JAYNE was five when the abuse started. Her parents had divorced when she was a toddler. It was her new step-father who set her on her pathway to drug addiction and sexual exploitation. By the time she was 15, Jayne had left home and was hooked on crack cocaine and heroin. Her boyfriend, John, first hit her when she'd thrown his drugs all over the floor during an argument.

But even Jayne was shocked by what he did next.

"He demanded I was to go on the streets to earn the money to pay for the gear I had wasted," she recalls. "I thought he was joking at first, but I was wrong.

"He took me to Middlesbrough and put me on a street corner and handed me a condom. After that night, he would take me to the red light area most evenings. He would stand near enough to watch me and after I had earned my money from doing a punter, he would take this off me and give me another condom. I hated him for this. After a while he'd just drop me off and tell me to earn the money for his drug use, which I handed over each evening.

"I remember on one occasion that I decided to spend my earnings on myself. Me and another girl called at a local drug dealer's and spent it on rocks and food. He beat me and my friend up. After that he got a friend, who was also involved in prostitution, to look out for me and watch what I was doing when I was out on the streets. I felt like a prisoner."

Jayne's descent into a life of drugs and sexual exploitation is a common one among those women who find themselves selling sex on the streets - and the dangers they face have been highlighted by the murders of the prostitutes in Ipswich.

It is a cycle of abuse that Wendy Shepherd, children's service manager at the charity Barnardo's in Middlesbrough, has seen countless times as head of the Secos (Sexual Exploitation of Children On the Streets) project. Secos works with vulnerable young girls aged from 12 to 25 and provides a drop-in centre for them to access help and support.

Through outreach work, they aim to get them off the streets by helping them to get counselling, drug or alcohol treatment, sexual health advice, education or basic life skills.

"For many of the women they're in a very difficult position," says Wendy. "If they're with an abusive partner who says you must go out and work to feed your drug habit and my drug habit, they end up between the devil and the deep blue sea. She can be beaten up for not going and when they do go out they can be attacked by people on the streets.

"There are some very dangerous people who kerb crawl around. For them it's not necessarily to do with sex, it's to do with power and violence and the fact that they can do these things to women."

Her comments illustrate exactly why there will still be prostitutes in Ipswich walking the streets tonight, even with a serial killer on the loose. Many women simply do not have a choice when it comes to selling sex. They feel powerless to leave their abusive pimps.

But how do they find themselves in such perilous circumstances in the first place?

"It's all to do with abuse and coercion," says Wendy. "Young people are often befriended by those who, on the surface, appear to be very nice, perhaps a boyfriend who ends up getting them addicted to drugs - then they become a pimp.

"There are other situations where young girls have run away from home only to be befriended by unscrupulous landlords. They may offer them a bed for the night and, before long, they have to pay that back in one way or another."

Vicki, 18, knows exactly what it's like to be groomed for prostitution. She and her friend were initially excited when their older 'boyfriends' bought them top-of-the-range phones, said they loved them and gave them money. They were given drink and, later, drugs.

Then it was payback time. With domestic abuse issues at home, Vicki felt trapped. She was forced to have sex in various flats and bedsits and, occasionally, a car park.

"My boyfriend would say 'get out of the car, go on, he's over there'," she says. "I'd get out of the car but I was screaming inside and I wanted to cry. I felt so dirty, most of the time I was on drink and drugs. A lot of it was a blur."

Eventually, Vicki told her story to a Barnardo's worker who supported her while she made a statement to the police. Since then, that support has enabled Vicki to return to education and her GCSEs. She wants to go to college.

But not everyone is as lucky as Vicki. For a long time, Jayne wondered if she would ever leave her abusive life behind. Her lowest point came when she was visiting a friend one day, and a well-known drug dealer came to pay a visit.

"He asked who I was, and once he discovered I was John's girlfriend he bundled me off into his car and took me to his house and locked me in a bedroom," she recalls. "John owed him £800 for drugs and he was taking me as ransom to get his money back. I was handcuffed to the bed and locked in the room for two days. During this time he raped and beat me. I only got out when this guy's brother let me free and I ran to the police, but John had disappeared."

So, what are the answers for helping vulnerable women? Should prostitution be legalised? Should there be zones which are monitored so they can pick up punters safely?

Wendy believes there needs to be an "holistic package of support" to get the women off the streets.

"We've worked with girls as young as 12 and, although it's rare to get them that young these days, at the end of the day there are still young people who shouldn't be out there," she says.

"I don't think you can decriminalise adult prostitution and then say it's not okay for 16 and 17-year-olds, because it's sexual exploitation. You have to get the message over that young people shouldn't be sexually exploited.

"Barnardo's feels strongly that we need to intervene as early as possible to ensure that they do not end up in the same situation as the women in Ipswich."

Although Jayne is safe now and feels protected by the police, deep down she is still terrified John may find her. She is slowly rebuilding her life with help from Barnardo's and has made contact with her mother again.

"When she asked me if I'd been on the streets selling sex I denied it," she says. "I couldn't tell her the truth, I feel so ashamed. He's ruined my life. I have no friends where I live, no one knows the full story and I can't tell them for fear of reprisals. All I want to do is get my life back in some order."

* The names of the abuse victims in this article have been changed to protect their identities.