Years ago, during the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry, I interviewed a young woman in the red light district in Manchester who was covered in cuts and scratches after a client attacked her with a wire coat hanger; last week, when I took part in a discussion on a Dublin radio programme with a woman who works with prostitutes in Ireland, she said she routinely hears from women who have been beaten, raped and even gang-raped by clients.

In 1998, when the global sex trade was on a smaller scale and possibly less institutionally violent than it is today, research carried out in five countries showed that 73 per cent of prostitutes reported physical assault and 62 per cent had been raped; among the rape victims, between a third and a half had been raped on more than five separate occasions. The situation of women who work indoors is hardly better, especially since the influx of trafficked women from countries such as Moldova, Romania and Ukraine. A study carried out recently by the London School of Tropical Hygiene discovered that 95 per cent of trafficked women had experienced physical or sexual violence. Sixty per cent reported experiencing some form of violence before they were trafficked, demonstrating a cycle of abuse.