What we want now is we don’t want any persecutions from the
police and we would like to have the right to work normally.
In France, at the time, there were fears about the moral order
and sex workers were paying the price for that.
I had joined the Mouvement du Nid a Christian organisation helping sex workers.
Selling sex was legal in France but soliciting was not.
Police in Lyon had begun to crack down on the sex workers.
They were often fined for public indecency and if they didn't pay their fines they risked
being sent to prison.
Have you been sent to jail?
Not me, not yet, because until now I always pay the fine.
But for instance, if you have children you can’t pay the fine
you are put into jail and your children are taken.
Their role as mothers was really central to the protest
and helped people to sympathise with them.
Because many people understood that yes, these women could also be mothers.
Most prostitutes are doing this job to give their children a better life, a better education.
Churches were considered sanctuaries.
There were between 150 and 200 women occupying this church over ten days.
This protest was the first of its kind.
It got a lot of media attention and so women in other cities across France joined the movement in Marseille, Grenoble and Paris.
No girls at all are working at the moment in the streets of Paris.
There are no girls at all.
In 1975, sex workers came from lots of different backgrounds.
There were obviously women from a poor background there were also women who had studied.
I remember women who participated who had a law degree.
Why is the police persecution so strong nowadays?
Because there was a big scandal so they think maybe that
making repression against prostitute they think it’s good for the opinion of the public.
In 1972, there was a scandal in Lyon involving politicians and some members of
the police force.
They were accused of having links to prostitution.
And so for three years, women felt they needed to shout out loud in protest.
After 10 days, the interior minister ordered the sex workers out of the church.
But Simone Veil was the Social affairs minister and she had a different attitude.
She asked a judge to carry out an investigation into the women's situation.
That report condemned the repression against the women.
There wasn't any big governmental decision but they did stop systematically handing down fines for several years.
Beforehand, sex workers were seen as easy women,
women you could just pay to have a good time with.
Through this protest they were standing up for themselves,
saying we are just women and mothers.