heroin to smoke.

"I was 21 and knew nothing about drugs apart from a bit of glue sniffing and smoking weed at 14 or 15," she explained. "So I started smoking drugs at the weekend, but only on a Friday and Saturday because I was back at work on Monday. It wasn’t long before I began doing drugs on a Sunday too and staying off work because I felt so awful. I had sickness and diarhorrea and I thought I had flu.

"Then I met a guy who knew about drugs and he said I was rattling for another fix and that if I had one I’d know if it was drugs or if I was just ill. So I bought some more and felt better – at first I smoked, then I started injecting. It took about three months to get addicted but you can get a habit and start rattling within four days."

Donna tried to come off drugs and appealed to her parents for help. She moved back home and her father helped her do up a flat – whilst she bought drugs with money intended for household items for her flat. "Mum and dad thought I was clean but I had to have a fix a day and I started shoplifting to pay for it."

She went on to have a two-year relationship with a man who was also an addict and who physically abused her. Donna worked to feed both their habits. When she received a prison sentence for shop-lifting offences, she managed to come off drugs, largely through fear of violence from fellow prisoners.

Yet within hours of release she was seeking her first fix.

"I started working the streets in Wolverhampton to get the money to buy drugs. I was always getting arrested. I was beaten up a lot by punters and I’ve been raped five times. I picked up herpes, syphilis and TV (Trichomonas Vaginalis). It was an existence, another way to earn. The dealer and the drugs were the pimps in my life."

Donna’s turning point came in June when she was arrested, yet again, and given a Drugs Detox Treatment Order (DDTO) as an alternative to imprisonment. She is currently doing well on a methadone programme and receiving treatment for a list of sexually transmitted infections.

"I’d had enough; got to the point where I couldn’t get out of bed without the gear. It wasn’t a life, it was a continuous cycle of rattling, raising a vein, getting a fix, working the streets to pay for the next fix.  
If I hadn’t got the DDTO I would be dead from a drugs overdose or someone would have killed me.”

WPc Sally Jones who, in her role with the vice unit in Wolverhampton, offers support to women to help them get out of prostitution, recalls the old Donna. "I first met her about two years ago when I locked her up. She was living on the streets, filthy, skeletal thin, no self-esteem, very lethargic and depressed – totally different from the young woman you see today. She has needed a great deal of support, encouragement and practical help to get where she is now. It hasn’t been easy, but she is determined – and it is so rewarding to see her progress."

Donna added: "Sally has always offered me help throughout the past two years. The help is there for anyone but some people don’t want to come off drugs. "Now I want to get a job doing clerical work in an office and I want to have a family. I feel I have a future."

Notes

Donna is not the girl’s real name.

This interview first appeared in One City News, the quarterly newspaper for Wolverhampton residents produced by members of Wolverhampton Partnership.

Call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 to anonymously report crime.