Where red lights shine

There are no saunas or massage parlours, so it is on the Granite City's dockside streets that the world's oldest profession is practiced.

Like the prostitutes, the ''punters'' are a varied bunch in search of a few minutes pleasure which could put their marriages, health and jobs in jeopardy.

The girls, many of them desperate drug addicts, face other risks. Although they provide sexual services in the lanes and yards around the poorly lit streets, they seldom offer sexual intercourse.

However, it is not uncommon for them to be raped by a client, but extremely uncommon for the assailant to face justice.

There are young girls and women old enough to be grandmothers, and there appear to be enough customers prepared to part with upwards of #20 to provide a nightly income for many women of as much as #200.

However, that does not provide a luxury lifestyle if #150 each day is going on a heroin habit for themselves and, often, a partner.

Others are simply earning money to feed and clothe their children. One mother of three said that was the purpose of her stints at the harbour ''and if my mother found out I was down here she would batter me''.

At least one Aberdeen student works at the harbour two nights a month to supplement her grant because, she claimed, no other job can give her the money she requires within the hours she can afford away from her studies.

Many fit the stereotype and dress in mini-skirts and boots. Some are forced to make some concessions to the chill wind from the North Sea, like woolly gloves which look incongruous alongside hot pants. Others dress more practically in long coats and trousers, which sometimes results in upsetting harassment for other women passers-by.

It is normally mid evening before they start work, but on a Thursday, late night shopping, they start earlier - apparently to accommodate clients whose wives are otherwise engaged.

They have a good relationship with police officers who adopt a sympathetic but firm approach.

Their job is to ensure local residents are not disrupted by the prostitutes or their clients, but they are also there to ensure the safety of the women, and lines of communication between them are vital.

''They accept us and don't see any malice, even when we charge them,'' said Superintendent Kevin Mathieson, who is in charge of policing the city's red light district.

''Even when the girls come up from down south and we don't know them they acknowledge it as an occupational hazard. They accept they have to be warned and then charged as part of the process, and we are able to speak to them quite freely.

''If we have a system in place where there are lines of communication, they are much more willing to tell us when they have unsavoury clients in the area or if pimps are operating - and they do tell us.

''It is obviously going to be a haven for 'weirdos', for lack of a better word, and prostitutes do get assaulted and raped.

''It happens on a fairly regular basis. Clearly, they know if they pursue a complaint and stand up in court and say a guy raped them they are going to get an extremely hard time.

''It often boils down to the credibility of the witness, and what credibility has a prostitute got?

''However, we need to know about these incidents and who is involved.''

He said open lines of communication were vital and they had recently appointed a female prostitute liaison officer to get to know the women and gain their confidence.

''If we were to have an incident - every major city has had prostitutes murdered and it may only be a matter of time before that happens here -we want to be in a position to know where to go in the initial stages of an inquiry.

''We want to try to manage the prostitution problem in different ways than we have in the past, which has been to rely primarily on enforcement.

''Yes, we will continue to enforce the legislation, but we are examining if there are areas where the prostitutes would be better operating.

''It might be better for us to try to shift them to an area where they are less visible and the punters cause less disruption to residents.'' He said they were also looking at ways of discouraging the kerb crawlers.

''In some areas they have followed different lines to try to dissuade people - by sending letters to the registered keepers of vehicles identified, which, you can imagine, might cause problems.''

He said that their concern was mainly with the street girls of Aberdeen, although they did monitor those who worked as individuals from private addresses.

If more than one girl was working from a house it then became a brothel, and action was taken. Action was also taken if they were causing a nuisance to neighbours.

Aberdeen's relative affluence has made it a draw to many girls from the south, and while those on the streets have mainly local accents many who advertise in newspapers are from England.

Events like Offshore Europe are said to provide a bonanza for high-class call girls who book into city hotels for the duration, but Mr Mathieson said they were unlikely to come to the attention of the police because of the level at which they worked.

''Our role has to be to try to promote public safety and identify problems as they arise, and not take a moral stance on things. We must take a pragmatic approach.''

He said the issue of licensed saunas had never arisen in Aberdeen, but if it did they would want to look at the experience in Edinburgh and make a comparison to see if there were any benefits.

GLASGOW

IT'S midweek in the criss-cross of streets and alleys that make up Glasgow's red-light district, and the girls are out early.

On the corner of Cadogan Street, Douglas Street, Waterloo Street, into Blythswood Square. In pairs, huddles and alone. Some thin, some shaking, most desperate, these are women driven to sell sex by debilitating and long-term drug habits.

Drugs control Glasgow prostitutes. More than 80% of the 1000 or so women are users. Heroin and temazepam are the drugs of choice, often taken together, the women say, to numb the pain. For every one who manages to break the cycle of addiction and get out of the game there are two or three new faces, new habits to be fed.

Many have children, many work to finance a partner's drug habit as well as their own. There are few, if any, pimps. Sometimes boyfriends and partners double as back-up or security. Mostly they are on their own.

