A NEW prostitution strategy which aims to help women break free from the destructive cycle of drugs and vice was today backed by the father of one of the Ipswich red-light killings victims.

A NEW prostitution strategy which aims to help women break free from the destructive cycle of drugs and vice was today backed by the father of one of the Ipswich red-light killings victims.

Tania Nicol's father Jim Duell said the efforts gave the town hope that further tragedies could be avoided in the future.

He said: “It's giving us all hope.

“If kerb crawlers think it's a free-for-all, if we don't put up barriers to stop them doing this, you get a sense they will come along and think it's OK to do it.

“They've got to be made aware what they are doing is morally wrong.”

Miss Nicol was the second victim whose body was discovered on the outskirts of Ipswich. A week before, the body of 25-year-old Gemma Adams was found at Hintlesham and soon after the discovery of Miss Nicol's body the naked bodies of Anneli Alderton, 24, Annette Nicholls, 29, and Paula Clennell, 24 were found. All five had worked as prostitutes in Ipswich's red-light district.

Suffolk police has introduced a zero tolerance approach to kerb crawlers and officers have arrested a string of men caught prowling through the red-light district.

While the police try to stamp out demand for street prostitution, other agencies, led by Ipswich Borough Council and Suffolk County Council, say they are introducing extra measures to help sex workers get off the streets.

Mr Duell, whose daughter was the youngest of the five red-light killings victims at 19, said the women who work the streets need every bit of help they can get.

He said: “If we're going to be a proper society that is morally structured in the right order we shouldn't be standing there allowing this to happen.

“It's a long term effort but if you keep the effort up you will get the reward by helping people to get to a better way of life.

“You're going to get girls that aren't going to take a blind bit of notice but I believe a lot of the girls are going to take notice.

“It doesn't make girls happy to go out and do that (prostitution). (And) the kerb crawlers can't be happy. It's a thing they want to hide and if you want to hide something you know you've done something wrong.”

He added: “After all that has happened to allow the kerb crawlers to carry on and allow the girls to be in the street where that has happened well you might as well give up. Where would we be if someone didn't try to stop that going on?

“These are desperate people and they have to be helped out of that desperation. You don't plan to become a prostitute. They get so desperate they go out on the streets.

“People have to reach out and help them.”

Mr Duell, of Stone Lodge Lane West, Ipswich, has spent the past four-and-a-half months trying to come to terms with the loss of his daughter. He said he still can't absorb the fact that she is gone forever.

“It was so sudden. She just disappeared and never came back,” he said.

“It's mad, quite honestly absolutely mad.

“When I go up to see her resting place up at the cemetery that's when it really sinks in. I know that she's resting in peace.”