Fifteen Years to Make a Decision: Filing a Report as a Sex Worker – Process and Reality (Switzerland 2026)
In the only Swiss survey to date that gives sex workers a voice, there is a statistic that says everything about everyday life in this industry: around 70 percent of the 24 people surveyed reported stealthing – the covert removal of a condom or an attempt to do so. About half experienced insults, discrimination, or theft of money and belongings. The Community Report by ProCoRe from November 2024 also documents who the perpetrators are: predominantly clients, but sometimes also passersby, colleagues, or partners.
And then there is the second statistic. Only around one-third went to the police at all.
This gap between experienced violence and filed reports is no accident and no sign of indifference. It has reasons – legal, practical, biographical. And it has shifted at several points over the last two years because the legal situation and available services have changed. This article explains what actually happens when a sex worker files a report: what alternatives to filing exist, what deadlines apply, where immigration law comes into play, and what the statistics say about prospects for success.
What Is Different in 2026 Than Three Years Ago
Four developments have changed the situation:
The revised Sexual Offences Act has been in effect since 1 July 2024. Since then, it is sufficient that the affected person has expressed their lack of consent through words, gestures – or through freezing, the so-called freezing response. The offence of rape is formulated in a gender-neutral way and no longer covers only vaginal intercourse. Stealthing is explicitly covered. Also new is a separate offence for the unauthorized dissemination of non-public sexual content (Art. 197a SCC) – relevant when a client shares or threatens to share secretly recorded images.
The numbers have visibly increased. The Police Criminal Statistics 2025, published in March 2026, record 1,402 reported rapes – an increase of 29.1 percent. This jump does not necessarily mean more violence, but rather a broader legal definition and apparently also more reports. Overall, registered criminal offences fell by 1.5 percent to 554,963, while serious violent crimes increased by 8.1 percent to 2,654.
Since 1 May 2026, there has been a national victim assistance hotline, 142. It is free, available around the clock, and does not appear on phone bills or call logs. During office hours, callers are connected directly to the responsible cantonal victim assistance office; outside office hours, specialized teams take over. For people calling from a studio or apartment where they do not officially live, this detail about the bill is not a minor point.
Victim assistance is being used more. The 2025 victim assistance statistics record 55,260 consultations, seven percent more than the previous year; 72 percent concerned female victims or relatives. 28 percent of consultations involved sexual offences. Compensation and restitution increased by ten percent to 7.3 million Swiss francs.
Three Routes – and Only One Is Called Filing a Report
The most common misconception is the assumption that there are only two options: go to the police or do nothing. In reality, there are three, and the order can be chosen freely.
Consultation Without Filing a Report
Victim assistance under the Victim Assistance Act (OHG) is independent of filing a report. The core requirement is that the criminal offence was committed in Switzerland and that physical, sexual, or psychological integrity has been directly impaired. Nationality and residence status are not criteria for access to consultation. Initial consultation is free, the advisory offices are subject to their own confidentiality obligations, and are not required to inform the police.
Applications for compensation and restitution, however, must be submitted within five years of the act or after becoming aware of it – otherwise the claim expires. The maximum amounts for restitution were adjusted for inflation as of 1 January 2025 and are 76,000 Swiss francs for victims and 38,000 Swiss francs for relatives. These state benefits also do not require a report, although the authority will of course want the facts to be credible – which is why documentation is so valuable.
Securing Evidence Without Contacting the Police
This is the part that is least known and has changed the most. In the Canton of Zurich, since April 2024, there has been the Mobile Forensic Nurses Service at the Institute of Forensic Medicine: forensically trained nursing professionals available around the clock who go to hospitals and document injuries and evidence in a legally admissible manner – without a report being filed. The secured evidence is preserved for fifteen years. The Bern model works according to the same logic.
The effect is measurable. In the first year, around 200 people affected by sexual or domestic violence were examined, and about 170 others received telephone support. And: 21 people subsequently filed reports – in the thirteen years before, it was only one. The Zurich government council made the service permanent in April 2026 and secured its funding.
For sex workers, this route is often the only realistic one. It decouples the medical necessity from the legal decision. You can secure evidence the night after the incident and answer the question of whether you can sustain proceedings months later. Important: The services are developed differently by canton. The 142 hotline or the cantonal victim assistance office will say what exists locally.
Filing a Report and Filing a Criminal Complaint
That leaves the third route. Those who take it should first know a distinction that determines the entire subsequent scope of action.
Complaint-Dependent Offence or Offence Prosecuted Ex Officio: The Distinction That Decides Everything
Offences prosecuted ex officio are pursued by the public prosecutor’s office as soon as it has knowledge of them. These include rape and sexual assault, coercion, robbery, extortion, fraud, aggravated bodily injury, and human trafficking. Once an investigation is set in motion, it cannot be withdrawn. You can express disinterest and partially refuse to give a statement, but the proceedings then belong to the state, not to the person who filed the report. Those who first learn this after the initial interrogation experience a loss of control that could have been avoided.
