Phoebe Utteridge

What keeps women coming back to Christchurch's red-light strip

"It always keeps it in the back of my mind, that something actually could happen," she says.

She turns away roughly 10 cars a night, because she gets a gut feeling that something isn't quite right. "If he stopped at someone else and they haven't gone, you always think ‘why not'," she says. "We trust each other's opinions."

Hayley knew Manning, and remembers Te Pania being "talkative with everyone."

Unlike Sarah, Hayley chooses the work because she enjoys it, and says she makes a lot of money, sometimes upwards of $800 a night.

"There's a sense of pride in that," she says. "I do very well for myself."

The 30-year-old is articulate, softly spoken, with a quiet confidence about her. She says she's had jobs in the corporate world, but sex work has always been a part of her life.

"It's actually a thrill to be out on Manchester St… If I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't," she says. "I know I can do other things."

For decades, Manchester St in central Christchurch has been known for street-based sex work. But for the roughly 25 women who take to the street each week, the job — and the risks — have changed.

Sarah* is no stranger to Christchurch's Manchester St.

The 48-year-old has spent much of her life as a sex worker there, returning again and again despite attempts to leave.

"It's easy money. And I have a drug addiction," she says, shrugging her shoulders.

Sarah says she first learnt sex could be exchanged for money when she was sexually exploited as a child.

"I had no childhood," she says.

Manchester St, from its intersection with Kilmore St to Bealey Ave, is known to most in Christchurch as the city's informal red-light district.

After dark most nights, it is lined with women offering sexual services.

Five nights a week, Sarah does her makeup, and heads there around 10pm.

She says she wants to stop, she's been working on her CV and applying for gardening jobs, but it's work she knows, and work that she says comes easily to her.

She says she was exposed to drugs early and started taking opium from a young age. Now, she takes morphine every day. "I don't use that much methamphetamine, because I don't like it," she says.

A dark history

A plaque that honours the lives of women who have lived, worked and died on the streets of Christchurch was unveiled on a newly refurbished memorial seat on Manchester St this week. The previous plaque was stolen.

For Sarah, the seat is personal. She knew some of the women who were murdered.

Five women have been killed working on Christchurch streets since 2005: Bella Te Pania in 2020, Renee Duckmanton in 2016, Ngatai 'Mallory' Manning in 2008, Suzie Sutherland in 2005 and a 24-year-old, whose name remains suppressed, also in 2005.

Sarah still remembers the night Sutherland went missing.

"I'd seen her about half an hour before she got into that car," she says.

The women had flatted together for a time, and Sarah held onto memories of Sutherland's "nice, bubbly" character.