‘Stop selling lies about prostitution’

Within 30 seconds of entering a strip club in Paceville, Melissa Farley was offered a private backroom for €100. The San Francisco-based psychologist and long-time researcher on prostitution said the encounter shocked her, even after visiting more than 20 strip clubs worldwide for her work.

“They’re usually kind of subtle about it. Not here,” she said, recalling how a pimp made her an offer almost immediately. Farley warned that the accessibility of sexual services in Malta reflects a wider issue of exploitation. “Women in Malta are exploited through prostitution at sex clubs,” she said.

She was speaking during a public lecture themed: ‘Behind the Business of Sexual Exploitation: Myths and Truths of Prostitution’ in which she argued that Malta should not decriminalise or legalise the purchase of sexual services. Instead, she urged the country to place the legal burden on clients and expand social services for vulnerable women.

Malta’s current legal framework does not criminalise prostitution itself, meaning selling sex is not illegal. However, related activities such as loitering for the purpose of prostitution and living off the earnings of prostitution are prohibited.

Farley cautioned against the belief that strip clubs operate on a “look, don’t touch” basis, noting that behind closed doors “a sex buyer can do pretty much whatever he wants. Lap dancing is prostitution.”

Behind closed doors “a sex buyer can do pretty much whatever he wants. Lap dancing is prostitution"- Melissa Farley, psychologist and prostitution researcher

Staff at Dar Hosea, a Maltese drop-in centre that supports women involved in prostitution, share Farley’s concerns. They warn that strip-club culture is becoming increasingly normalised and that the sex industry’s shift online – where women are marketed as “escorts” – has made it harder to reach those in need of help.

Both Farley and Maria Borg Pellicano, who leads the service at Dar Hosea, identify as abolitionists. “We want to end the entire institution of prostitution,” Farley said in a joint interview after the lecture.

Currently, women in Malta may go to prison and pay fines for loitering, a reality Borg Pellicano finds unjust. Under her proposed framework, women, men and transgender people selling their bodies would not go to prison, but traffickers, pimps and buyers would face penalties. “This would allow us to address the demand,” she said.

Some countries, including Sweden and France, have implemented policies that reflect the abolitionist model. Farley favours the French model since it provides free social services, including housing and healthcare, in addition to protecting prostitutes.

Often, women may be living in the backroom of a strip club.- Melissa Farley

In Malta, several factors deny prostitutes access to safe and secure housing, with substance use posing a major barrier. Sobriety is often a requirement to access temporary social housing. But many women rely on substances during prostitution. “They tell me ‘I can’t do it straight,’” Borg Pellicano said, recounting conversations with women at Dar Hosea. 

Many women have to sleep on the streets or live with their pimps, who subject them to serious emotional and physical violence. Borg Pellicano said women go to Dar Hosea bearing marks of heavy beatings. “They have no other option, so they will continue to live there,” Pellicano said. Farley added: “Often, women may be living in the backroom of a strip club.”

Pellicano sees safe and secure housing as the first step toward healing and thinks it is unreasonable to expect a person to get sober without a stable living situation. The YMCA in Malta has raised this same issue, calling for more access to low-threshold centres where anyone is allowed to go and sleep overnight.

In recent years, advocacy groups have lobbied for prostitution to be recognised as legitimate work. They favour the term ‘sex worker’ over ‘prostitute’. Farley rejects this language and believes the movement only stands to benefit pimps and traffickers.

“Prostitution is not a choice because the conditions that permit genuine consent are not present,” she said, noting the absence of physical safety, equal power with sex buyers and real alternatives.

Anna Borg, an expert in gender equality at the University of Malta’s Centre for Labour Studies agrees that prostitution should not be labelled as work. For her, saying ‘sex work’ is like “trying to sell a lie”. It is not normal to risk getting beaten up, choked or contracting STIs on the job, she pointed out.

Sex buyers often justify their actions by arguing they are helping a woman make a living or that it’s acceptable to “rent” another person’s body if she consents, Farley said.

Borg pointed out that there are lots of restrictions when it comes to selling kidneys or other organs. She advocates that similar restrictions be applied to the question of buying another person’s body for the purpose of sex. “Rather than asking ‘did she consent?’ we should be asking whether she’s been offered the real choice to exist without prostitution,” Farley said.

A common rationale for legalising prostitution is to regulate the business and shrink sex trafficking markets. This has not played out in practice, and empirical research has found the opposite to be true, Farley said. She cited a study by the London School of Economics, which found that countries where prostitution is legal experience higher rates of reported human trafficking.

Forming her opinion through academic research, Borg similarly assessed that the situation in countries that legalised prostitution did not improve. “Malta has become a destination for organised crime groups interested in prostitution,” Farley said, explaining that pimps in organised crime consider legal prostitution to be a welcome mat to them.

Farley sees an inherent connection between trafficking and prostitution. “You can never have trafficking without prostitution. Legally they’re not the same, but on the ground they’re almost impossible to separate from the victim’s perspective,” she said, citing her extensive body of research, including interviews with over 800 people in prostitution across five continents at the lecture.

Farley pointed to the broader structures of the worldwide sex economy. Banks and real-estate developers uphold this system as well. “Banking practices in Malta and everywhere else are interconnected,” Farley said, pointing out that banks are turning a blind eye rather than using their position to expose scams involving bank-to-bank transfers involved in sexual service payments.

Nonetheless, the expansion of health and housing services, increased education and non-judgemental support to women in prostitution offer productive pathways forward.