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Photo of Pye Jakobsson
Pye Jakobsson, the founder of Rose Alliance. Foto: GFDL/Adrián Estévez
DEBATE

Swedish Rose Alliance - a fraudulent organization

Rose Alliance is a Swedish organization claiming to fight for the rights of prostituted women. In debates, they maintain that we must divide voluntary from forced prostitution. But who are they, and whose interests are they actually campaigning for?
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Rose Alliance Sweden is an organization that is probably best known outside of Sweden. Its spokesperson Pye Jakobsson is in a high position in several international organizations and is often hired as an adviser to other organizations. 1
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This is because Pye Jakobsson has managed to portray Rose Alliance as if it represented women in prostitution in Sweden.
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"Us sex workers", she says when debating prostitution. She makes it sound like she can speak for all women in prostitution.
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As tends to be the case whenever a women publicly claiming that prostitution and pornography is what women want, she's not beeing scrutinised. The media are usually pleased to redistribute her story of the "happy hookers".
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Around the time of New Years in 2013 was probably the first time we heard something else.
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ROSE ALLIANCE in Sweden was founded in 2009/2010 by Pye Jakobsson.
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She has previously founded several similar organizations, such as ROSEA in the early 2000s and later SANS.
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ROSE ALLIANCE has a webpage, but the only information about them available there is an email address. And their postal address is the same as Jakobsson's home address.
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Invisible square for layoutSUPPORT FOR LOBBYING
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It started when the freelance journalist Kajsa Skarsgård revealed that Rose Alliance was financially supported by the Dutch organization Mama Cash – an organization advocating for decriminalization of prostitution and for it to be seen as "sex work". 2
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During 2011 to 2013, Rose Alliance received about 95 000 euros in financial support.
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But that wasn't all of it. The money came indirectly from the Swedish government, since Mama Cash received 31 million SEK from SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency).
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Thus: the Swedish government, having criminalized sexual purchases, is handing out money to an international organization that not only campaigns for decriminalization, but also is financially supporting Swedish opponents of the Swedish legislation.
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"Rose Alliance is a political organization, not an organization helping women." Anna, ex-member of Rose Alliance
NO SUPPORT FOR WOMEN IN PROSTITUTION
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This revelation led to an ex-member of Rose Alliance decided to tell people her story of how the organization actually worked.
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Anna Berg (assumed name) told that she approached Rose Alliance for support, because she wanted to meet other prostituted women, and also find a place where she didn't have to lie about what she did. But the organization wasn't supporting women. They had a safety guide, and that was it, Anna explained. 3
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– Rose Alliance is a political organization, not an organization helping women, Anna told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Arena.
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She also said that only a few people are running the organization.
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– Rose Alliance basically is Pye Jakobsson.
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ON DOUBLE SEATS?
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Anna also said that Pye Jakobsson is actually not at all "one of the girls", as she herself puts it, but rather belongs to the other side.
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It turned out that Pye Jakobsson has been on the board for the strip club Flirt Fashion in Stockholm since 2001. Anna explained that Pye Jakobsson also was planning the women's schedules and helped recruiting new girls to the club. 4
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Anna's story raises a lot of questions. It is of course a very serious matter if someone claiming to work for women's rights in sex trade is actually working as a sex industry executive – including work in recruitment.
"It is of course a very serious matter if someone claming to work for women's rights in sex trade is actually working as a sex industry executive - including work in recruitment."
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When Pye Jakobsson was asked about Anna's testimony, she replied that she hardly saw herself working as a boss, even if she did arrange schedules and place new girls. But she claimed to not have actively worked in recruitment, instead "just" having placed the new girls into their schedule. And being on the board, she explained, was only "to help out an old friend". She emphasized that she hadn't got any board remuneration. To her, it therefore didn't matter that she was on the board of a sex club that profits from using women in the sex industry.
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NOT THE FIRST TIME
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Regarding the recruitment issue there is one person's word against another's. But a simple background check reveals that it is not the first time that Pye Jakobsson has functioned as an executive in the sense of arranging schedules.
