Their are mixed emotions when it comes to legalising prostitution. I know girls who are high class escorts, girls who work in ‘massage’ parlours and friends own escort agencies. These girls I know do not seem to be victims, but happy in what they do. They offer a service and get paid for it. They have chosen with their own minds to work in this profession and have not been forced into it.
They work in enviroments that are relatively safe for them and legalising prostitution would make it even safer. They would pay tax on very high earnings and they wouldn’t be commiting a crime or getting a criminal record for doing something that they want to do.
Legalising would mean that the goverment could tax their earnings therefore giving the economy a much needed boost.
The enviroment the girls work in wouldn’t be undercover and could be made safer
Proper healthcare would become more easily accessible to them.
They would have more rights in the workplace and holiday pay if required.
Escort girl Helen Wood made the headlines when it was revealed she slept with Wayne Rooney.
She and an escort friend did a threesome with the footballer in July 2009. The newspapers got wind of it, but all three denied that the event happened. Helen didn’t want it to ever come out because of her son. Suddenly her friend’s phone went quiet. She was in hiding with the tabloids. The friend sold her story to the papers, revealing Helen’s identity.
A week later, with her cover blown and her small town talking about her, Helen sold her tale too. At that stage, she decided that she had nothing to lose. She tells me that Wayne wasn’t blessed with good looks but he was “nice and not an a***hole like some of them”.
This is the story of an ordinary girl who became a single mother at 16 and then got herself into debt. She had borrowed £500 from a loan shark for a holiday to Spain. When she was made redundant from her £260-a-week office job, she had no way of paying it back.
Worried one night, she phoned her friend who suggested that she join an escort agency.
Dressed in a blazer, skinny jeans and stilettos, Helen went for an interview at the agency to work as an Escort in Manchester. “How soon can you start?” they asked. A girl hadn’t turned up for work and there was a man downstairs waiting in a room. Helen went in and slept with him.
Helen earnt £500 by that evening working for the Manchester Escort Agency and stayed with them for another 2 years.
In total Helen worked as a Manchester Escort for 2.5 years
“I had a choice. I could have left plenty of times but I didn’t want to, because the money was so good. It was addictive. There were some really low points but you just got over them and picked yourself up again. There are regrets but at the same time, it’s a business arrangement. It was a job and it’s all about acting.
“Sometimes I enjoyed my job. I met a lot of people and, hopefully, with my advice and reassurance, I left a lot of them thinking that they could be happy. But I never fancied any of my clients. A lot of men knew that I didn’t give a toss about them but then others would say things like, ‘It’s just you and me. Come on, I’ve seen you lots of times. We could build something.’ And in my head I’d be thinking, ‘What are you talking about? There’s nothing to build.’
“If you ask me do I regret escorting, I’d say no, because I got myself into a rut. I never asked anybody to lend me money. To a degree I sold my soul but I’d rather sell my soul in that way and go home and be myself, than live a complete lie. I never told any of them that I loved them.”
Helen doesn’t seem like the sort of girl who would end up as a prostitute. After all, she comes from a respectable middle-class home. She grew up in a nice area in Bolton, England. She has two older brothers. Her father is a music lecturer at a university and her mother is a teacher’s assistant in a primary school.
“People make it out to be seedy but a lot of the clients were really nice. They were just on business trips. A lot of them say that their wives refuse to have sex with them. They’re just normal men who basically wanted sex,” Helen says. “A lot of men don’t even have sex with you. They just want to have a woman sitting down listening to them and not making them feel like s**t.”
She always practises safe sex. For an all-night job, she would get anything between £1,200 to £1,400, but a lot of the time for that they’d take her out for a meal anddrinks.
Helen is an example of an escort who enjoyed her time in the industry and would agree that the escort industry would be best served by being legalised and brought out into the open.
What goes on between 2 consenting adults should no longer be a crime.
