Eindhoven prostitutes back to illegally working the streets

The decision to shut down the designated street prostitution zone in Eindhoven in 2011 is coming up against criticism and incomprehension among prostitutes. "These ladies must be helped out of their dead-end situation," says the alderman. "Then I'll go back to illegal soliciting," says one prostitute.

It is 12.30 at night. The road between the railroad tracks and industrial park is deserted. A red Renault stops. A skinny woman in a black jacket and miniskirt steps out from the dark. She walks up to the car, swinging her hips, says something through the open window and gets in the car. The driver pulls over and parks ten metres further along behind a perforated aluminium partition. A few minutes later another woman gets into a grey station wagon. The car drives on towards the second designated area, since the red taillights of the Renault indicate that the first area is taken.

Prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000 and six years ago Eindhoven opened a designated street prostitution area. The aim was to put an end to the nuisance caused by street prostitution in the working class area of Woensel West. Used condoms were being thrown into front gardens, cars were cruising around the area at night, and neighbourhood girls were being asked how much they charged. Thirty prostitutes with addiction problems were given a pass that allowed them to work in the special designated zone. The aim was also to provide addicted street prostitutes with better healthcare.

A sitting room facility was provided were prostitutes could shower, wash their clothes and get ready for work. Condoms, clean needles and coffee were provided. People from the Salvation Army spoke with the women, a doctor examined the women, and police kept an eye on the situation. The nuisance was reduced and the women's health improved, as Veronique Robeerts knows from her own experience.

Robeerts has been an addict since the age of fourteen. She worked as a street prostitute for ten years. She is now 28 and the traces of the rough life she has led are clearly visible. She has a glass eye and a scar on her stomach from an umbilical hernia surgery. Her sunken lower lip betrays her missing lower teeth. Her bony body all but disappears in her baggy light grey training suit.

Drug dealers and human trafficking

Before 2003 she hustled in the residential area, where she regularly had to hide from police. “There was good money in that, since it was 24 hours a day.” From the opening of the Eindhoven street prostitution zone, she was there seven days a week from 8 pm to 2 am. On busy evenings she would service ten clients, on quiet evenings sometimes none. She would turn tricks, go to the dealer and then use. She slept in squats or in a tent. She stopped selling herself seven months ago. She is now living in a shelter run by the Salvation Army.

Although the street prostitution zone has succeeded at virtually all its aims, according to an evaluation, the municipality wants to shut it down in 2011. In the next three years, aided by assistance workers, all the addicted prostitutes must become independent of the drug dealers and pimps. Alderman Mariët Mittendorff: “We do not want to facilitate these women in remaining in their dead-end situation. We would rather offer them a dignified existence.”

Opinions on street prostitution zones vary throughout the country. Amsterdam shut its zone down in 2003. Rotterdam and The Hague followed suit in 2006. The argument for closing the zones was that they attracted drug dealers and human trafficking. The street prostitution zones are still open in Utrecht, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Heerlen and Groningen.

Disappear from sight

Robeerts shakes her head vehemently. Her blonde spiky hair moves up and down. “There is no point in shutting down the street prostitution zone. Women will just go back to soliciting illegally."

She does not believe that her former colleagues are waiting for help. “There may be a few that are motivated to get out of that life, but most of them are not.” You can only help a woman who wants to be helped, is also what assistance workers have learned from experience.

“Don’t tell me that there are no longer any street prostitutes in Amsterdam,” says Kersten van Dalen. For years she was the coordinator of the street prostitution zones in Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. “Street prostitutes now have to quickly jump into cars to avoid police. No one sees what happens to them. No one gives them condoms or tests them for venereal diseases.” Nor will shutting down the street prostitution zones stop human trafficking. Van Dalen: “The victims will just disappear from sight. No one will notice a girl is missing if she disappears. That makes it tougher to intervene.”

The view city councils take of legal street prostitution zones is changing, says researcher Sander Flight. “When municipalities opened designated street prostitution areas in the nineteen eighties and nineties [when prostitution was illegal, but tolerated], the predominant idea was that street prostitutes had to have a safe place to work. Over the past years, city councils have largely espoused the moral conviction that these designated street prostitution zones are hotbeds of criminal activity. Places where women work in degrading circumstances and which they should not keep up and running. And they decide to spend the money on other things."