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When the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet charted the "sex clubs" of Stockholm, 15 years ago, they visited one of them, called Erostop. There, journalist Richard Aschberg interviewed Pye Jakobsson and wrote about her thusly:
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"Pye Jakobsson, 32, handles schedules and other things around the strippers at Erostop." 5
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Pye Jakobsson's role appears to have been something of a "madame", a woman with prior experience as a stripper, who then later does executive work for, and is friends with, the owner – that is: the profiteer of the sex industry.
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When I write this article, a year after the reveal, Pye Jakobsson is no longer on the board for Flirt Fashion.
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Rose Alliance att Stockholm Pride Festival
Rose Alliance has participated in the Stockholm Pride parade during the last few years, claiming to be ”queer”. Prostitution being a rather extreme example of heteronormativity (the majority of all prostitution worldwide consists of men sexually exploiting women) has not stopped the Pride board from welcoming them.

Invisible square for layoutVOLUNTARY OR FORCED PROSTITUTION?
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But it's not just in the matter of Pye Jakobsson's background that Rose Alliance doesn't hold up to closer scrutiny. It also goes for the basis of their operations: all their talk about free choices.
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In public debate, Rose Alliance is sometimes confronted with tangible facts about what women in prostitution are subjected to, every day and worldwide. The spokespeople of Rose Alliance will then claim that they are only talking about women who want to be in prostitution and who enjoy it – because, they say, there are already other laws protecting against rape or human trafficking, for example.
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But this way of dividing prostitution into voluntary or forced does not reflect reality. To the contrary, there is a clear connection between legalized prostitution and human trafficking – among other examples there is the fact that trafficking tends to increase in countries where prostitution in itself is legal. 6
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Futhermore, in Sweden legal demands for proof in human trafficking cases are so difficult to meet, that in fact many cases of trafficking are sentenced as procuring. 7  And procuring is a crime that Rose Alliance wants to have removed.
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DIFFERENT MESSAGES IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS
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Sadly, answering like I just did here means that Rose Alliance is given the interpretative prerogative. My response was about why their reasoning is wrong, which is based on assuming that Rose Alliance actually means that they oppose trafficking, as they have been claiming in public debate. But do they? In other contexts, what they say sounds completely different.
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Laura María Agustín, Ph.D and living in Malmö, is another one of the few spokespersons for Rose Alliance. This is what she writes about women in human trafficking, that is: women locked indoors at all times and being moved around as the traffickers see fit:
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Invisible square for layoutInvisible square for layout"women who live inside sex establishments and rarely leave until they are moved to another place without being consulted receives the media’s usual attention, it being taken for granted that this represents a total loss of freedom. In many cases, however, migrant workers prefer this situation, for any of a number of reasons: if they don’t leave the premises they don’t spend money; if they don’t have working papers, they feel safer inside in a controlled situation; if someone else does the work of finding new venues and making arrangements, they don’t have to do it; or having come on a three-month tourist visa they want to spend as much time as possible making money." 8
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GLORIFYING HUMAN TRAFFICKING
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Euphemisms such as "migrant workers" for which "someone else does the work" of "making arrangements", makes it sound like something completely different than sexual exploitation in human trafficking, where locked in women are moved from place to place without any chance to escape.
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Others in Rose Alliance are also downplaying human trafficking.
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In a radio show, Pye Jakobsson talked about her background as a stripper in Portugal:
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Invisible square for layoutInvisible square for layout"There, I worked with lots of Brazilian women. Many of them would probably be considered victims of trafficking today, because most had been tricked into coming to Portugal by being offered work in restaurants. Once they arrived in Portugal, there was no restaurant, their passports were taken away, waiting for them to pay for the flight ticket. You didn't talk about trafficking back then, and there was a bit more room for personal interpretation of how you felt. Some girls went to the cops, some cried and became depressed, and some sat down and said: 'Jesus, how could I fall for this, how stupid of me!' and then they happily kept on working. And they thought: 'When I get back to Brazil I won't tell anyone about this, but while I'm here I'm certainly gonna earn as much money as I can!'" 9
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This extreme oppression of women, girls being tricked, robbed of their passports, and exploited in human trafficking for sexual purposes, tranforms into a personal "interpretation" in Pye Jakobsson's description.
