Phoenix tugs at the hem of her skirt. She wears towering suede boots to the knee, horn-rimmed glasses, a black bodycon dress: thin cotton stretched to almost-transparency. Her makeup is immaculate, her lips stained purple, her hair falls in thick, blonde waves formed of shining polyester. Through five layers: merino, wool, knitted jumper, denim, leather, I feel the cold seep in, and shake my feet to keep circulation. Then saunters, hips swinging, down the footpath, one eye watching for pebbles on the concrete that could tip a platform heel.
Sue Merrett, a gravel-voiced outreach worker, mans a white van that gives out bread, hot drinks and condoms. She says there are about 65 women who work the streets in Christchurch, and anywhere between five and 20 women out on Manchester St on any given night. Tonight there are about seven. Occasionally, a passing car-load of men screams obscenities at the women.
Sometimes they hurl glass bottles. A while back, there was a period when guys would come with paintball guns and shoot at the women as they tried to work. And they do. I can see ladies as old as 70, they get in there. No one should ever die from it. A few metres down this stretch of road, Phoenix points to the corner where sex worker Mallory Manning was taken. Two years before Manning, the body of another sex worker [name suppressed] was left in that same river, after she was raped and killed by Peter Steven Waihape.
Her body was found, strangled, in an empty lot. And this is the same street that Renee Duckmanton was taken from in Her murderer left her body burning by the side of a road. Phoenix has been in the sex industry since she was around 15, and first discovering her identity as a woman. But some girls will end up desperate and accept less, especially when business is slow. Phoenix will be out here all night if she needs to be. But sex work had gone on, operating beneath the legal exterior of massage parlours, homesโand on the streets.
The law was passed by a majority of one. Opposition MPs predicted a tidal wave of new, young, vulnerable sex workers. But it never came. For those men and women who do make up the industry, the aim was for legitimacy, destigmatisation, and safety: NZPC argued that as long as the buying or selling of sex was illegal, the trade would be pushed underground, with workers vulnerable and exploited women left without legal recourse.
