Those who survived that era tell Julie Hill about the sexual acts demanded by police, and how they made it through. Content warning: This feature contains distressing descriptions of a sexual and emotional nature, which may be triggering to survivors.
In the mids, when she was 15, White began working on Customs Street in downtown Auckland alongside female sex workers, all runaways like her, she says, and aged from about 14 to Their clients were the sailors coming on and off the ships.
She also sold dresses to the parlour girls and ship girls. There was nothing spared for transsexual or transgender back in those days.
You were born a man so you should be treated like a man, and they beat the shit out of you. But on several occasions she did time for theft. In the mids, Auckland Central Police Station took over from the Wharf Police, and a vice squad was formed to deal with criminal sexual activity and pornography. Officially, it now seems to have vanished β despite multiple officers spoken to for this story acknowledging they had been members, police said they had no record of a vice squad ever existing at all.
The sad fact, however, is that relatively few sex workers from the 70s, 80s and 90s are still around today; of those that are, many are understandably reluctant to revisit painful memories. Researching the story nevertheless led to dozens of interviews in Auckland and around the North Island. We reviewed diaries and collected affidavits. The story began with one outlet and migrated to another. On more than one occasion I suspected it may never be published at all. Those brave women who did come forward had never told their stories publicly, in many cases not even to friends or family.
