Research consistently shows that sex workers experience high rates of victimization, including physical assault, rape, and threats. For those in particularly vulnerable positions – such as sex workers facing homelessness, substance use, involvement in crime, or mental health challenges – exposure to violence is even higher.
Despite this, sex workers are often reluctant to report violence to the police. Previous research has shown how migration status, social stigma and the legal status of sex work affect whether sex workers report violence. In countries where sex work is criminalized, many are excluded from legal protection altogether. But even in Denmark, where selling and buying sexual services is decriminalized, underreporting remains widespread.
As a part of an ongoing project ‘Violence as condition? Experiences with violence among female sex workers in marginalized positions’, we take a closer look at why this silence persists. We focus on sex workers in marginalized positions – those struggling with homelessness, drug use, or mental illness, as well as women working illegally in Denmark or under precarious conditions. The project uses a mixed methods design and seek to investegate both the scale and character of violence as well as the mechanisms that prevent sex workers from reporting incidents and effectively cut them off from legal protection. Within this, we conduct interviews with sex workers to explore subjective experiences of violence and to understand what shapes the decisions about reporting or seeking help.
The interviews reveal that silence is not simply a lack of action. For many women, staying quiet is a way of coping in environments where violence is constant and protection feels out of reach. Shame, fear of being judged, and mistrust of authorities often weigh heavier than the potential benefits of reporting. Some women describe blaming themselves for what happened, while others normalize violence as “just part of the job.” Seen this way, underreporting can be understood as an emotionally adaptive and rational response to systemic exclusion shaped by broader structural, social and cultural contexts.
Overall, the study provides a foundation for addressing the barriers that hinder sex workers from seeking justice. It also contributes to broader discussions on the lack of legal protection for marginalized victims more generally, by showing how broad structural conditions shape everyday responses to violence – and why formal rights to protection do not necessarily translate into real access to justice.
About the author:
Theresa Dyrvig Henriksen is a senior researcher at VIVE – The Danish Center for Social Science Research. She primarily works with ethnographic methods and her research primarily concerns sex work and violence.
