When Mia Döring was in her late teens and early twenties, she didn’t see herself as a victim. The men who paid to use her body weren’t doing anything illegal – and that, she says, was precisely the problem.

“If the law had been in place when I was being sexually exploited, it would have sent a message to me that something was wrong,” says Döring, now a psychotherapist, campaigner and writer.

“It would have woken me up to my victimhood. As it was, no crime was being committed, and these men were free – legally and therefore morally – to abuse me.”

Döring is one of a growing number of sex trade survivors urging countries around the world to implement the Nordic Model, a legal framework that criminalises the purchase of sex while decriminalising those who sell it. For its advocates, it is a compassionate approach that targets exploiters and supports the exploited. But opponents, including Scotland for Decrim (SfD) and the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), dismiss it as stigmatising and dangerously out of touch.

Scotland could soon follow Northern Ireland in adopting the Nordic Model. Earlier this year, Ash Regan MSP introduced the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill. The legislation would make the purchase of sex a criminal offence, punishable by up to six months in prison or a £10,000 fine. It would also repeal the offence of soliciting and guarantee a right to services such as housing, counselling and training.

“The key part of the Nordic Model is that you criminalise the purchase of sex and decriminalise the sale,” Regan explains. “But I want to go further – I want to expunge convictions that people selling sex may have accumulated under previous legislation.”

Regan draws a direct link between her proposals and the Casey Review, which investigated how gangs of Pakistani Muslim men were allowed to abuse vulnerable girls across the UK with near impunity.

“One of its recommendations was that we should stop criminalising victims,” she says. “Many of these cases involved girls of 13 or 14, groomed into prostitution using the ‘Loverboy method’ – a common technique… They should never have been criminalised for their own abuse.”

While prostitution itself is not illegal in the UK, more than 30 related activities – including brothel-keeping, kerb crawling and soliciting – are. The result is a confusing, contradictory patchwork of laws.

A legislative overhaul is long overdue. A 2014 report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Sex Trade found that just 7% of police forces and councils considered the current laws effective. It concluded that the status quo “normalises the purchase and stigmatises the sale” – punishing the vulnerable while letting the men who buy sex walk away unscathed.

To those not steeped in the debate, the “happy hooker” is a seductive myth – the empowered woman who chooses sex work on her own terms. And yes, the dominatrix with a judge’s balls under her boot exists, and makes a compelling spokeswoman. But she is the exception, not the rule.

Most do not choose the sex trade freely. Around half entered as children. Nearly 70% have a history of local authority care. The vast majority – almost 90% – are women. A disproportionate number are migrants with no access to public funds. Their stories are harder to hear – often spoken in broken English by women with histories of abuse and addiction.

What everyone who cares about this issue can agree on is that people who sell sex should not bear the brunt of criminality. But consensus fractures over what comes next. One side views prostitution as labour, albeit risky, that should be made safer through legalisation as in Germany or full decriminalisation as in New Zealand. 

Meanwhile, proponents of the Nordic Model, as introduced in countries including France, Ireland, and Israel, view prostitution as a system of commercial sexual exploitation, sustained by male entitlement and women’s desperation. They argue that no regulation can make the sale of human beings acceptable, and support should focus on helping people exit the trade.

Advocates of legalisation often point to Germany as the enlightened opposite of British prudery. In theory, prostitution is regulated: brothels are licensed, workers registered and health checks recommended. In reality, it’s a pimp’s paradise and a hub for traffickers.

Following the change in the law in 2002, “Germany became the ‘brothel of Europe’ almost overnight,” says Elly Arrow, a German feminist campaigner.

In 2017, the government introduced reforms aimed at curbing some of the industry’s most grotesque excesses, including flat-rate “all-you-can-fuck” deals, “gangbang” parties, and the sexual exploitation of heavily pregnant women. “But it’s offered no meaningful protection,” she says.

A recent German government report claims the legalised system is working. Elly Arrow calls it a whitewash.

“They surveyed over 2,000 people in prostitution – but overwhelmingly through brothel owners and prostitution websites which we know are used by organised criminals,” she says. “The most vulnerable – Roma women from Romania, often addicted, illiterate and undocumented – weren’t consulted.”

Only 17% of people registered to sell sex are German. Most are Romanian (36%) or Bulgarian (11%). Many more are off the books.

Arrow notes that the 600-page evaluation omits basic but vital facts, “including the more than 120 prostituted women murdered in Germany since 2000.” Instead, she says, it offers dubious claims that many women “engage in prostitution as a lucrative side income”, hindered only by a society too backward to treat the sex trade as just another job. More disturbing still is the language used in the government report, which refers to “underage prostitutes” implying child victims are willing participants. “Would these academics want that life for their daughters?” she asks.

The contrast with Sweden, which adopted the Nordic Model in 1999, is striking. Germany has roughly twice the estimated murder rate of women in the sex industry compared to the UK. Meanwhile in Sweden, not a single such murder has been recorded in over two decades. The pattern is clear: where prostitution is normalised, women die.

Yet Scotland for Decrim, the group leading opposition to Regan’s bill, argues that the current law already endangers people in the sex industry, and that the Nordic Model could make the situation even worse.

“Criminalising clients does not solve the reasons why people go into sex work: because of financial need, caring responsibilities, disability, or simply preferring this work to other kinds of work.”

“Sex workers are the experts on our own needs. We know that only full decriminalisation will protect our safety, health, and human rights, giving us the power to choose when and how we work.”

Tellingly, SfD’s second demand is “Better protection from poverty and other conditions which drive people into sex work.”

Whichever side of the debate one is on, it is clear: prostitution is seldom a free choice – it’s a decision made when every other option has been taken away.

Those pushing to dismantle the sex trade face resistance, not least from those with financial or ideological stakes in its continuation. Given that around one in ten men admit to paying for sex, it is inevitable some will be sitting on the benches in Westminster and Holyrood.

Ash Regan’s bill may pass, or it may fall. But the current system – chaotic, incoherent, and weighted against the vulnerable – is already failing.

What comes next will say much about Scotland. Will politicians continue to frame the commercial use of traumatised women as progress, or dare to imagine something better? The loudest voices aren’t always heard by legislators. But in bedrooms and backstreets, the consequences of what happens next will be lived – and sometimes not survived.

Jo Bartosch’s forthcoming book, Pornocracy, will be published by Polity