Experience with Violence and Sexual Abuse in CommercialSexual Female Workers

Overview

The examination of 119 commercial sexual female workers revealed the occurrence of sexual abuseand sexual and non-sexual violence in case history of the respondents. The obtained results indicatethat commercial sexual female workers form a population group, which is highly endangered withsexual and non-sexual violence. The high risk of becoming a victim of sexual and non-sexual violenceis encountered by the prostitutes in their personal life as well as in the professional area (rape intheir personal life was detected in 28.6% of the group, rape in their occupational activity in 17.6%,non-sexual violence at work even in 51.3%). The prostitutes also encountered more than two-foldhigher sexual abuse up to 15 years of age (21.1%) than that in the general population. The sexual abuseas well as rape was only exceptionally reported to the police. The reluctance to report sexual offencecould lay in the fact than more than a half of the sexual abuses (same rate in general population) wascommitted by their related people. Likewise, in cases almost in half of the of sexual aggression thehusband or partner of the victim was the offender.

Key words:
prostitutes, sexual abuse, sexual aggression.