IT is 25 years since Holland legalised its sex trade.
Overnight, pimps became “managers”, punters “clients” and prostitutes “self-employed sex workers”.
But now, more than two decades on, politicians, the police and most of the general public in the country admit the move has been a disaster.
There are calls to repeal the law and shut down the notorious window- brothels such as those in the centre of capital city Amsterdam, which draw millions of sex tourists every year.
Femke Halsema, mayoress of Amsterdam since 2018, initially supported the legalisation but has in recent years admitted it was a mistake, and now considers prostitution a barrier to women’s equality.
Dutch police have told me legal brothels act as smokescreens for increasing numbers of unlicensed, illegal premises all over the country.
Female prostitutes are more than eight times more likely to be victims of serious or fatal violence, and since 2000 at least 127 women have been murdered by pimps or punters.
The pimps are always watching
Lotte
Shockingly, these women need to entertain at least six men before they start earning any money to cover the extortionate rent they have to pay for the room where they work.
Most windows are owned by criminal networks, and many prostitutes have “boyfriends” who control them and take a cut of their earnings.
So much for the freedom of being self-employed.
Many of those controlling the window scene and facilitating the trafficking of women into Amsterdam are known as loverboys.
These are young men, usually of Moroccan or Turkish descent, whose ways of working are like the grooming gangs preying on women in the UK.
Cycle of abuse
Loverboys seek out insecure, under-age girls in schools, coffee shops or parks.
Posing as potential boyfriends, they draw them in with promises of love and attention, and shower them with gifts, before trapping them in prostitution.
Emotionally and financially dependent on their “boyfriends”, the girls then find themselves locked into a cycle of abuse.
One of the Romanian ladies left the window for ten minutes and when she came back she was beaten so badly, two of her teeth were still on the floor when we came to see her
Lotte
When a loverboy puts his victim to work in a window, he does so to keep an eye on her, day and night.
And since, under the Netherlands’ legalised regime, it is not an offence to profit from this form of prostitution, these loverboys seem invincible — and their young, female victims feel that they have little chance of ever proving the abuse.
The De Wallen area of Amsterdam is the Netherlands’ most famous window-brothel zone, where 230 red-lit bays display scantily clad young women like meat.
I have interviewed a number of them and all are from Latin America, Africa or Eastern Europe — few locals are desperate enough to work this hellish trade, estimated last year to have generated more than £600million in profit.
I chatted to outreach worker Lotte in a cafe near De Wallen.
Carrying a large rucksack filled with cans of cola and sandwiches, she told me about her work with women in the sex trade.
She says: “Many of the girls don’t eat unless we take them food, because they are not allowed out during their shifts in case they miss a customer.
“The pimps are always watching. Once, one of the Romanian ladies left the window for ten minutes and when she came back she was beaten so badly, two of her teeth were still on the floor when we came to see her later that night.”
Window worker Sophia came to Amsterdam with a man called Nick, from her home town, a fishing village 100 miles away.
She agreed to speak to me during a quiet time in her day, having first checked that there were no potential punters hovering.
“Nick brought me here to work in the strip clubs,” she says, combing her thick, blonde hair and adjusting her basque.
“He said I could make a fortune and he could be my manager.
“But the money was not great, and the next thing I am working shifts in the windows, seeing at least ten men every night. And in the day, I sit here, bored and cold.”
Legalisation was supposed to reduce the numbers of trafficked women, eliminate pimping and violence, and make the trade safe for all involved.
But the opposite happened.
Under the relaxed laws, the number of punters, prostitutes and brothels all increased significantly — as did the number of women trafficked into the Netherlands to meet a surge in demand.
It is reported that this figure now stands at between 5,000 and 8,000 women each year — and to ward off any suspicion that a woman might be being held against her will, her pimp will move her from one brothel to another, across different areas of the city or elsewhere in Holland.
On average, the women have sex with 12 men a day. Many have poor language skills, visible injuries and use drugs or alcohol while on the premises.
During my many visits to Amsterdam to report on this issue, I’ve seen endless tour guides leading naive visitors around the brothel areas, while waxing lyrical about the wonders of legalisation.
