OUR WORK
We promote the human rights and poverty relief of people with multiple and complex needs who have been affected by commercial sexual exploitation.
We support and help to develop the most effective service provision for this group so that they have more hope, support, and opportunity.
We do this by:
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Activities that help to relieve need, particularly through service provision
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Activities that promote the elimination of harm and human rights abuses, particular through exiting services
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Developing a network of services and other stakeholders and facilitating collaboration
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Research and development of solutions
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Providing information and advice to services and other interested parties, such as policy makers and funders
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Raising awareness and providing training
Stand Against Sexual Exploitation (SASE) is a charity that aims to create more choice for people affected by involvement in the commercial sex industry and to eliminate harm and exploitation. We facilitate a network of practitioners, individuals, policy makers, survivors, and others who share this aim.
We primarily support service providers to be effective in helping people, most commonly women, to exit from prostitution. We promote practice, policy and law that helps to achieve this.
The network aims to raise public awareness of these issues and to act as a resource and information hub disseminating research, policy and practice.
The network also aims to offer a safe and supportive space for survivors, practitioners and others to connect with one another and progress these issues.
OUR MISSION
BACKGROUND
A growing number of academics, students, services, agencies and policy makers have begun to express concern about the normalisation of prostitution and its impacts on gender equality and violence against women. Increasingly, attention is being paid to the idea that prostitution isn’t a harmless practice. France, Sweden, Iceland and Norway for example have legislated to criminalise the purchase of sex rather than its sale. The EU has recently voted to adopt the same strategy and while this is non-binding, it recognises a sea change in attitudes about prostitution and gender equality in particular.
In the UK the findings of the All Party Parliamentary Group’s Inquiry into Prostitution and The Global Sex Trade have recently been published and a number of politicians have begun to express the view that perhaps a new form of regulation that targets the demand for prostitution, focusses on supporting women to exit and decriminalises those who sell sex is a better alternative than current approaches. The Mayor for London is also in the process of launching a consultation about the issue and services that support women to exit are growing in number.