Thai Hookers In Uk (increases )

[eric1000]

Sex comes out of the city into middle England

Government ponders legalisation as explosion in prostitution sees number of sex workers rise by 50 per cent in five years to create £770m business

David Smith, Tony Thompson and Gaby Hinsliff

Sunday April 18, 2004

The Observer

The elderly matrons flicking through Country Life and Good Housekeeping in Julie's hairdressing salon may or may not be aware of the services on offer in the next room. Sitting innocuously in a street lined by luxury cars, clipped hedges and whitewashed homes, Julie's is a front for the buying and selling of sex.

At first glance, nothing could be further from the neon lights of Soho than a spring afternoon in Cavell Road, Billericay, Essex, filled with birdsong and the shouts of children from a nearby school. Women waiting their turn in Julie's hairdresser fit the popular image of the 'blue-rinse brigade'. Male customers who ask for the sauna services are quietly led through a thick bead curtain to something very different.

'I'm just out of the shower,' smiled the nubile Louise, wearing only a towel. A basic sauna massage will cost £20, says the hairdresser/madam. Extra requirements should be negotiated with the girl.

The affluent residents of Cavell Road, who include City brokers and company directors, know all about Julie's unofficial offerings, but feel powerless to stop it. 'It's disgusting,' said one. 'We live near a school and it attracts the wrong kind of people. We used to get them parking outside our house. It was so obvious: they're middle-aged baldies. There was a petition to get it closed and we contacted the police, but they didn't do anything.'

Another neighbour, who lives in a £400,000, four-bedroom house, said: 'My worry is house prices and whether they could be affected by this place being here. Would a similar house a few streets away sell for more? If my husband gets a cab home, the driver makes a knowing comment and my husband has to say: "No, I actually live there".'

Brothels and prostitution are no longer confined to the seedy underside of the big city. In sleepy suburbs, country villages and the bastions of moral conservatism, there are women plying their trade and men willing to pay. And police commonly turn a blind eye, pointing to a lack of local resources and coherent national policy.

The number of people offering sexual services in Britain has increased by a staggering 50 per cent in the past five years, according to new figures obtained from the European Parliament.

There are now as many as 80,000 women working as prostitutes in the UK, their numbers swelled by an influx of 20,000 immigrants. In London alone, an academic study found that men spend £200 million a year on sex, almost half in massage parlours and saunas.

Across the UK, the industry is believed to be worth about £770m a year, with street prostitution accounting for only about five per cent. New massage parlours have sprung up in once unlikely places such as Herne Bay, Glastonbury, Lincoln and Highbridge.

In recent months, the courts have dealt with a spate of offenders, which few doubt represent the tip of an iceberg. About 15 women were discovered working above a sex shop called the Pleasure Zone in Darlington, resulting in the owner having £900,000 worth of assets frozen. A supermarket worker running a brothel in Basingstoke was caught after his landlady was greeted by a girl wearing sexy underwear.

Another brothel was found operating out of a caravan on the A1 near Bedale, North Yorks. A former post office worker was caught running one from her home in Newton Abbot, Devon. Six Bulgarian women were found working in a parlour in Swansea by detectives from the National Crime Squad.

Earlier this month, a woman involved in a gang that ran Britain's biggest-ever Thai prostitute racket was ordered to pay back a huge slice of her profits or face 15 months in jail. The racket was based in Worthing, Sussex, and the gang ran a finishing school for prostitutes in Wimbledon, south-west London. Last week a civilian police worker appeared in court accused of living off earnings from a massage parlour in Leicestershire.

Despite these victories, police have spoken about their frustration at losing the war against organised crime gangs exploiting an influx of prostitutes from abroad. So dire is the situation that the Government is under pressure to consider partial legalisation of prostitution, in so-called tolerance zones, when it publishes a review in June.

Alarm bells are ringing across Europe after a report last week warned of an explosion in the sex industry. 'Internet access has put sex into every home and boosted the exploitation of women and the traffic in sex slaves,' said Marianne Eriksson, a Swedish MEP, who has called for a study into 'the reasons behind the sexual behaviour of men'.

According to the National Crime Squad, about 600,000 people are illegally brought into the EU each year, the vast majority of them for sexual exploitation. The European Parliament will debate the issue next week.

The rise in internet use and increasingly relaxed attitudes to sex have been cited as the main reasons behind the surge. Superintendent Chris Bradford of the Met's Clubs and Vice Squad, the largest unit of its kind in the country, said: 'Paying for sex has become a commonplace activity in our society. The internet has opened up new opportunities for people to obtain material that would previously have been available only in adult bookshops.