In the past decade, the profile of the Glasgow prostitute has changed dramatically. In the 1980s, fewer than half were drug users and there was a significant number of women over the age of 40, many with alcohol problems.

Now, it is increasingly younger women. Last week, prostitutes reported finding a 14-year-old from outside the city in their midst, six months pregnant and selling full sex for #5.

There are some saunas and massage parlours and some flats where the girls work in small groups, but these require a clear head and a clean bill of health, so the vast majority work the streets.

It is a chaotic lifestyle, and a dangerous one. Seven women have died violently since 1991, as yet, there have been no successful convictions. Some women say there have been as many near misses - throats slashed, near strangulations, severe beatings. Violence is part of their daily life.

Last year, Strathclyde Police set up a street liaison unit to deal directly with the women and said it was working well at promoting better relationships. Rape alarms have been issued in the wake of the latest murder.

It's understood that the unit was created after a report was critical of the lack of such a facility in a city where so many prostitutes had been killed.

The women say that despite the compassion and understanding shown by some individual officers, they have an often fraught relationship with the force, which they believe is often more interested in lifting them or obtaining information on drug dealers than the women's own welfare.

Scottish Office statistics, meanwhile, show that it is the Glasgow girls who account for more than 80% of all those prosecuted for soliciting in Scotland.

Analysts say such figures cannot simply be explained by the street working habits and large number of prostitutes in the city, but suggest a heavy handed policing approach and, more notably, an unforgiving attitude in society in general. Being addicts, many of the women cannot afford to pay the fines levied against them and must eventually end up in Cornton Vale.

After the last prostitute killing, in March this year, Glasgow finally took steps to address the problem by establishing a working group to examine all aspects of the city's prostitution scene, with the safety of the women as the main theme.

Mr Paul Silk, principal officer of the social work department with responsibility for criminal justice, said the group would gather evidence, hear opinions, and produce a report to establish a policy decision.

He does not believe that prostitution can readily be dealt with by a uniform change in the law, and stressed the conflicting interests of the health and safety of the women and those of the residents and business operators affected by what goes on in the areas where prostitutes operate.

Glasgow City Councillor Louise Fyfe, a member of the working group, said the safety issue was the driving force behind the request for such a report, which is a Labour Group priority. The merits of legalisation and decriminalisation will be discussed, and Fyfe said it is important to listen to what the prostitutes have to say.

Meanwhile, the women themselves say they don't expect attitudes or their luck to change anytime soon. They try to protect themselves as best they can. They work roughly between 8pm and 4am and use a haphazard system of checks to try and stay safe - occasionally working in pairs, noting registration numbers, checking back seats of cars, pulling trousers to the ankles so he can't run after you, taking descriptions of violent clients. That's if they have their wits about them. If they don't they trust only in fate.

They have nothing but praise for the street outreach workers who provide them with support and advice and free condoms.

They say they would like to see more CCTV cameras, especially in lanes where most assaults take place, an all-night cafe run by the women themselves, and, more than anything, official recognition of the dangers they face and a willingness on the part of the public to recognise them as mothers and daughters and sisters and wives, and not the drug-addled misfits they feel they are perceived as.

''This is not how you see your life turning out,'' said one prostitute. ''This is not something that anyone would ever wish for themselves.''

One 19-year-old who has fallen behind paying her fines is terrified of prison but her main concern is her safety. She feels the police are supportive when she reports violence, carries an alarm issued by them, and sticks to the designated streets. This is not enough, however, in her eyes, and she believes that to work in licensed premises with a bouncer would offer greater safety.

She says: ''If prostitution was legalised, it would be worth paying the tax, because every night I go out on the town, I wonder if it will be my last.''

EDINBURGH

EDINBURGH'S ''sauna solution'' to prostitution is the envy of many. Punters appreciate its discretion. Prostitutes appreciate its relative security. And the police and health authorities appreciate its apparent success in containing violence and drug addiction.

But, even if Eve wore high heels and Adam a shabby raincoat, Edinburgh is no Garden of Eden for punters and courtesans.

Police will raid any of the city's 23 saunas, where 90% of the prostitutes work, if there are suggestions of drugs, or under-age girls.

Tom Wood, assistant chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police, has worked in the United States and Holland, and has seen nothing better than the capital's system.

''It is purely pragmatic,'' he says. ''It is not rocket science. It is not brilliant. It is just a way of dealing with a problem that has aye existed and always will.

''In past times they tried the death penalty and all sorts and it doesn't work. If it must exist it should be in hygienic and safe places.

''Coming down hard on it is like trying to suppress water. It just goes somewhere else. Pretending it doesn't exist means you have less control and don't know what horrible things are happening behind your back.''

Wood insists his force's approach is not the same as turning a blind eye. It involves liaison with prostitute support groups like Scot-Pep and an insistence on communication.

And he says the liberal approach is not new: Edinburgh was never that douce.

