A long-overdue reckoning with ‘child prostitution’ convictions

The government announced in November that it will automatically expunge historic ‘child prostitution’ convictions i.e. for those convicted as children for themselves engaging in prostitution. This marks a significant and long overdue development in the application of relevant law.

History

The UK has an uneasy history with the sexual exploitation of children. Legislation has been slow to distinguish perceived sexual immorality from sexual criminality, and society’s sympathies, even to this day, often prioritise class and appearance.

In Europe, the practice persisted openly into the late 19^th century with limited regard for children’s welfare. Early legislation was driven by class anxieties rather than child protection. Reforms focused on safeguarding wealthy girls (whose inheritance was at risk), while working-class children were more likely to be criminalised for behaviour arising from coercion and abuse.

The catalyst for real change came not from legislative concern but public scandal. In 1885, William Thomas Stead, an investigative journalist and social reformer, published the Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, a series of sensationalist articles exposing the suffering of Victorian England’s children. Assisted by a former prostitute and the Salvation Army, Stead bought a 13-year-old girl, from her parents for £5 to send to the Continent – a stunt that revealed both the prevalence of commercial abuse of children and the degree of official indifference. 

As a result of this scandal, after four years of legislative debate, the government passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 and introduced offences targeting the procurement and abuse of girls. 

Despite these reforms, the criminalisation of exploited children persisted well into the 20^th century.  The authorities routinely adultified vulnerable, mostly working-class children and charged them with vagrancy, loitering, soliciting and moral conduct offences.

Cultural romanticisation versus social vilification

Cultural narratives will always bleed into public perception. Art and media have repeatedly aestheticised the sexualisation of young girls. 20^th century fashion photography packaged sexualised images of children as beauty, tragedy, or artistic provocation. Louis Malle’s 1978 film, Pretty Baby, for instance, cast a 12-year-old Brooke Shields in a brothel setting, a portrayal applauded rather than condemned, while Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita turned a sexually abused child into a “nymphet”.

Respectable society has historically tolerated sexual commerce within beautiful, middle-class settings, but vilified it when associated with poverty.

Take for example The Vagrancy Act of 1824 and the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869 which targeted the poor and working class, reinforcing prevailing social attitudes that linked poverty with immorality and disease. 

These attitudes have endured. Recent public inquiries (the 2014 Jay Report and 2015 Casey Review) acknowledge that child victims from working-class backgrounds were let down by institutional failures.  Authorities often interpreted the child’s abuse as active participation and the outdated label of “child prostitute” persisted in charging decisions and court proceedings.  Their experiences were doubted and credibility undermined because they did not fit society’s preferred narrative of victimhood. Although the controversial Contagious Diseases Acts were repealed in 1886, astonishingly, the Vagrancy Act still exists, leaving children as young as 10 theoretically vulnerable to criminalisation.

The modern legal position

The Sexual Offences Act (1956 and 2003) attempted to clarify the statutory position: section 5 created the strict liability offence of rape of a child under 13, and section 9 criminalised sexual activity with anyone under 16. Strict liability provides absolute protection to the youngest; consent is impossible.

In practice, however, exploited children were still being arrested and prosecuted well into the early 2000s. Between 2008 and 2010, 13 to 15-year-old girls were prostituted and raped by a grooming gang; their story was dramatised in the BBC series, Three Girls.  In 2009, a victim given the fictitious name ‘Amber’ provided detailed disclosures of abuse, following which she was arrested at her family home as a co-conspirator. During the trial she was portrayed by both the prosecution and defence as an assistant pimp. For years she campaigned for justice and in 2022 the Greater Manchester Police delivered a personal apology.

This changed with the Modern Slavery Act in 2015, which introduced the statutory section 45 defence for children forced to commit crimes as a consequence of their exploitation. Where earlier laws offered partial safeguards, the Modern Slavery Act filled the gap.

Reform and recognition

Public inquiries now acknowledge the faulty systems that enabled the abuse of working-class children to continue unchecked. In March 2023 Baroness Casey’s review into police standards prompted the government’s amendments to The Crime and Policing Bill, which will pardon child prostitution convictions once Royal Assent is received.

Under the new provisions, hundreds of children who were convicted or cautioned for prostitution offences before the law changed in 2015 will automatically have these convictions or cautions disregarded and pardoned. 

Expunging ‘child prostitution’ convictions properly acknowledges the injustice faced by victims of child sexual exploitation and wipes records that should never have existed.

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