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"This extreme oppression of women, girls being tricked, robbed of their passports, and exploited in human trafficking for sexual purposes, tranforms into a personal "interpretation" in Pye Jakobsson's description."
UNCLEAR MEANINGS
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When I was doing research for this article, I discovered that Pye Jakobsson is very evasive while responding to interviews, both about her own background and about Rose Alliance's.
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Despite the fact that a simple check confirmed that Rose Alliance was founded in 2009/2010, Pye Jakobsson now and then states that the organization has been around since the early 2000s.
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But that goes against what she's been saying at other occasions about her attempts to form SANS and ROSEA; that she has repeatedly failed founding a "sex workers' organization". This is how she describes the attempt to found one in 2004:
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Invisible square for layoutInvisible square for layout"But it didn't go that well. We thought we needed allies with us. Like, our friends. Soon, the organization was filled with happy liberals who thought it was great with lots of sex all the time, but the sex workers became fewer and fewer." 10
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When it comes to herself, Pye Jakobsson – both in interviews, as a lecturer, and in debates about prostitution – describes herself as a "sex worker". In international lectures and interviews she has talked about prostitution as if it was her own experience. 11
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At other occasions, she has stressed that she was a stripper, not a prostitute, she's never "sold sex". 12
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In interviews she have said many times that she "stopped stripping a few years back" – continuing to use the same words about stopping recently despite several years passing between interviews.
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LACK OF CREDIBILITY
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Of course Pye Jakobsson has as much right as anyone else to talk about prostitution no matter if she has personal experience of it or not.
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The reason I write about this, is that today Pye Jakobsson is making an international career for herself as a lecturer and as an advisor to international organizations, including UN organs, in matters of prostitution, not stripping. Her career is built on the image she has created for herself as the one "speaking for the sex workers", and as a "representative for sex workers" and as a "leader for the sex workers' organization in Sweden", combined with the claim that society should listen more to "sex workers".
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Because of that, it matters that Pye Jakobsson is, in fact, not a representative for women in prostitution, if she does not have such experience. It matters that she is running an organization that is not working to support women in prostitution, but actually is dedicated to campaigning: propagating against the Swedish Sex Purchase Act and for a total decriminalization of all laws regarding prostitution. It matters that she and others in Rose Alliance claim to make a difference between "sex work" and trafficking, but in fact are downplaying human trafficking as well. It matters that she is pretending that all women in Sweden with experience of prostitution are agreeing with her, that she often hides the fact that there is another organization for prostituted women in Sweden – PRIS – that actually support women, both those in prostitution and those wanting to get out of prostitution, and that sees the Swedish law as a positive, but insufficient, marker that you do not have to suffer all that prostition means for the victim. An organization that wants the Swedish Sex Purchase Act to be adopted in other countries as well. 13
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And most of all, it matters that Pye Jakobsson, while constructing this image of herself, has also in practice been a part of the industry exploiting women in sex trade.
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"And most of all, it matters that Pye Jakobsson, while constructing this image of herself, in practice also has been a part of the industry exploiting women in sex trade."
INTERNATIONAL CAREER
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Today, Pye Jakobsson is aiming for an international career as an expert on prostitution and HIV prevention, the latter concerning how the world can best prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
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One thing having contributed to this new career is that she has been cooperating since 2012 with HIV Sverige, where she has been employed for a study. This included Jakobsson asking about "health and safety among sex workers". On the Rose Alliance website, they encouraged the visiting "sex workers" to reply to an internet questionnaire. Beside this, they interviewed a total of eight (8) women, two (2) men (who also bought sex) and one (1) transgender person. Despite this being far from a scientific study, Pye Jakobsson is presenting and using it as if it was. 14
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And the myth of the happy hooker seems to still be strong enough that few even consider questioning what they are being served.
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A FALSE IMAGE
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In Sweden, Rose Alliance's claims about what they are and what they do are accepted without question both by media and by cooperating organizations. And for the common Swede Rose Alliance isn't very well known. So Kajsa Skarsgård's revealing articles passed mostly unnoticed.
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By making people believing that she is a speaker for prostituted women and referring to Rose Alliance's claim of "organizing the Swedish sex workers", Pye Jakobsson has instead been given international influence. Apparently, this also goes for large international agencies such as the UN, for which Pye Jakobsson has presented herself as an advisor.