'It is my theory that exposure to this has in turn raised the stakes for thousands of men who now want something more than pictures.

'They are going out on to the streets and finding women who are there to facilitate them. Because of this, we are seeing an increase in demand for prostitution.'

Demand has been met by supply. There are now more women working in the sex industry than ever before, the result, in London particularly, of a dramatic increase in foreign prostitutes.

Eight out of 10 women employed in brothels or massage parlours in the capital are now from eastern European or the Balkans. Their exploitation has meant sex is rivalling drugs as the prime revenue source for organised crime. Although prostitution itself is not an offence in Britain, running or recruiting for a brothel is illegal, yet the police say they are powerless to intervene.

Vice Squad officers do visit virtually every massage parlour in the London area - chiefly in search of juveniles and women being held against their will - but say they cannot afford the time or money to close them down.

'Does that play into the hands of organised crime?' Bradford asked rhetorically. 'There are no two ways about it. It is just as easy for a pimp to smuggle someone into the country and set them up as a prostitute as it is for them to bring in hard drugs. And over time, the profits will be roughly the same. But the penalties for bringing in drugs are severe, which is not the case when it comes to trafficking people.'

Penalties will be increased sharply from 1 May, when the new Sexual Offences Act makes it illegal to transport women across borders for the purposes of sexual exploitation, but, according to Bradford, not all who enter Britain come under thisdefinition.

'Trafficking is a very emotive term. Lots of the women who come here know exactly what they are going to be doing. Many of them have been working as prostitutes in their own countries and earning a pittance. They see Britain as a place where they can do the same work, but earn significantly more.

'Where it often falls down is that the women find themselves in a form of debt bondage and end up with only a tiny proportion of the money they earn, the rest going to their pimp.'

The change in social attitudes is typified by the boom in lap-dancing clubs in London and elsewhere, some of which act as a front for massage parlours. Access to sex for sale has never been easier - via the internet, top-shelf magazines, certain newspapers or specialised guides such as McCoy's Guide to Adult Services, which boasts on its cover: 'Including 448 massage parlours, 38 escort agencies, 144 private flats and houses, 341 individual working ladies, plus assorted erotic parties, dominatrices, working couples and working twosomes.'

The author, George McCoy, also runs a website and a phone line with his 'Pick of the Month: Top Ten Massage Ladies'. He said: 'Most middle-class friends find what I do quite acceptable. I do after-dinner speeches to Round Tables all over the country. Sometimes one of the guests will come up to me afterwards and talk about his experiences. In the past, it was something they'd never make public, but now they think: "What the ######."

'There is less stigma about visiting a parlour now than there was 10 or 20 years ago. It's accepted as another feature of everyday life. We are told to be politically correct about everything - you can't drink, you can't smoke - and people just think, "Sod it".'

McCoy has become acquainted with many of the women involved. 'There are a lot of single mums trying to make a better living than they can on the checkout at Tesco. There is an increase in Thais and east Europeans. But there are a lot of girls working in flats in middle-class areas, such as Sevenoaks. There are also a lot now charging £400-£600 minimum, or thousands for a week.'

Hilary Kinnell, of the UK Network of Sex Work Projects, which represents 60 organisations working with prostitutes, said there was evidence of prostitution spreading from cities into smaller towns to escape active policing. The sudden arrival of prostitutes in S#####horpe, she claimed, appeared to have been triggered by a crackdown in Doncaster.

With no clear national policy, the 43 police forces in England and Wales are left to their own devices. Only a handful have full-time vice squads, even where significant numbers of prostitutes are known to be operating. Street prostitutes attract the most complaints from residents, so resources tend to be focused on them. In Bradford, police have targeted kerb crawlers and pimps rather than prostitutes. In Southend and the centre of Nottingham, police seek anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) against persistent street walkers, breach of which can lead to up to five years' jail.

Liverpool is considering the radical experiment of Dutch-style 'streetwalking zones' in the inner city. Earlier this months, officials from Utrecht in Holland travelled to Merseyside to brief senior police chiefs, civil servants and local councillors. If the scheme were introduced, prostitutes and punters could carry on without fear of arrest between certain hours within the zones. It would include a drop-in centre with a needle exchange, condoms - and advice about routes out of prostitution.

Pimps would be banned, and uniformed police would be on patrol, backed up by CCTV - a response to a string of brutal prostitute murders on Merseyside. The rest of the city would become a no-go zone for sex workers, easing tensions with residents.

