Dispossessed Fund: I was suicidal when I came here, says sex worker who leapt from abortion clinic window to flee trafficker

As another £1 million is handed out in the latest round of Dispossessed Fund grants, Campaigns Editor David Cohen visits an inspirational project which is using therapy to transform the lives of street-based prostitutes and trafficked women
Helping hand: Street Talk founder Pippa Hockton talks to the young woman trafficked from Albania (Picture: Lucy Young)

Psychotherapist Pippa Hockton became aware of the predicament of London’s street prostitutes when a man, referred to her for counselling at the Royal Free in Hampstead, confessed to his favourite vice. “He told me that he liked to go out and knife street prostitutes,” she recalled. “He said that he had never killed anybody but that he got a big kick out of hurting and scaring them almost to death.”

Ms Hockton, 54, the grand-daughter of an Oxford don, never knew for certain whether the sick client was telling her the truth or concocting a lurid fantasy, but that was the trigger moment that put her life on a new track.

She decided to investigate whether there was any specialist mental health provision for street-working prostitutes and discovered that the prevailing wisdom was that their lifestyle was too chaotic to work with.

So she volunteered at Maze Marigold, a drop-in centre in Dalston offering hot food and clean clothing for street-based sex workers — and found that the women had the same capacity to engage therapeutically as anybody else.

“I worked with about 35 prostitutes in a leaking attic with buckets to catch the rain and birds flying around the rafters and I came to see them as the most desperately vulnerable women in London,” she said. “Every one of them had been victims of child sex abuse, drug addiction and in many cases undiagnosed mental illness.”

When Maze Marigold was suddenly shut down, Ms Hockton, a single mother of two, decided she could not abandon these women who had begun to trust her, so she quit her well- paid job on the NHS and set up Street Talk.

Today she employs a team of eight therapists who work with street sex workers and trafficked women at hostels in secret locations in Lambeth and Camden. Of the 300 women they’ve helped since she started her charity eight years ago, one-third have stopped sex-working for good, she said. To build on their remarkable work, Street Talk has been awarded a £20,000 grant by the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund.

The money will be used to pay for a series of art therapy and photographic workshops for street-based sex workers leading to a public exhibition of the women’s work at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton.

It is one of 67 grants amounting to £1 million announced today by the Dispossessed Fund in partnership with Comic Relief, and brings to £7.6 million the total given out by the fund since its launch in 2010.

So far £3 million of the £12.2 million raised by the fund has come from Comic Relief and their money alone has funded more than 200 small charities tackling poverty and exclusion across the capital.

There will be few charities in London working with a more damaged, complex client group than Street Talk.

Speaking from her headquarters in King’s Cross, Ms Hockton recounted the story of a sex worker who came to her wrapped in a duvet, shivering uncontrollably with suspected pneumonia. “She had no GP, so I sent her to hospital to get a diagnosis and medication. The next day she was found beaten unconscious in the street. She got the pills, but was attacked by another member of the street community who thought they’d get ‘high’ on her pneumonia drugs. That’s how desperate these people are.”

ALTHOUGH change for these damaged women is a slow, painful process, transformation is possible. Veronica, 26, a former sex worker trafficked from Albania, spoke about how she had jumped out of the window of an abortion clinic to escape her trafficker and that Street Talk had saved her after she had been referred to them by the Salvation Army.

“When I came to Street Talk a year ago, I was suicidal and I didn’t want to talk about my life with anybody,” she said. “My Street Talk counsellor, Francesca, was so friendly and patient and helped me open up, and my support worker, Charlotte, helped me get leave to remain in the UK which,” she beamed, “just came through so now I can legally stay!”

Is Street Talk’s work unique? “I believe we are the only group taking therapeutic care into sex-worker hostels,” said Ms Hockton. “This is a terribly stigmatised group that almost nobody is interested in helping. They are haunted by flashbacks of being abused as children and by the deep-rooted shame of what they’ve become, so they self-medicate with drugs which only makes them feel they deserve more abuse.”

Ms Hockton recalled a drug-addicted prostitute, Maria, who stridently resisted all help until she gave birth in an ambulance outside her hostel and her newborn was immediately taken into care. “She came to us and said, ‘I want to be alive for my son when he comes looking for me at 18 — can you help?’ A week later she had changed her mind. She said: ‘I want to clean up and fight to get him back now.’

“We got her into rehab, she got totally clean, she got a regular job, and you know what? She eventually got her son back. If today you met this successful African woman who has all the refined grace of a Michelle Obama, you would have no idea that four years ago she was a prostitute.”

The key to their success? Ms Hockton paused. “We treat them as human beings,” she said. “If we can make these women feel they deserve better, they will find the motivation to change.”

Organisations to benefit from grants

Street Talk

Founded by psychotherapist Pippa Hockton in 2006, they provide mental health services, including therapy, advocacy and support work to help transform the lives of trafficked women and street-based prostitutes.

Where: Lambeth and Camden

How grant will be used: To provide art and photography workshops at two hostels in Lambeth to 43 women trapped in street-based sex work, culminating in an exhibition of their work at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton.

Mighty Men of Valour

Grant: £19,990

What they do: Founded by Frederick Clarke in 2005, they provide mentoring, training and advocacy to men to address issues such as domestic violence, anger management and anti-social behaviour

Where: Croydon

How grant will be used: To deliver an outreach mentoring project to engage up to 400 unemployed young fathers in weekly workshops offering financial literacy, understanding of issues around domestic abuse and preparation for employment

Silverfit

Grant: £17,464

What they do: Started in 2007 by Edwina Brocklesby, a social worker who became the first British woman over 70 to complete an ironman challenge, Silverfit offers older people opportunities to volunteer, exercise and improve their health and combat isolation

Where: Lambeth, Lewisham, Enfield and Tower Hamlets

How grant will be used: To develop four additional “Silver Tuesday” venues to deliver physical activity, such as walking and cycling, to engage 360 older people

Astell Foundation

Grant: £20,000

What they do: Founded by Andrew Marshall, a Kensington property developer who became increasingly aware of people who were homeless in the area, they offer a Saturday evening drop-in where hot food, emergency aid, housing advice and clothes are provided

Where: Kensington and Chelsea

How grant will be used: To pay for staff costs, including a part-time chef, of running their holistic support service, supporting up to 200 homeless people a week

The full list of groups awarded grants is at: dispossessedfund.org.uk

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