https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/i-regret-approving-saunas-when-i-knew-they-were-brothels-zv9z2883b

A former senior Edinburgh councillor has apologised for her role in the granting of licences to saunas in the city knowing they would be used as brothels. Susan Dalgety, who rose to the post of deputy leader of Edinburgh city council, expressed regret to all “women trapped in prostitution” for regularly approving the venues when the police, council officials and elected representatives all knew women would be paid to have sex on site. Dalgety, who represented Scottish Labour at that time, said: “The irony was at the licensing committee meetings we could not describe the sauna as a brothel because we could not licence brothels, so it was all very ‘Edinburgh’.”

Dalgety described these as “living porn” venues “where young women perform sex acts for groups of men in exchange for money”. She noted that, despite it’s respectable façade, Edinburgh still had a “significant criminal underclass”, adding: “Women are trafficked from across the world into Edinburgh.” High levels of HIV were circulating in the capital in the Eighties and Nineties, fuelled by intravenous drug use, when Dalgety first became a city councillor. “The public health advice at the time was if you managed prostitution then you could better manage HIV and drug abuse,” she said.

As a young woman Dalgety, who is a columnist for The Scotsman, also accepted the argument that female sexuality could be empowering and prostitution was valid work. Now 68, she said she had since started to “understand how awful prostitution is” and the fact that “the vast majority of women who are trapped in it” are vulnerable and are dealing with trauma such as child sexual abuse and drug addiction.

https://archive.ph/C6wu2