HALF a century after the Yorkshire Ripper’s reign of terror, sex workers are still working the same danger-plagued streets – and fear every night could be their last.
Just a stone’s throw from where evil prowled for victims, women ply their trade to punters in Bradford, West .
The city’s deprived Manningham area remains a gritty red-light district almost five decades after serial killer first struck.
Three of his 13 known murder victims came from , and the women who still work the patch tell The Sun that the Ripper’s shadow has never lifted.
‘Nothing has changed’
Mum-of-three Sarah, 30, said: “Fifty years on, what’s changed? Nothing.
“It’s still really dangerous to be out on the streets. You don’t know whose car you’re getting into.
“You don’t know if you’re going home at the end of the night. You don’t know if you’re going to end up in a hospital.
“Every time I get into a car, I don’t know if I’m coming back out.”;
Sutcliffe lived just north of Lumb Lane in Bradford’s red-light district, where he would often drive around watching the women working the streets.
Desperate to lose his virginity, he was tricked out of £5 by a sex worker, and in a fit of rage, returned with a brick in a sock – only to attack the wrong woman by mistake.
You don’t know if you’re going home at the end of the night
Sarah, 30
Experts believe it was on these streets that the violent, troubled Sutcliffe transformed into the
Patricia Atkinson, 32, was Sutcliffe’s fourth victim but the first to be slain in Bradford, in 1977.
The sex worker met Peter in Lumb Lane before being killed with a hammer in her flat on Oak Avenue.
The long-derelict block of flats – now a haven for antisocial behaviour – remains frozen in time as a haunting reminder of the Ripper.
Young mum Yvonne Pearson, 21, was battered with a hammer in 1978.
Her body was hidden under an old sofa on a grassy embankment just streets from her home, not far from Lumb Lane.
The Ripper’s third Bradford victim was 20-year-old student , whose murder in 1979 displayed how Sutcliffe’s violence extended beyond prostitutes.
The lorry driver was for years able to carry on his brutal reign of terror in part because police attitudes saw sex workers as dispensable and only took the case seriously once “innocent young girls”; had been killed.
Sarah, who has worked the streets since age 14 after being groomed and hooked on drugs, accused of similar failings today.
Her aunt Shelley Armitage, 31, was one of three sex workers butchered by self-proclaimed Crossbow Cannibal Stephen Griffiths in 2010.
The monster, who used power tools to dismember victims, revered and meticulously studied the methods of Sutcliffe.
‘Cops saw us as dispensable’
Sarah said: “I’ve been. You tell the police – they don’t do nothing. So you stop reporting it. What’s the point?
“They don’t care. They never have.”;
“I’m not a bad person. People think us prostitutes, we’re thieves, we’re liars, we’re horrible, we’re nasty, but we’re not. We’re really not. We’re just human beings that are lost.
“I didn’t choose this life for myself. People think we just woke up one day and thought we’d become prostitutes and get hooked on drugs.
“No-one wants to do what we do for £30 a go. There’s no pleasure in it, there’s money in it.
“We just scrape by,”;
Another sex worker, who asked not to be identified, said the fear of violence remained constant.
She said: “I grew up learning about the Ripper. The first car that I ever got in, I was s***scared.
“And, you know what, to this day, 20 years later I still get that feeling.
“It’s a constant fear every day that I could be the next victim.
“I’m dying to get out of it. I’m done with this. I’m sick of it.”;
During Sutcliffe’s killing spree, women’s groups accused police of institutional sexism.
I’ve been sexually assaulted, beaten, robbed so many times. You tell the police – they don’t do nothing. So you stop reporting it
Sarah, 30
Some victims’ families were even told their loved ones had “brought it on themselves”; by working as prostitutes.
The term “non-prostitute victim”; was shockingly used to distinguish Barbara Leach from others.
Tracy Browne, who was bludgeoned with a hammer in Silsden, Yorkshire, in 1975, was ignored by police who doubted her story because her profile as a 14-year-old schoolgirl did not fit with senior officers’ theory about the killer’s motivation.
The brutal attack was not filed as a Ripper assault until Sutcliffe confessed to police in Broadmoor prison in 1992.
In his disturbing confessional, Sutcliffe admitted: “I saw this Tracy Browne. She didn’t look 15, she looked 19 or 20. She were all dressed up. She were walking slowly up this lane.
“I thought, ‘Oh, she’s probably one of these prostitutes’ because I had it in my mind Silsden must be full of prostitutes.
“Anyway, I hit her with a branch or something, didn’t really injure her, and threw her over a wall. I climbed over and I was thinking of bumping her off and this voice said, ‘Stop, stop. It’s a mistake’.”;
Ms Browne, 62, said: “Sutcliffe was practising on me and as his cockiness increased, his crimes became more heinous.
“All his victims were real woman with real lives and real families.
“They deserve to be remembered for who they were.”;
I do honestly deeply believe that there is still misogyny in the police and lessons have not been learned after all these years
Mo Lea, 65
That same disbelief shown from authorities is still part of life in Bradford, say the women who work those streets today.
Ms Hollins added: “People think we’re thieves, we’re liars, we’re horrible, we’re nasty, but we’re not.
“We’re really not. We’re just human beings that are lost.”;
It is feared the Ripper, who died of Covid in 2020, was behind a shocking tally of unsolved cases that have remained dormant for decades.
A report after he was handed 20 life sentences in 1981 found that Sutcliffe could have been responsible for a further 13 offences.
Cases linked to the Ripper include Mo Lea, who almost had her spinal cord severed as he pinned her to the ground and assaulted her with a sharpened screwdriver.
Mo, 65, who was attacked in Leeds in 1980, warned that without real action the killings of Sutcliffe and Griffiths could be repeated.
She said: “I’ve always said if these victims had been men, lessons would have been learned. At the time in the 70 and 80s, women were deemed as second class citizens.
“And to this day, I still think that is the case.
“I do honestly deeply believe that there is still misogyny in the police and lessons have not been learned after all these years.”;
NOBODY TALKS ABOUT HIM HERE
A report after Sutcliffe was handed 20 life sentences in 1981 found that he could have been responsible for a further 13 offences.
The 1982 Byford report, made public in 2006, said: “We feel it is highly improbable that the crimes in respect of which Sutcliffe has been charged and convicted are the only ones attributable to him.”;
It was revealed in 2017 that police interviewed Sutcliffe in jail about 16 unsolved attacks but they did not quiz him about any murders.
No charges were ever brought.
In 2020, for the “language, tone and terminology”; used in the 70s to describe Ripper victims.
Force Chief Constable John Robins said the language used at the time was “as wrong then as it is now”;.
He insisted that the force’s approach to investigations was now “wholly victim-focused”;.