Dora Noyce's Danube Street house of ill repute was one of the city's most famous addresses. The police raided it every six months and she happily paid her fines. If serious criminals tried to move in, she told the police and the police chased them out. As Wood explains: ''She was very pragmatic too.''

However, there followed a period in the wilderness. Mrs Noyce died just as heroin arrived. The older, well known street prostitutes gave way to young girls feeding their habits or those of their partners. The scene became more violent, and the police realised they had lost the plot.

''We had lost our intelligence links and we wanted to develop them again. We decided that if we wanted to affect the outcome of the game we had to play the game. We had to establish a relationship.

''So we appointed a prostitutes' liaison officer and there was a right hoo-ha because it was seen as a tacit admission that we were accepting it.''

Wood does not support legalisation. ''That in my view is taking a step back. You just need to see the degradation in Amsterdam - women from all over the world sitting in shop windows. It is not a situation that I would want to be a part of.''

Councillor Marion Morton, vice-convener of Edinburgh City Council's licensing board, agrees. Her 12-member board considers sauna licence applications along with permits for tattoo artists, cab drivers and swimming pools.

A brisk and pleasant Quaker, she adopts a resolutely legalistic stance on saunas but, on the wider issues of prostitution, has openly liberal views.

She affects puzzlement at the council's liberal reputation on sauna prostitution, pointing out: ''Glasgow also licenses saunas. The licensing of them is a way of controlling them, not a way of leaving them free.

''But if the police tell us that there is an illegal activity going on in them then we will not license them.

Mrs Morton's biggest complaint about street prostitution is that the women pay the fines while the men are more reprehensible.

And she does not consider Leith's reputation an embarrassment. ''It is generally accepted that prostitution is a fact. It is also accepted that the law as it stands is no longer in step with the way the majority of people do things. I have never been quite sure myself what all the fuss is about. A number of the laws were passed in Victorian times and reflected Victorian hypocrisy.''

In the 1990s, Edinburgh citizens reflect a more straightforward attitude. ''Many feel they would sooner live above a sauna than a fish and chip shop because there is less noise and less smell.''

DUNDEE

Prostitution in Dundee is in a class of its own, and it is not a high class. As a low-wage area with high unemployment, there are no high-class call girls or sauna parlours. But equally the city is devoid of the drug-addicted women who walk the streets of Glasgow.

Traditionally, street walkers pounded their beats in the Exchange Street/Dock Street areas near the harbour, looking for seafarers and picking up kerb crawlers.

They are still there to a limited extent. But the booming aspect of the business is the girls who work from mobile phones or home telephones.

Advertising in soft porn newspapers, they have established a steady trade, much to the annoyance of fellow residents in the tenement blocks from which they invariably operate.

Around half a dozen girls operate from flats in the centre of Dundee at any one time. Charges range from #15 to #40 for a range of sex services. The trade is a steady one and can be very profitable with low overheads and no taxation.

Attempts to establish the sauna/massage parlour scene in Dundee have been unsuccessful. The last one to open, in the city's Perth Road, was closed down 15 years ago after a newspaper expose.

In the early part of the last century, brothels did flourish in Dundee but the trade never recovered from riots in which both of the main venues were burnt down by mobs of local women.

Nonetheless, of the two prosecutions in 1996 for offences relating to prostitution one was for brothel keeping. Last year there were no prosecutions.

The lid was lifted on the seedy nature of low-life prostitution in Dundee 10 years ago during the infamous Andrew Hunter murder trial. Hunter was convicted of murdering his wife, and had used local prostitutes, several of whom were called as witnesses.

Some clearly had drink problems, were living in poverty, and charged as little as #3 for sex.

Dundee's oft-repeated status as ''the largest village in Scotland'' has prevented prostitution from taking a significant hold. The community is too small, clients are vulnerable, and businessmen are more likely to travel to Edinburgh to avail themselves of prostitutes.

A support project set up in the city by the Church of Scotland to help vulnerable women and children from all walks of life has not dealt with any prostitutes for at least six months. The scheme was developed after the success of the Kirk's Centenary Project for prostitutes in Leith, which was launched by the Women's Guild in the late 1980s.

More recently, the Kirk has started a new study into prostitution across Scotland. The Reverend Steve Clipston, who is coordinating the project, said some may have been surprised at the guild's willingness to help in this area.

''Probably being women, they saw the vulnerability of the street women. It might be surprising for folk to think of all these twin-sets and pearls folk helping the street women. But Jesus said 'I came here not to help the well but to help the sick, those who are ill spiritually'.''

Mr Clipston added: ''My idea of the church is that it is there for the sinful. The church is there for everybody. While we may not like the sin it doesn't mean we turn out the sinner.''

In addition, Dundee has Scotland's highest illegitimacy and teenage pregnancy rates. Rightly or wrongly, writers on the history of the city have suggested that the female-domination of the working class, where women mill workers were often the family breadwinners, led to a forward attitude to sex, that may still prevail today accounting for the low level of professional prostitution.