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Today, Rose Alliance is a driving force in international debate, where they are spreading the message that the Swedish Sex Purchase Act is not working at all. Even then, Pye Jakobsson tries to appear as a speaker for all prostituted women in Sweden: "We sex workers consider..."
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In this way, Rose Alliance is spreading a completely false image of both what people in general and what women with experience of prostitution think about the Sex Purchase Act in Sweden – a law that actually enjoys solid support among the people in Sweden.
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According to four various studies over the first ten years more than 70 percent of the people in Sweden support the Sex Purchase Act, among women 80 to 90 percent. The support is also stronger among younger people of both sexes. 15
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IN WHOSE INTERESTS?
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So perhaps the most important question is this: who profits from Pye Jakobsson's, Laura Agustín's and other Rose Alliance members' campaign?
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According to Pye Jakobsson herself, Rose Alliance today, aside from its campaign against all legislation concerning prostitution, is primarily working towards HIV prevention.
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And it is via HIV prevention that UN organs such as UNAids and UN Women have made statements on decriminalizing prostitution in all the countries of the world. It makes you wonder.
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Is HIV prevention something that the prostitution lobby has decided to generally use in their advocacy? Are there more people like Pye Jakobsson in international settings, meaning so-called "representatives for sex workers" from other countries, who are running their lobby campaign in similar ways?
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And are they scrutinized as little by the media as they are here?
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Gerda Christenson
Translation to English: Annina Claesson
"And are they scrutinized as little by the media as they are here?"

Pink line
This article was first published in Swedish in
Kvinnofronten's Internal Newsletter, no. 4, 2013.

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Footnotes:
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1. Pye Jakobsson was when this article was written • a member of the board in NSWP, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (from 2014 she's President of NSWP) • consultant for Harm Reduction International. • member of GCWA, the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, advisory group, since March 2013.
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2. SWE: Kajsa Skarsgård: Lobby för sexarbete får Sidabidrag, SIDA:s tidning Omvärlden, 4/12 2012.
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3. SWE: Kajsa Skarsgård: Intern kritik mot organisation som ska hjälpa sexsäljande kvinnor, tidningen Dagens Arena, 13/1 2013.
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4. SWE: Kajsa Skarsgård: Frontfigur också i styrelse för strippklubb, tidningen Dagens Arena, 14/1 2013.
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5. SWE: Sexklubbsägare – och familjefar, Aftonbladet kartlägger sexklubbarna, 24 juni 2000.
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6. Seo-Young Cho, Axel Dreher & Eric Neumayor: Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking? World Development, vol. 41, 2013.
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7. SWE: Kajsa Wahlberg: Lägesrapport 13. Människohandel för sexuella och andra ändamål. Rikspolisstyrelsen 2012.
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8. The Disappearing of a Migration Category: Migrants Who Sell Sex, by Laura Agustín.In Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol.32, No.1, January 2006.
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9. SWE: Vintersurr på Radio 1, Pye Jakobsson, 13/12 2011. My translation.
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10. SWE: Vintersurr på Radio 1, Pye Jakobsson, 13/12 2011. My translation.
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11. SWE: Carina Edlund & Pye Jakobsson: En annan horisont – sexarbete och hiv/sti-prevention ur ett peer-perspektiv, no date given,
and
Conferência Internacional PREVIH, Intervenção de Pye Jacobsson, da Rose Alliance, no Painel IV da II, 3/7 2013,
and
Pye, prostituée suédoise: "pénaliser le client n'est pas la solution, 28/6 2012.
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12. SWE: Äntligen med Gert Fylking, Radio 1, 26/8 2011.
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13. PRIS' goals at their website: www.nätverketpris.se/goals.html
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14. Conferência Internacional PREVIH, Intervenção de Pye Jacobsson, da Rose Alliance, no Painel IV da II, 3/7 2013.
and Pye, prostituée suédoise: "pénaliser le client n'est pas la solution, 28/6 2012.
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15. SWE: Jari Kuosmanen: Tio år med lagen. Om förhållningssätt till och erfarenheter av prostitution i Sverige, in Prostitution i Norden – Forskningsrapport, TemaNord 2008:604.

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