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WEARING see-through white lingerie and matching sliders, a young girl displays bare legs and a vacant stare as she stands on the street corner.
Down the road, another woman totters along in silver heels and a skintight miniskirt, showing off her rear as an elderly lady shuffles past.
Dozens of sex workers are known to operate at any one time day or night on Aurora Avenue, which has become a prostitution hotspot[/caption]
Elsewhere nearby, dozens of women parade half-naked in underwear and bikinis, trying to catch the attention of men in what has become an open sex market in North Seattle – just minutes from the offices of tech firms like Apple and Amazon.
Locals say the Aurora Avenue strip, also known as ‘The Blade,’ has become a magnet for prostitutes, pimps, gangs and ‘Johns’ – the slang term for people who buy sex from sex workers – since the pandemic.
But the problem had got even worse in the past year.
On average, 300 people buy sex there every day, and there are now as many as 60 working girls working on the notorious thoroughfare – many of them underage.
Shockingly, almost a third of their customers work in the US city’s thriving tech and business community.
Underage sex workers
Dutton Clarke runs Stereo Warehouse on the street, and he believes the spike in prostitution is linked to the closure of Las Vegas strip clubs when Covid-19 hit.
He said: “We’ve been here about 30 years and watching it change over the years has been very interesting, especially about the last three or four years with Covid.
“That’s when the crime started hitting pretty good with all the prostitutes.
“Last summer there were 50 or 60 girls at a time out there and most of them were naked and a lot of them were really good looking.”
The business owner said a significant number of the prostitutes appeared under the age of 16.
His claim is backed by reports of girls as young as 11 working the two-mile strip of single storey businesses and cheap motels that make up The Blade.
Traffic passing through the seemingly ordinary north Seattle area, which is now known for prostitution[/caption]
Locals say pimps have become so brazen they will approach underage girls outside of schools.
‘A family business’
Speaking on the Taboo Room with Aaron S documentary, Dutton added: “It was shocking at first.
“It’s become common for the kids to count how many prostitutes they see.
“We’ve always had prostitutes here, but it used to be one or two.
“When all the strip clubs closed in Vegas during Covid, there’s no loitering law here so they know they can be a prostitute here and not have any trouble with the police.
“So they were coming here from all over the country and making thousands of dollars a day.”
This man was filmed lying on the floor, seemingly struggling, down an alleyway just round the corner from the main strip[/caption]
‘Incredibly privileged’ punters
Prostitutes first started loitering on Aurora Avenue, also known as State Route 99, because it was frequented by truckers cruising back and forth from the Canadian border.
But recent studies have shown it is now popular with white collar workers.
Between 2013 to 2021, at least 77 percent of sex buyers here were employed.
About 30 percent of those were working in tech and business, according to local government statistics.
Ben Gauen, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney who focuses on human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation cases, calls the men that inhabit Aurora an “incredibly privileged sector of our society.”
He added: “I can’t think of any other subset of offenders that we see who have that level of employment at the time they committed their offence.”
It’s common for gunfights to break out in the area[/caption]
‘I’ve been kidnapped & tortured’
Prostitutes can make $4,000 (£3,061) to $7,000 (£5,355) a day, turning tricks for between $60 (£45) for oral sex and $100 (£76) for full sex.
One called Winter told the Taboo Room YouTube documentary: “You could say this lifestyle is very addictive.
“I got out of it before. I got a job as a paralegal, but I wasn’t making the amount of money that I was making doing this so I was like, it’s easier to come and do this.
“On a slow day I will make $1,000 at least and the most I’ve made out here is $4,000.”
But the job doesn’t come without risks. Winter later explained how she was kidnapped, raped and tortured by a man who she went with.
She added: “He had a knife to my throat the whole time.”
Locked in a makeshift cell
And she’s not alone. In July last year, a man posing as an undercover police officer abducted an Aurora prostitute.
He then drove her hundreds of miles to his home in the neighbouring state of Oregon, where he locked her in a makeshift cell in his garage.
She only escaped by punching open the metal door.
Police have since linked the suspect Negasi Zuberi, 30, to violent sexual assaults in at least four other states.
Negasi has been charged with interstate kidnapping and transporting an individual across state lines with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and is awaiting trial.