But any such experiment first needs Home Office per mission to halt prosecutions, which would mean a change in the law. All eyes in Liverpool are now on the Home Office's review of prostitution law, due in June. Such 'tolerance zones' are expected to emerge as one key option, although Ministers insist the paper is intended only to spark public debate,

Political nervousness about even such limited decriminalisation is high. Home Office Minister Hazel Blears said decriminalisation is an 'unlikely outcome' of the review, because of the clear links between prostitution, organised crime and drugs. In Edinburgh, a pioneering 'tolerance zone' in the Leith docks district was recently abandoned after the area was regenerated and new residents, snapping up its smart warehouse apartments, made their objections known.

But others argue that a fresh clampdown on punters could endanger women. Trish O'Flynn, senior policy officer at the Local Government Association, said: 'The profile of the typical man who buys sex is not a sad, single bloke in his fifties: he's a 30-year-old who's married, with no criminal record and a good job.

'There is a debate to be had here. Is it just another commercial activity - albeit not a very pleasant one - that people enter by choice and it just should be regulated?

'Or is it something that is unacceptable, and we should be looking at what motivates people to buy sex and how we could remove the demand?'

· Additional reporting by Rob Colvile

How sex laws differ around the world

· In Britain, prostitution is not illegal if the prostitute works independently without disturbing the public order. Men who are found buying sex several times in prostitution areas can be fined. It is a crime to advertise, run a brothel or recruit for prostitution.

· In the 1950s, sex guru Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behaviour In The Human Male claimed that 70 per cent of American men had had sex with prostitutes.

· In Greece, brothels are not allowed within 200 metres of public buildings. Athens considered a proposal for a new law to halve the distance to facilitate prostitution during this summer's Olympics, but decided against.

· In the Netherlands, prostitution is legally defined as a profession and prostitutes join the Service Sector Union. They have been required to pay income tax since 1996. Brothels employ 30,000 people.

· In Singapore, working women have to carry a 'yellow card' proving they are registered and have recently undergone a twice-weekly health check. Some brothels provide voluntary benefits to keep the prostitutes working there.

· In Sweden, it has been illegal to buy or try to buy sexual services since January 1999. Prostitution is considered to be an expression of unequal relations between men and women.

· Germany passed a law in December 2002 that gave prostitution legal recognition. Cologne has legalised 'drive-in' brothels, with covered parking, and bedroom and shower facilities.

· Prostitution is illegal in the United States, except for Nevada, where 'cat houses' have been legal since 1970. There are up to 40 brothels and more than 300 licensed prostitutes. At the £2.5 million Wild Horse Resort And Spa, working women don latex gloves to give men's private parts a check-up for clinical hygiene.

[Basher]

They go to the brit embassy, get a form, fill it in and tell lots of lies....

Surely it would be easier to open a bar, fill it full of ladies who will have sex for money and make a killing pimping?

Bash

[davethailand]

all these <deleted> are worried about is the value of their house, i lived not far from billericay and thats the typicle response i'd expect.

[dr_Pat_Pong]

They go to the brit embassy, get a form, fill it in and tell lots of lies....

Surely it would be easier to open a bar, fill it full of ladies who will have sex for money and make a killing pimping?

Bash

Might those ladies be leaving a plain brown envelope with the immigration officer as a thank you for favorable consideration ?

[eric1000]

have you noticed the speelchecker has blanked S*C*U*N*Thorpe ?

it picked up the c*u*n*t in sc*unthorpe ??

maybe there are plenty of c*unts in sc*unthorpe !

[davethailand]

don't know about that but theres a total and utter c**t from bournemouth, erco i believe.

[thaimee]

#####s do come in all shapes and sizes don't they? as for hookers can't say the topic is worth mentioning. look at thai prostitutes, they are so considerate asking for numeration once the acrobatics have finished. now in the UK, i believe the in thing is the cash before hand and a performance to rival eddie edwards on the ski slope. so i agree with davethailand that the only reason for complaints is because of possible devaluation in the locality. long live the oldest profession!

(for reference have tasted all the flavours ) Thaimee.

[Richard W]

They go to the brit embassy, get a form, fill it in and tell lots of lies....

Do you have any statistics on this?

One scenario is: Briton meets bargirl. He falls in love and brings her home as wife/fiance. She promptly vanishes.

