Metropolitan Police officers have said the force needs to move away from criminalising women involved in street sex work, following the exposure of grave failings in the Simon Levy case.
The call comes as the Met pilots a new two-officer, all-female team in north London — Operation Amicus — set up to build trust with street sex workers and encourage them to report violent crimes committed against them.
Officers on the team described hearing about endemic levels of male violence against the women they have met, drawn from a cohort of 80 women in the area identified as being involved in street-based sex work.
“Every single one has reported something,” one of the officers said, “whether they’ve been raped, they’ve been punched – they’ve been attacked in some way, shape or form.”
Several women were too frightened to report abuse, the officers said, describing an appalling situation in which women are repeatedly attacked by men yet believe the police cannot be trusted to help. Some have come to expect sexual violence from clients as a grim norm – and see little point in reporting it.
But the team said attitudes shift once women realise they will be listened to. “Once they report one and they realise they’re being listened to, they then start to report the next one because they know that somebody’s going to turn up and somebody’s going to listen and they’re going to be taken seriously.”
The officers said the Met needs to move away from criminalising women involved in street sex work, calling it “not fair” when “they’re just trying to survive”. They also acknowledged residents’ concerns about sex work in their streets and the need to tackle organised crime.
The Levy case and its fallout
Simon Levy, a convicted sex offender from Tottenham, was given a whole-life term in August after murdering two women and raping another – all of them vulnerable, and all sometimes engaged in street sex work.
Whole-life terms are among the most severe punishments handed down by courts in the capital – London Streets recently reported on the case of Deepak Sandhu, jailed for life with a 28-year minimum over the Earl’s Court murder.
Levy killed Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo in March 2025 and Sheryl Wilkins five months later. Before those murders, he had raped a third woman in January 2025. She disclosed the attack while being arrested by Met officers for allegedly breaching a community banning order – but the force failed to engage with her properly and eventually closed the rape case. It was only reopened after Levy went on to kill in the same section of a car park where he had raped the surviving victim.
The survivor later said in a statement that “nobody ever listened to me” and that interviewing officers had spoken to her “like a child”. The Met and the Crown Prosecution Service have apologised over a series of decisions that left Levy free to roam the streets. The CPS brings some of the most significant prosecutions heard in London’s courts – including the £1.3m NHS fake prescription fraud that saw a pharmacist jailed.
Levy, who also has convictions for attacking 13 women on the Tube and trains, at music events and even in prison, sexually assaulted women at random across London’s public transport network as well as elsewhere.
“We needed to change the way we were working”
Supt Rob Gibbs said the new team was “an acknowledgement that we needed to change the way in which we were working” and move away from criminalising sex work.
“Women get stuck in the criminal justice system” for minor offences, he said – a cycle that leads to “more sex working and actually we need to break that cycle”. He added that women involved in street-based sex work were at the “most harsh end of violence against women and girls”.
The Met says the team has already improved safeguarding and increased reports of rape and sexual offences, alongside better information-sharing to identify the most dangerous perpetrators of violence against women and girls. If the pilot is judged “successful in improving confidence within the community”, the approach could be rolled out across the force.
“I was scared to contact the police”
A woman the team has supported, given the name Alice to protect her identity, said most homeless women she knows who engage in sex work in Tottenham have not reported assaults for fear of being arrested themselves.
She said two men have attacked her in separate incidents this year, including one who violently assaulted her after she declined to sell him sex. “I was scared to contact the police,” she said. “When I went to the hospital I begged the doctors, ‘please don’t phone the police because I’ll get arrested’.”
She first met the Met’s female liaison team after being attacked by another man. “They came and said, ‘look, we’re not here to arrest you, get you in trouble, we’re here to support you’.”
Campaigners say crackdowns deepened fear
The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), which campaigns for decriminalisation, said a “very intense and aggressive police crackdown” in north London had led to “quite aggressive arrests of women” in Enfield and Haringey.
Caseworker Laura Watson said closure zones and antisocial behaviour orders that banned women from entire areas had, in some cases, led to “mass criminalisation because women were breaching those orders”. She said “women really describe absolute terror from the police, running up and down the road, running away from the police” – adding that most street sex workers are “mothers working to feed themselves and their children”.
Prof Kate Brown of the University of York, whose research focuses on policing interventions with sex workers, said liaison teams were not in themselves a solution. “Our research shows that sex work liaison officers can make a real difference to safety and access to justice, but only when they are designed and delivered in the right way,” she said. Her research centre is working with 12 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales on such teams – but she warned they “cannot fix a system that continues to police and criminalise sex workers”, arguing that “decriminalisation is the best way to deliver safety and justice” for them.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Our commitment to halving violence against women and girls within a decade includes tackling the serious exploitation and abuse associated with prostitution.” The spokesperson added: “We expect the police to treat all victims of offences with dignity, and every investigation to be conducted thoroughly.”
The Levy case: a timeline
- January 2025: Levy rapes a woman in Tottenham. She reports it while being arrested for allegedly breaching a community banning order, but the Met fails to engage properly and the case is closed.
- March 2025: Levy murders Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo.
- August 2025: Levy murders Sheryl Wilkins – five months after his first killing, in the same section of a car park where he had raped the surviving victim.
- August 2026: Levy is handed a whole-life term. The Met and the CPS apologise for the failings that left him free.
- October 2026: Officers reveal the Operation Amicus pilot in north London and say the Met must move away from criminalising street sex workers.
Street sex work and the law: what you need to know
Sex work itself is legal in the UK, excluding Northern Ireland – but many related activities are not. Soliciting for clients in public places, known as street sex work, is illegal, as are working together, brothel-keeping, pimping and advertising sexual services. Street sex workers are also frequently targeted by police using anti-social behaviour powers, such as community banning orders – the alleged breach of which was the reason Levy’s surviving victim was being arrested at the moment she tried to report her rape. Campaigners argue this web of offences leaves women fearing arrest if they seek help, pushing them away from the very officers tasked with protecting them.
Key figures
- 80 – women in north London identified as involved in street-based sex work and engaged by the new team
- 2 – plain-clothed female officers running the Operation Amicus pilot
- 13 – women Levy has convictions for attacking on the Tube, trains and elsewhere
- 12 of 43 – police forces in England and Wales working with York researchers on sex worker liaison teams
