Parenthood on Trial

The silent suffering of the sexworking parent

As sexworkers there is no shortage of issues we have to face but one in particular always appears to be hiding in the shadows.

Sex workers are losing custody of their children at alarming rates. This isn’t an issue that’s just effecting full service sex workers. Just in researching for this piece I found five separate mainstream articles discussing how strippers, cam models and onlyfans creators are losing custody of the children. I discovered two distinct legal firms that have published papers on sex work and custody disputes. They both clarify that any type of sex work, no matter if the parent has since ceased the work in question - can and will be used against them in a court of law. (But don’t worry, for $100,000 and a good lawyer you MIGHT be able to get partial custody after being rung through the mud in court)

There are as of yet no legal protections from discrimination based on engaging in sex work. Even without a potential effect on the child that creates a legal justification for considering past or present sex work in a custody case, moral stigma can and usually will still come into play in a custody case, regardless of whether you no longer participate. (Sex Work and Custody Cases, Woodruff Family Law Group)

Damned if you do, damned if you stop doing and damned if you’re dead.

In Julie DeWolf’s research paper ‘Sexworkers and the Best Interests of their Children: Issues Faced by Sexworkers Involved in Custody and Access Legal Proceedings’ Dewolf states “Sex work was treated as a negative quality in a parent rather than an aspect of their life warranting further factual exploration.” She goes on to argue that “stigma against sex workers appears to carry more weight in custody and access disputes than evidence concerning the impact that a parent’s sex work has on a child.”

According to one study, 37% of the 399 sexworkers that were interviewed have had their child apprehended by social services.

Forced child removal is a sexworking parent’s worst nightmare and probably best kept secret. Most parents cite the fear of further delaying any type of reunification process (sadly, our nation only has a 50% rate of reunification) as a main reason they stay silent about their court custody proceedings. The rest likely stay silent because simply put, it’s a horrifyingly traumatic situation to talk about. And when we talk about that 50% of families who don’t experience reunification, we see that the trauma is ongoing.

Child removal is a traumatic experience and results in greater mental health crisis for the children and parents suffering from PTSD. Child removal leads to increased intimate partner violence and housing instability. Would a person be able get much work done while they’re constantly worried about where their child is being housed and how they’re feeling? Providing protection is such an important component of parenthood and so many sexworking parents are unable to give it or feel any type of familial security.

Research shows separating a child from their parent(s) has detrimental, long-term emotional and psychological consequences that may be worse than leaving the child at home. This is due to the trauma of removal itself, as well as the unstable nature of, and high rates of abuse in, foster care. Nevertheless, the child welfare system errs on the side of removal and almost uniformly fails to consider the harms associated with that removal. Only two jurisdictions require courts to consider the harms that will occur when a child is taken from their family. (Shanta Trivedi, The Harm of Child Removal, 43 New York University Review of Law & Social Change 523)

I think it’s important to note here that most of the people in the articles I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, their court cases started when their partner took them to court. I’m not saying that sex workers don’t also lose custody of their children due to other issues such as addiction and poverty—but I am saying we do face an extra hurdle when our partners take us to court to use our jobs against us; they are rewarded and we are punished. Intimate partner violence that leverages the judicial system against sex workers like this is a pervasive and all too common practice among abusers that wish to entrap and control their sex working partners.

So why does it feel like nobody is talking about this as a pressing issue facing our community? Yes, while it’s true that the facade of benevolence makes most Americans complacent about a colossal government apparatus that spends billions of dollars annually on surveilling families, breaking them apart, and thrusting children into a foster care system known to cause devastating harms, Why does it feel like any conversation that has to do with parenting is excluded from public sexwork discourse? (Dorothy E Roberts, I have studied Child Protective Services for Decades. It Needs to be Abolished.) I’d assume all of us recognize that a majority of our workforce are parents and joined our workforce to provide for their families, so why does it feel like we’ve abandoned them?

I know some of our colleagues are noticing it, if not also personally facing it, and it’s a disservice to ourselves to restrict this topic from our conversations and organizing. I am but one worker in this industry but I’d love to start seeing a push against this—a campaign amongst ourselves to create a safe atmosphere for us to share the experience of sex working parents, and the possible traumas that come along with it. The unique stigma that sex working parents face will only perpetuate the longer we shame our colleagues out of speaking about it. I would love to hear from other community members on how we can begin to create and uphold this space through a culture shift.