Complaint-dependent offences are only prosecuted upon explicit filing of a criminal complaint. Typical in everyday work: sexual harassment (Art. 198 SCC), assault, threats in basic form, trespass, property damage. Here, a deadline of three months applies, calculated from the day the perpetrator becomes known. If it expires, criminal prosecution is permanently closed – and three months is short when you still have to work, pay rent, and stabilize yourself in the meantime. A criminal complaint can be withdrawn, but this withdrawal is definitive.
In practice, this means: If an incident involves multiple offences – condom secretly removed, then not paid, phone stolen when leaving – different regimes run in parallel. This is precisely why a conversation with an advisory office before going to the police station is worthwhile, not after.
The Process, Step by Step
1. The initial report. This is possible at any police station or directly to the public prosecutor’s office. Several cantons have lowered the threshold: The Zurich Cantonal Police has operated an online reporting form specifically for sexual offences since 2025, after which the specialist department makes contact. In the first five months, 30 reports were received there, and about half resulted in a formal report. The trip to the counter – for many the real hurdle – is thus eliminated.
2. The interrogation. There are rights here that must be actively asserted because they are not granted automatically. Victims of offences against sexual integrity may demand to be interrogated by a person of the same gender (Art. 153 CCP) and that an interpreter of the same gender be present (Art. 68 para. 4 CCP). Fact sheets from public prosecutor’s offices recommend notifying such wishes at least five days before the appointment. There are also general protective measures under Art. 152 CCP – in particular avoiding direct contact with the accused person. A companion or trusted person may usually attend.
3. The role in the proceedings. Those who constitute themselves as a private party (Art. 118 CCP) gain access to files and party rights and can assert civil claims directly in criminal proceedings instead of filing a separate lawsuit. With limited means, free legal aid including a victim’s lawyer may be considered (Art. 136 CCP); the costs of legal representation can also be covered as a victim assistance benefit.
4. The most common outcome. The public prosecutor’s office may decide not to take the case or terminate the proceedings later. An appeal is possible against this – the deadline is ten days, which is short, and it runs even if you are not currently in a position to read mail. Those who have legal representation do not lose this deadline.
Reality in Numbers
It helps no one to gloss over this part. The reporting rate for sexual violence is low: A 2013 government report estimated less than 20 percent; a survey by the research institute gfs found eight percent of affected women went to the police.
It thins out from there. An analysis for the years 2016 to 2018 revealed a conviction rate of 22.8 percent of men charged with rape across Switzerland – with extreme cantonal differences: seven percent in the Canton of Zurich, 61 percent in Vaud. The NGO Brava calculates that of one hundred affected women, only about four see their perpetrator convicted.
These figures are not an argument against filing a report. They are an argument for evidence. Most dismissals do not occur because the statement is not believed, but because the evidence is insufficient for a conviction – it is a matter of one word against another. Those who have forensic documentation, secured chat logs and booking data, and told their story to a specialist service soon after the incident are in a different proceeding than someone who appears three months later without documentation. The fact that this evidence weakness is systematically greater in the sex industry has much to do with a circumstance we described in our article on structural discrimination despite legality: legality alone produces neither witnesses nor credibility.
The Point Where Immigration Law Comes Into Play
Here lies the hardest hurdle, and it is not imaginary. Under Art. 82 FAPSC, police, justice, and criminal investigation authorities must report to the cantonal migration authority, without being asked, if they initiate or terminate criminal investigations against foreign nationals, arrest someone – and if they determine that a person under examination is unlawfully present in Switzerland. Those who work without authorization or beyond the permitted duration thus risk the case turning into proceedings against themselves. Around 80 percent of sex workers in Switzerland have a migration background; for a considerable proportion, this reporting chain is the actual reason for not going to the police.
What still applies:
- Victim assistance is separate from it. Counseling centers under the Victim Assistance Act are not reporting offices of the migration authority.
- Self-incrimination is not mandatory. Anyone questioned as a witness or informant does not have to provide answers that would incriminate themselves (Art. 169 CPC). It’s better to know this boundary before sitting in the interview room.
- A separate regime applies in cases of suspected human trafficking. Art. 35 VZAE provides for a recovery and reflection period of at least 30 days, during which a decision can be made about cooperation with law enforcement; Art. 36 VZAE regulates residence during proceedings. A hardship permit is possible independently of willingness to testify.
- Anonymous reporting is possible. Suspected cases of human trafficking are recorded by the ACT212 specialist office anonymously and without consequences for the person reporting, even if the suspicion is not confirmed.