One suspects that she has lied about her intention to live with the guy. But perhaps when she gets to Enlgand, she finds that things are intolerable. No one has advised her what to do in such a situation (neither the British ECO nor Thai Emigration seem to have offered my wife information or advice in case of a prompt breakdown in the relationship) and she has no access to the funds to buy a ticket home. In the this variation, no lies need have been told. (Moreover, the lady need not have been a prostitute in Thailand.)

I'm not sure how easy it is to get honest work in the UK without the right visa stamp nowadays. Ecro's dictum 'once a prostitute, always a prostitute' may have some truth in this case, in that having done something repugnant once, it is easier to do it again. Let me give him another quote - 'No one wants to be a prostitute.'.

We've seen on this forum the case of a Scotsman who was happy for his Thai wife to continue working as a prostitute when she came to Britain. Was the ECO told any lies in this case?

I've heard of a case (from someone who worked on the ensuing divorce case) of a Briton who turned out to have a higly erratic income of dubious legality. He brought a bargirl home to England as his wife, they had a child, and then, so the family could make ends meet, she went on the game with her husband's knowledge. She eventually ditched him as a waste of space. Who lied to the ECO in this case? If anyone, I suspect it was the husband.

Are there not cases of men bringing in Thai wives / fiancées and forcing them to work as prostitutes? (I don't remember hearing of any specific cases.) No girls need not have lied to the ECO in these cases either.

There is also the possibility of straightforward clandestine illegal immigrants, possibly imported by the container-load.

[ASIC]

A lot of illegal workers arrive through Rome Italy as tourists. They then disappear in the Schengen countries. How they arrive in the UK, I am not sure.

ASIC

[OldAsiaHand]

They go to the brit embassy, get a form, fill it in and tell lots of lies....

Surely it would be easier to open a bar, fill it full of ladies who will have sex for money and make a killing pimping?

Bash

Might those ladies be leaving a plain brown envelope with the immigration officer as a thank you for favorable consideration ?

There have been persistent rumours for many years that the visa section of the British Embassy does tend to leak a bit. Are the rumours true? I venture no personal view here, but instead I will simply quote a character in Robert Altman's, 'The Player' who was asked a similar question about entirely different sorts of rumours of unpleasant things: "The rumours are always true."

[MadFrankie]

A lot of illegal workers arrive through Rome Italy as tourists. They then disappear in the Schengen countries. How they arrive in the UK, I am not sure.

ASIC

channel tunnel with fake euro passports more likely than not...

[dragonmasterzip]

They have sex in England?

I thought that sort of thing wasn't done?

[Basher]

They have sex in England?

I thought that sort of thing wasn't done?

Only with the lights out mate, and through very thick wooly clothes....

Bash

[Axel]

Only with the lights out mate, and through very thick wooly clothes....

Bash

No, I don't believe this. Isn't it rather on Saturday afternoons? The curtains are closed, hubby puts a red bulb in the night-table lamp and a porn - movie from Thailand (Axel, keept it related to Thailand) into the machine.

THAN, when he sees these nice girls from Thailand and his wife of 20 years from England walks in....

that's when he feels sorry for the electricity used by the red bulb.

[Axel]

Might those ladies be leaving a plain brown envelope with the immigration officer as a thank you for favorable consideration ?

Dr. you are not suggesting anything into the direction of the consular service, I hope

Let's say, these ladies probably had a lot of career experience already in LOS, collected the one or other house, have a few kids at home and a few more Bahts in the bank account. All assets that will be positively seen at the embassies (I do not limit this to one, only) towards granting a visa.

Now, the assets they offer in overseas, might be ripe, overripe but not stale. Mind you the average man on the street in Western countries has difficulies to judge age by seeing an Asian face.

[wolf5370]

A lot of Essex is new big houses. Most of these were built in the last 20 years. If you ever go there and talk to the residents you will hear a distinctly East London accent. During the 80's old voctorian houses shot up from the likes of 15 grand to 300+ grand. Many sold up and moved out to rebuild Cockney land in Essex (and Kent to a lesser degree). Many of these people are from common stock, many of the 'blue rinse brigade' were probably on the game themselves during the war. Makes me laugh to hear their worries that it will affect their property values - Thatcher gave them a massive spending power boost, and Essex house prices were very low then to boot. They've done nothing but gain.

How do I know this? I was born in the East End. I am a Cockney (born in the sound of Bow Bells and all that) - Bancroft Road Hospital infact. My parent's 3 floor double breasted victorian house was worth just 14k in 1979 - we sold and moved to the country - It was resold in 1988 for half a million - it is probably worth double that now (or has been broken in to flats more likely).