KINGSWAY runs from Hope Road, adjacent to the Andrew’s Memorial Hospital to West King’s House Road, where, just around the corner, is the Canadian High Commission. It is in one of the capital’s better neighbourhoods, with apartment and townhouse complexes, sprinkled with a few old-style homes with large front yards.

In daytime there is a kind of middle class correctness about the place.

Until night time, most night prowlers will tell you. At least up to about three weeks ago.

These days, even at night, it is middle-class correct.

The scantily-dressed women are missing from the sidewalks. No catcalls as cars slow at intersections. The drawled “Hi, baby. You want som’ng?”, is absent. No cars pulling close to the curbside for a quick negotiation about a quickie.

“Things around there dead,” one regular said last week. “At least for now. The girls not taking any chances right now.”

The concern is about safety after what happened to Yvette Douglas, 41, who was known on the streets as “Oney”.

Douglas was one of the women who used to be on Kingsway. A prostitute, or commercial sex worker as they are called these days.

On the night of August 9, Douglas was on the job with other colleagues when a group of men drove up in a green Mitsubishi motorcar into which they attempted to force one of the women. She resisted and Douglas went to help, leading to a struggle.

One of the men pulled a gun and shot Douglas twice — in the left breast and right shoulder. She died on the spot.

While the police do not keep records of attacks on prostitutes as a category, violence against women who sell sex on the streets is fairly common, with a few cases leading to death, according to the women themselves, health officials and NGOs who monitor their activities.

In fact, according to prostitutes who work in the New Kingston area, the week before Douglas’ murder, the body of a sex worker, who had been abducted from one of the city’s unofficial red light districts, was dumped near a shopping plaza on Constant Spring Road. The police, however, could not confirm this incident.

The causes of the violence run the gamut — from Johns not wanting to pay for the sex they get and prostitutes being considered easy targets for theft.

“Most times is because the man them done have sex and want them money back or them want to have sex again but don’t want to pay,” says Sharon, a New Kingston regular.

“At least once a month or so a car or bus will drive up and the man them try to drag one of us with them,” she adds.

Princess, 26, is a very attractive young woman. About five feet eight inches tall, she is extremely well proportioned. Flat stomach, round backside, doe eyes in a slightly oval face. She has dark, smooth skin.

This night Sharon is wearing four-inch heels and minuscule pair of black shorts. She remembers the time when she was abducted, gang-raped then left on a deserted road.

Well, she had negotiated terms with “a decent-looking” man and had agreed on the location for the tryst. He didn’t drive to where they had agreed.

“When I got out of the car and look, there were five guys waiting and them say if I don’t give them what them want they would kill me,” she recounts.

Sharon pauses and drags deeply on a cigarette held between fingers that have grown nervous with the memory.

“One of them,” she goes on, “back a gun and hit me on the side of my head and start to beat me. So, I just give in and give them what them want. All five of them.”

Yet, Sharon is still on the streets. Beckoning passing motorists, offering sex for cash.

“It’s business,” says one woman who hangs out at one of the New Kingston spots. “It dangerous, but it’s business.”

Indeed, most of the women say they understand the dangers of nights on the streets, turning tricks. Several, like Princess, have stories of rapes and robberies and even abductions.

“Quite often, when there is an exchange of money for sex, solicitors confuse a business transaction for an act or service to mean full ownership of the body and, therefore, the right to mistreat the commercial sex work at will,” explains Lois Hue, the director of the HIV/AIDS programme at the Jamaica Red Cross, which runs clinics and outreach programmes for prostitutes.

“At that point, such abuses are more than sexual offences,” adds Hue. “They are violation of a person’s human rights.

Howard Gow is executive director of Patricia House, a residential treatment facility for drug addicts. His clients are sometimes prostitutes who are also drug addicts.

Gow sees violence against prostitutes as part and parcel of a wider problem of violence against marginalised people, some of whom happen to be on the streets.

“There is an unacceptable level of violence directed towards all such people by the wider society,” says Gow.

Princess makes the same point. Often, she notes, crimes against prostitutes go unpunished and there is little investigation.

“Is like we don’t count,” Princess says. “A lot of people don’t recognise we who sell sex, much less those who sell sex on the streets. Because we have to do this to feed we pickney, them feel we is less of a human.”

Adds another: “This sort of thing (violence against prostitutes) has been happening for a long time now. But (because) most people say, ‘Is just the ol’ whoring gal’ when them beat up the girl them or take them ‘way an’ rape them, it don’t make the news.”

But aware of the dangers they face on the streets, prostitutes have developed a number of mechanisms for protection, including arming themselves, operating in clusters and sharing information and fostering co-operative arrangements with security guards and other people who work nights in the areas where they operate.

One night recently, some of the women revealed that they carried knives, ice-picks or phials of acid. A few had pepper-spray or mace hidden in their purses.

“When the whole a we (all of us) stand up here we make sure all a we all right,” one woman says, explaining why they work in clusters. “You feel safer if is more of you.”

Some, like Doneisha depend on good luck, good judgement and the arrangement she has worked out with the security guard of the apartment complex outside which she works. The guard, if she is being stalked, allows her to hide inside the complex. And when she leaves to turn a trick, he makes a note of the make, colour and licence number of the car in which she leaves.

“I just work by the grace of God,” Doniesha says. “I mean, I try to make good decisions on who I go with. Like, I don’t do business with young boys.

“I only go with man over 40 cause the older man them have money and usually just want straight sex and not interested in beating you or anything like that.”

So far, Doniesha’s luck has held. She has avoided being raped and has twice slipped abduction attempts.

On the streets, luck and co-operation work well. Being swift is also an asset — the one employed by most of the prostitutes in times of danger.

As Carlene well understands. That’s not her real name. That’s what everyone calls her. She looks like Carlene, the Dancehall Queen who was particularly popular in the mid to late 1990s.

“More time, you just have to take off you shoes and run,” she says.

Tonight, Carlene is wearing a long purple wig. She flips a strand of the hair from her eyes and exaggeratedly chews her gum. She pauses in contemplation. Perhaps thinking about Yvette Douglas — Oney — and the girl whose body was found in the plaza. And perhaps about her own life.

“What we go do?” she asks, rhetorically. “Survival we (have to) deal with!”