The scale is shown in the FIZ Annual Report for 2025: 300 cases in the victim protection program, of which 228 identified as victims of human trafficking, 65 people in residential shelter care; in migrant counseling, 396 additional people were added, including 119 sex workers. 87 criminal proceedings were pending based on reports from supported victims – the most common country of origin was Romania with 33 new cases.
Politically, this issue is in flux: A coalition of ProCoRe, Amnesty International, Aids-Hilfe Schweiz, the Swiss Catholic Women’s League, and the Sexworkers Collective has been calling since late 2024 for violent offenses to be reported without fear of immigration law consequences. GREVIO, the Council of Europe expert group on the Istanbul Convention, visited Switzerland in March 2026 and will formulate new recommendations by the end of 2026 – the first report from 2022 contained over 50 recommendations, including on incomplete data and unequal cantonal access to counseling.
When money is at stake: the underestimated report
Not every incident is physical violence. The most common conflict is more mundane – no payment is made. For a long time, the view was that contracts for sexual services were contrary to public morals and thus not enforceable. The Federal Court abandoned this jurisprudence in ruling 6B_572/2020 of January 8, 2021: A man had promised a sex worker 2,000 francs for a night, never had the money with him from the start, and disappeared from the hotel afterward. The Federal Court confirmed the conviction for fraud and stated that legal and voluntary prostitution is to be considered a socially adequate, permitted activity. The claim for compensation is thus protected in both criminal and civil law.
In practice, this means: Non-payment following prior deception is an official offense and subject to prosecution. Decisive are proofs of the price agreement – chat history, booking confirmation, screenshots of the ad. Anyone who wants to know generally how deception works in the erotic market and what traces it leaves will find the patterns that prosecutors respond to in our text on fake ads and advance payment scams.
What you can do before your shift to keep the option of reporting open later
A report does not arise in the moment of the incident, but from what was organized beforehand.
- Prepare numbers. 142 for victim assistance, 117 for police, the direct number of the nearest specialist office. We also describe the principle of having the crucial number in your phone before starting work using the example of the emergency contact before your shift.
- Don’t delete communications. Booking messages, price agreements, cancellations, threats. Screenshots with visible dates, saved outside the device.
- Inform a third party. A colleague who knows where you are and with whom. Their statement is testimony in proceedings later, not just a feeling.
- Have injuries documented, even without intent to report. A fifteen-year retention period means exactly that: time.
- Seek counseling before police. A single conversation clarifies which offenses are involved, what deadlines are running, and what the proceedings mean for your own residence status.
Counseling is cantonal – jurisdiction usually by place of offense or residence
The specialized counseling centers are the shortest path because they understand both: the proceedings and the industry. Xenia in Bern, Aliena in Basel, Isla Victoria in Zurich and Winterthur, Lysistrada in Solothurn, Fleur de Pavé in Lausanne, and Grisélidis in Geneva offer free, multilingual, and usually anonymous counseling; most are organized in the national ProCoRe network. The Basel-Stadt cantonal police additionally deploy specialized female officers who are present in the scene and take language courses for this purpose – an approach that understands trust as a prerequisite for reports, not as their byproduct.
The problem is unequal distribution. In smaller cantons, there is simply no specialist office for sex work, and victim assistance operates through jurisdiction rules you have to know – as we showed with the example of Obwalden, where you can choose counseling but not jurisdiction. In Schaffhausen, specialized support comes in large part from a neighboring canton. That’s why 142 is the most pragmatic first point of contact: It connects without having to know the cantonal organization chart logic.
Low-threshold services are increasingly thought of digitally. ProCoRe has deployed software in 2026 that searches online portals for active ads and sends links to cantonal counseling centers via WhatsApp to the numbers registered. In the pilot phase, 9,000 contacts were generated, with around ten percent of recipients responding promptly.
In brief
- Counseling doesn’t require a report. Victim assistance is free and independent of status and criminal proceedings; 142 is free and doesn’t appear on your bill.
- Securing evidence is your own decision. Forensic documentation without police involvement is possible in several cantons; retention is usually fifteen years.
- Deadlines are firm. Three months for the criminal complaint in cases requiring a complaint, ten days to appeal against discontinuation, five years for compensation and satisfaction.
- Official offenses proceed without you. If you know this beforehand, you make the decision consciously.
- Rights must be announced. Interview by a person of the same gender, translation by someone of the same gender, protection from encountering the accused, accompanying person.
- Immigration law is the most difficult point – but specialist offices, reflection periods under Art. 35 VZAE, and anonymous reporting channels exist.
- Evidence decides the outcome, not the severity of what was experienced.
The 21 subsequent reports from the first year of the Zurich model – compared to just one in the thirteen years before – say what this is really about. Not about pressuring victims into quick reports. But about keeping the decision open at all until you can make it.
This contribution reflects the status as of September 2026 and is not a substitute for legal advice. Cantonal jurisdictions and services differ; in a specific case, a specialist office or a lawyer for victim rights is the right contact.