Adelaide escort Lucy reveals the risk of being caught in a police prostitution sting is her constant fear

Meeting complete strangers for sex pales into insignificance compared with this threat that keeps Adelaide escort Lucy living in “constant fear”.

Adelaide sex worker Lucy is living with a “constant fear” – and it has nothing to do with being paid to be intimate with strangers.

Like all sex workers in South Australia, she endures the dread of being trapped in a police sting for working a job that isn’t illegal anywhere else in Australia.

SA is the only state to still completely outlaw Lucy’s line of work.

In Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, sex work is legal under certain conditions and it is now decriminalised in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Victoria and NSW.

But despite that national reality, Lucy said SA Police failed to turn a blind eye to escort work in SA and staged regular “stings” – posing as potential clients to try and catch offenders who would be conducting legal business in other Australian states.

“It’s a constant fear,” said 32-year-old Lucy, who started working as an escort 10 years ago, when she was still a visual arts student at university.

“When you first tell people you’re a sex worker, people always ask ‘isn’t it scary?’ or ‘haven’t you had some bad experiences’, but honestly the scariest thing has always been the police.

“It’s been over 10 years now that I’ve been a sex worker and the biggest fear and the biggest problem that I’ve ever faced, really, has been the laws and police and the fear of police because we get entrapped, police pretend to be clients and try to set us up.”

Adelaide sex worker Lucy says she’s most terrified of being stung by police. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Lucy said she had managed to avoid being caught but she had been contacted by police posing as potential clients.

“I’ve been able to figure out that’s what’s going on and not have myself be in a position where I’m stuck there,” she said.

“I have had a lot of friends who have had run-ins with the police. It’s scary, especially when I actually am not doing anything that is worth the resources that are being used to police sex workers.

“It could be used for so many better things but they’re spending all this time and money trying to stop consensual adult sex, it’s so strange.”

Lucy said SA’s outdated laws needed to be overhauled.

Sex work is illegal in South Australia.

“We’re the state with the harshest laws … it’s one of the major things that we’re really behind on, it’s a real shame,” she said.

Kat Morrison, general manager of SA sex work advocacy group SIN, said the current laws meant police served diametrically opposed roles of protector and prosecutor for the state’s sex workers.

Ms Morrison said that situation was “unworkable” – and the laws needed to be brought into line with other states.

“Criminalisation creates barriers for sex workers to access justice, and to report crimes committed in both personal and professional spaces,” she said.

“It’s time for South Australia to align itself with other Australian jurisdictions and decriminalise sex work.

“Every police report made by a sex worker is measured against the risk of being arrested and charged. Whether the risk is real or imagined does nothing to assuage those fears. No worker should ever have to decide between criminalisation and justice.

“Decriminalisation has been evidenced to provide the best health and wellbeing outcomes for sex workers. Decriminalisation provides sex workers with access to industrial rights and safeguards, while simultaneously recognising sex work as work.”

In 2019, former Liberal attorney-general Vickie Chapman and Greens MLC Tammy Franks launched a joint bid to decriminalise sex work, calling the state’s laws the “most archaic in the country”.

But the political rivals’ bill, which had passed the Legislative Council, lost a conscience vote 24 to 19 in the lower house.

A separate attempt earlier this year to criminalise men who pay for sex was rejected by a single vote. That bill was opposed by Ms Franks and SIN.

Last year, the federal Labor Party amended its national platform to endorse moves by state and territory governments to decriminalise sex work.

An SA government spokesperson said any moves to change the state’s sex laws were generally the “subject of conscience votes for Labor members of parliament”.

“SAPOL will continue to uphold the law and any action taken is a matter for determination by the courts,” the spokesperson said.

An SA Police spokesperson declined to comment.