It was shortly over a year ago that "us" as internet escorts, courtesans, prostitutes, hookers and the other names you choose to call us, really saw the danger of our work. We pulled together as a community, for the first time that I had seen. We were shocked to the very core. This was when the police confirmed that several street walkers had gone missing. One by one the bodies turned up and terror began to set in for many people who lived and worked in the area, but more so for the punting community, this murderer had a taste for sex workers, street walkers to be precise.

When you strip back all the basic, our make up, fancy clothes, cars, web sites, our internet personas, we are not really that dissimilar to the girls that stand on street corners touting for business, instead of standing on the kerb in our mini skirts, we are standing in the forums shouting “pick me, pick me, look at my fancy website that I use to self promote my body for you to pay to sleep with”. In the crude light of day we are both selling sex.

Many fellow East Anglian escorts shared the theory, how safe are we, do we know this person, have we seen them, has this person been blacklisted from ourselves?

As time went by speculation grew, this person had been operating for many years, they had an accomplice; there was a murderer out there that had a penchant for street walkers. At one stage they had tried to link 30 murders together, all mainly from red light district areas dotted around the country.

Escorts I knew in London were scared, many of us operated a buddy system, another escort had full details of your booking and calls were made to each other, before, during and after appointments to ensure that everyone was kept safe, many girls only saw regular clients, some literally packed up, others took extended breaks and some acted like nothing was wrong.

As more information came out through the media alarm bells rang in a few escort friends head’s, mine included. One friend was a possible witness to one of the nights in question. A late night outcall in Ipswich, she saw a bit too much to what she thought was a coincidence.

When specific descriptions started coming out three of us all had the same name in our head. We were that sure, every single box was ticked and we could add a few more that would demonstrate more so how unhinged this person was. We asked him where his car had gone, it matched the one on the police profile and miraculously disappeared the day after it’s details were released. When we quizzed him about the car he knew nothing about it’s location, said it must have been stolen, but said thank god it had as a few people had told him it matched the description of the suspect’s car. In the same breath he spoke about how he used street walkers in Ipswich as well.

Collectively we made the call to the police. Our details were jotted down, the call was made early morning on my way back from a night in Ipswich, it was maybe 9-10am and still by the end of business no return call had been made, excuses were made why we needed to keep this individual close to hand but we were rapidly running out of time, we were chasing the police with short intervals from around 4pm. So certain were we, and certain that this person would disappear into thin air if the police did not act that day, a call was made to one media outlet, the one we knew would have the resources to try and contain this person to a small radius, within minutes a helicopter was above the satellite office we were sat in. It may have been a drastic step to take, but as the day progressed more people rang our phones asking about “X”, every caller all had the same feeling, even his ex-girlfriend! I know it sounds like something out of an action movie, it was so surreal. I felt I could cry tears of relief that maybe we had nailed the murderer and the suffering would be over. I felt proud that by the escorting community pulling together and sharing information, this was info from drivers as well as escorts, we were convinced we had located the Ipswich killer. He honestly ticked every box and so many more.

We were located within a small industrial unit, the only access was down this country road, a small village either end of the road. We even got cars positioned down this road in case he wanted to make an escape. Anyway, after many excruciating hours of playing the waiting game the police finally rang. They asked to speak to him on the phone. He left for the day, saying that the police just wanted to confirm his missing car report.

Later that night the police rang to inform us that they had asked him to go to his local police station, from there they located his car and that another station had had it all along and that he was aware of it all along, they were searching it, we wondered why he lied to us about its disappearance. The following day he was cagey with us and said very little about it all, after three days off his vehicles being impounded and searched he still had not told us the truth. He was called in a few more times for questioning after that but always released the same day. Shortly after the police made their arrests. Whether they caught the real killer, hopefully the court case will determine that. I sure hope they have the right person.

I felt guilty for thinking that this person was capable of those horrible crimes, but in honesty we all believed him to be capable of them, our guilt did not last long. Where is this man that we wrongly accused? On vacation at her majesty’s pleasure. A string of despicable offences. The first few he was let off on probation, but then his next offence he had a short detention, came out and re-offended all within the space of six months.

As much as our community was scared at the time of this horrific offences we had never in my history been closer. I had hoped that we would come away from all this having learnt something but very few did. With the year anniversary having passed, and sadly not a mention on the net or in the press, and the trial dates looming it has been heavily on my mind, I took solace at the time that good could come out of all of this, that the government will change their ways and take action to legalise this industry and make it safer, but as yet I have seen backwards steps not forwards.

You can’t sweep street walkers off the street, they will just find another corner to work from, one without the protection of police presence, you need to offer them an alternative solution so they can still work. Many still worked on the streets right up until the final disappearance, I wanted to go to the district just to pay them not to be there.

The media coverage on this all honed in on the same thing, drugs and sex workers. Journalists and reporters all thought that escorts and sex workers were identical, we were all doing this to pay for a drugs habit, they were the only magic words that each reporter wanted an answer to, “what drugs are we on“. They saw us all as second rate citizens with no education. None of us are saints, we all fall off course sometimes and choose a wobbly path, we all do things at some point in our lives that we are not proud of. But the tabloids decided to focus on two points, paid sex and drugs. They forgot that these were someone’s daughter, someone’s friend, human beings, they lulled people into a false sense of security “It won’t happen to me as I am not selling myself on the street” “It wont happen to me because I don’t do drugs”. You don’t need to be a sex worker or drug addict to get murdered, and one of those girls I know for a fact her habit was nowhere near like how it was portrayed! Those poor families were plastered across the press as though they had failed their children, there was no sensitivity, no humanity in the coverage, like people who work in this community are scum.

These big blundering footsteps we are taking backwards are only proving to me that this incident is not going to be isolated. Clamping down on newspaper adverts. Where do you think these women will turn to? They wont all find their way to the internet. How many will you be pointing in the direction of the streets? If they are clamping down on advertising, how long before the internet falls under attack? With the number of women trying this lifestyle increasing don’t penalise and condemn us, educate the public and understand us, protect the people within the industry and treat it like you would any other work sector, we are after all selling a service like many other businesses. And for god’s sake please don’t glorify it with anymore of these bloody “Belle de Jours” people are impressionable and will believe it to be as fancy as these shows. But then what do I know, I am just another sex worker afterall.

Don’t forget about those girls, they are the reason changes need to be made!