Following the Department of Justice’s explosive report that members of the Worcester Police Department (WPD) engaged in illegal sex acts with vulnerable women, particularly sex workers, a collective of sex worker advocates in Worcester is demanding the City Manager Eric D. Batista provide an apology and reparations for these women.
Project Priceless, an organization dedicated to helping women escape sex work, filed two petitions focused on the women in the WPD report to be heard by the Worcester City Council at their Dec. 17 meeting.
“The bottom line is that these women are surviving male violence from strangers, boyfriends, pimps on the daily,” said Sathi Patel, the coordinator for Project Priceless. “And the mere fact that it’s cops, people appointed to protect and serve, is just the icing on the cake in these women’s lives.”
The first petition asks the council to request Batista issue a public acknowledgment, condemnation and apology for the sexual abuse of the prostituted women by the officers as detailed in the Department of Justice’s report, according to the city council’s agenda. The second petition asks the city council to request Batista allocate financial reparations and mental health support to the women harmed by the abuses listed in the WPD report.
Released on Dec. 9, the 41-page Department of Justice report revealed members of the WPD used excessive force, engaged in discriminatory tactics and engaged in illegal sex acts with women.
Multiple women told Department of Justice investigators that Worcester police officers engaged in unwanted sexual contact with them during undercover operations, took advantage of them sexually in vulnerable situations, and threatened arrest if they did not perform sex acts, according to the report.
A day after the report was released, Batista released a statement saying it was unfathomable to him that any police officer or employee of the city could or would have acted in manners he described as “unlawful egregious, and immoral.”
Patel told MassLive that her hope for these petitions is to have them approved by the city council but is unsure if the body will pass them. At the very least, Patel wants these petitions to accelerate conversations that address the subjection of women to prostitution, the opioid epidemic and homelessness.
“We would hope that the momentum keeps going and we are able to self organize the solutions to our material conditions if the city administration isn’t willing to advocate that struggle,” Patel said.
Additionally, the organization has filed two other petitions for Tuesday’s meeting. The first calls on the council to request Batista commit to criminalizing abusers, including sex buyers, pimps and police officers who abuse women, while also decriminalizing and rehabilitating abused women, according to the agenda. The second petition calls on the council to request Batista allocate resources and a building for a shelter operated by Project Priceless that would provide resources such as harm reduction to homeless women.
Liz Grajales filed the four petitions on behalf of the organization, the agenda reads.
Project Priceless was formed in 2023 following the closure of the Safe Exit Initiative shelter, according to the organization’s webpage. The webpage reads that the organization meets weekly to organize around social problems that these women face.
“None of these women are consensually working as prostitutes,” Patel said. “It’s something that is happening to them, which is why we say we call for the end of the sex trade.”