Dr. Teresa Whitaker:

We can never say statistically how many people are involved in prostitution. Researchers all over the world will agree with me on that. It is an activity that is so clandestine, stigmatised and underground that one can never definitively say that X amount of people are engaged in it in any particular location. If a person has been pimped into prostitution, he or she will not be talking to us. The people who talk to us are independent sex workers, some of whom are migrants. Some of these women said they would come here today but I do not know whether they did. In the case of migrant sex workers, their view was that there was money to be made in this country. They work independently and are happy with what they do. I cannot offer figures for how many people are coerced and how many independent. Nobody can give those figures, and members should be suspicious of anybody who claims to do so. They are simply not available.