Under-age girls
The guides describe the women as happy, tell the tourists how much money they make, and paint a picture that is as far from the truth as you could get.
Indeed, just walking around the window-brothel area is so deeply distressing to locals — and less naive visitors — that they tend to scurry through with their heads down.
During my recent visit, I saw a boy who looked barely in his teens being taken into a brothel by an older man, presumably his father.
The boy looked terrified, humiliated and like he wanted to run away.
Yet in 2005, tour operator Thomas Cook launched night tours of the red- light areas — with free tickets for children under-three.
The local council even offered tours of De Wallen to gawk at the women behind the windows — a practice locals nickname aapjey kijken, which translates as monkey-watching.
But in 2020, revolted residents got these tours banned.
Thomas Cook went out of business in 2019 before being revived online but no longer runs the tours.
Dutch law prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from being involved in prostitution.
But because it is no longer a police matter, under-age girls can be found throughout the industry.
Local authorities are supposed to inspect the brothels but rarely do — and barely any traffickers ever face arrest or are convicted.
In 2023, a report showed the vice conviction rate had dropped significantly over the past five years.
Former Justice minister Winnie Sorgdrager now admits that only a minority of women in the sex trade have benefited from the legalisation.
Amsterdam’s red-light district is reported to draw as many visitors as do its museums and canals — and the punters include Brit stag parties.
But legalisation of prostitution has consistently failed to protect women — and what has happened in the Netherlands shows why the UK should reject calls to try this here.
Although there is no shortage of evidence of how badly countries such as the Netherlands have fared by removing legal sanctions on the sex trade, there can be no room for complacency in the UK.
Campaigners such as the English Collective of Prostitutes are calling for blanket decriminalisation here.
In 2018, the University of Brighton, in its freshers’ week, invited the Sex Workers’ Outreach Project Sussex (SWOP) to hold a stall offering condoms, leaflets and advice on how to do “sex work” safely.
Accused of promoting prostitution, SWOP replied: “One in six students does sex work or thinks about turning to sex work.”
But telling students prostitution is a safe and easy way to make money is dangerous as well as wrong.
Just look at what happened in the “Managed Zone” in impoverished Leeds neighbourhood Holbeck, where punters were granted amnesty to buy sex from the most vulnerable women.
Severe warning
The zone was established in June 2014 to appease residents and workers tired of seeing kerb crawlers and used condoms on the streets.
It was made permanent in January 2016 — weeks after a Polish woman named Daria Pionko was beaten to death there by a punter.
Complaints from residents and businesses included stories of children being propositioned in the street and locals being harassed by sex buyers.
It was a horrendous decision to effectively make part of Leeds a legalised prostitution zone.
Normalising the buying and selling of women’s bodies is as immoral as it is dangerous
Jakob, a former police officer
Women were seen staggering around at all times of the day and night, badly affected by drugs and alcohol — with men prowling around and propositioning any woman they felt was fair game, whether in prostitution or not.
In 2021, feminists, residents and some of the women previously prostituted in the zone successfully campaigned for its closure.
But now, in Amsterdam, something much worse than even the window brothels is coming.
Due to public disquiet and protests about their beautiful city centre becoming a pit of crime and exploitation, there are plans to close down the red-light district — and replace it with a mega-brothel, to be known as an erotic centre.
This is due to be completed in 2031.
It is high time the Dutch government officially recognised that legalisation of the sex trade has been a disaster — then repealed the law and introduced what is known as the Nordic model to deal with the sex trade.
This would criminalise both pimps and punters while providing safety, sanctuary and exiting programmes for the women, allowing them to escape this vile work.
Over the years I have spent campaigning to expose the truth about the sex trade, I have encountered endless claims in the UK — from politicians, police and prosecutors — that some form of legalisation would solve all the problems.
What has happened in the Netherlands over the past 25 years should serve as a severe warning against taking that approach.
Jakob, a former police officer who lives in Amsterdam, says: “Normalising the buying and selling of women’s bodies is as immoral as it is dangerous. I saw more violence, more organised crime and far more trafficking since legalisation than before it.
“No wonder we are seen as the brothel of Europe.”