Authorities say Zuberi posed as an undercover police officer, kidnapped a woman in Seattle, drove her hundreds of miles to his home in Oregon, and kept her in a makeshift cell[/caption]
The previous November, a 20-year-old woman tried to escape her pimp by jumping half-naked out of the third-floor window of her Seattle apartment.
Her pimp caught her and drove her back to Aurora where she attempted to flee a second time.
A passing driver saw her sitting topless in a driveway.
When she jumped in his car the assailant – who was later arrested – gave chase, continually shooting at the vehicle.
The makeshift cinderblock cell allegedly used to hold a kidnapped woman[/caption]
‘It broke my heart’
Locals have captured Wild West-like gun fights in the same area as violent pimps and dealers battle for territory.
Between May and July 2024, Seattle police responded to 30 shootings on Aurora north of 145th Street – roughly one every two days.
Drug use is rife and sex workers hand over all their money to pimps who feed their addiction to crack cocaine and fentanyl, an opioid that induces zombie-like behaviour.
Authorities are now pledging to crack down, closing down the most notorious motels and reinstating the anti-loitering laws that were removed in 2020, creating a pimp’s paradise.
Seattle Council member Cathy Moore this week called for stiffer penalties for curb crawlers and for greater ‘diversion opportunities’ to be given to sex workers.
Prosecutors previously revealed in 2022 a 20-year-old woman made a harrowing escape from her vicious pimp outside this motel[/caption]
An ‘open-air strip club’
Residents meanwhile are so fed-up they’re building a searchable database of license plates of suspected curb crawlers.
One person vented: “Cops don’t intervene until someone is stabbed, beaten or shot.
“That’s why Aurora looks like an open-air strip club more than ever before.”
Some of these girls are definitely not 18 and that I have a huge issue with. I saw a girl recently that had to be no older than 12 or 13 and it broke my heart”
Reddit user
Another commented: “Many of the girls aren’t there by choice. They were conned into the trade by their “boyfriend” AKA pimp.
“The pimps then use pretty extreme measures to keep them in the trade.
“Those measures can lead to drug addiction and PTSD worse than a combat veteran.
“And the vast majority are under 18 when they start, on average around 13.”
A third also spoke out on the underage vice, writing: “I drive this section daily as I live about six blocks from this area.
“It’s really ramped up in the last two years. I really am like most in that I don’t have a problem with it if the girl wants to do it and she is of age (18 at least please).
“But some of these girls are definitely not 18 and that I have a huge issue with.
“I saw a girl recently that had to be no older than 12 or 13 and it broke my heart.”
Inside the life of a sex worker
DR EMMA CUNNINGHAM, senior lecturer in criminology, with research interests in violence against women and girls, says:
“Some sex workers insist this is just a job, and they are making lots of money from it.
But there appear to be many more with awful experiences of violence and PTSD who become trapped in this work.
Some women may be topping up low-paid employment.
Some charities – Beyond Streets and Women’s Aid – have said the cost-of-living crisis has pushed more women into the informal economy of sex and escort work.
From films like Pretty Woman there is a romanticised notion of escorting, and it is not a crime to buy or sell sex between two consenting adults in the UK.
Many sex workers end up with PTSD.
Many are trafficked and exploited and take drugs to forget the trauma they have experienced.
Many female sex workers have experienced severe repeated violence.
How can a woman who is selling sex to a man who is physically much stronger than her withdraw her consent if he hurts her?
He is potentially capable of killing her.
According to research, women selling sex are 18 times more likely to be murdered than those who do not.”
‘I ain’t got no shame in my game’
Footage of a half-naked sex worker shopping at an Arco petrol station in North Seattle went viral in June.
Campaigning journalist Jonathan Choe shot the video then posted it on his website, complaining: “North Seattle is lost.”
The young girl – clad in nothing more than sky high heels, skimpy knickers and a pink top – confronts Choe when she realises he is filming.
She asks: “What are you recording for?”
Showing how normalised the vile trade has become, she then adds: “This is the Blade and we are selling a** over here so you can put your camera down.
“I ain’t got no shame in my game.”
Seattle volunteers show some of the products they give away to sex workers and other people who ask for as part of providing harm reduction services along a north Seattle strip known for prostitution[/caption]
Unlike the UK, in Washington State selling sex is illegal, but locals claim police have failed to enforce the laws.
It remains to be seen whether stiffer penalties will make change for good.
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