COMMENT by GEORGIA WESTGARTH
SOMETIMES, the story just isn’t what you expect it to be.
I’d just spent four hours sitting in a brothel, interviewing in turn four working girls and the owner.
“I got the full tour – dungeon and all,“ I told the newsroom on my return.
You don’t often see a room full of journos rendered silent and left hanging on every word.
“You captured the attention of the entire newsroom – that’s rarely been done before,” my editor said.
No, I thought, I hadn’t captured anybody. Lacey, Carmen, Kati, Hayley and Tanya had. It was their stories everyone was hanging on.
But the fact I got to tell them was exhilarating.
The working girls I met that day broke any stereotypes I had in my head about sex workers, and in turn everyone I spoke to about my experience.
The dirt, the drugs, the abuse – just weren’t there.
It’s not that I didn’t look for them. It’s not that maybe they don’t exist in other places. It’s just that, in this series of five interviews on that day, those judgements weren’t validated.
The girls I spoke to – some my own age – were not boorish. They were articulate, educated, empathetic and confident.
I walked up those stairs feeling a hundred miles away from the paid sex industry and left feeling much the same as most people would – satisfied.
Satisfied, that I had done my job, satisfied that I could tell their stories accurately and with heart and satisfied that they deserved to be told in the local newspaper.
With the brothel’s house cat playfully jumping in and out of a tall vase next to me, as I put questions to the girls and heard their stories, I soon realised what I was listening to.
Yes, they answered all my gory questions and they told it like they saw it, but it was the elements of human nature that stood out to me the most.
With all the trimmings of a brothel, it was how the girls and their clients managed from day to day that ended up being the most interesting.
Human nature wasn’t what I thought I’d leave with, but human nature it was.
I learnt that some people came knocking on the brothel door to try and save their marriages, or add some flavour. And one working girl told me how she did end up saving a marriage.
It took just a short chat with a sex worker for this man to realise that he didn’t want what he came there for, and he ended up racing home to his wife with a fresh perspective on his marriage. That was just one anecdote that surprised me.
But some readers were challenged by the overall topic, and some even confronted by the way it was put together. No drive-by shootings, just the person behind their job.
Some readers felt the series somehow glamourised the role: a sort of “Pretty Woman“ in print.
But in fact I was just doing what I do every day: interviewing people, questioning them, and telling their stories.
And that’s cause for celebration, not fear.
The joy of journalism is finding these hidden surprises – and readers should relish the discoveries.
We acknowledge that some of this material can challenge what locals might think they should be reading about in their “community” newspaper.
But isn’t it better to know, than to wonder – especially when it concerns your local area? And in these instances how they got to where they are now – was then – and still is fascinating.
It’s my job to report on the world as it is, even if that is found to be distasteful by some.
I’ve written about so many empowered men and women throughout the south-east, who have so many captivating tales to tell and these five women – in my eyes – were no different.
My job is to give readers as much truth as I can. And my colleagues and I will continue to present the facts as they are – and not as some might wish them to be.
[ Return to ‘Behind the brothel door’ feature page ]
