Read more at This Is London…

Crackdown on kerb-crawlers under new laws

Kerb-crawlers can be arrested on their first offence under new laws designed to tackle the demand for prostitution, Home Office minister Alan Campbell said today.

And a poster campaign launched to coincide with International Women’s Day will warn potential “punters” of new criminal fines of up to £1,000 for having sex with a woman forced into prostitution against her will.

Changes to the law coming into effect on April 1 will remove a requirement for police to establish that a man is “persistently” kerb-crawling before arresting him.

Mr Campbell said the reforms are intended to hit hardest the men who pay for sex, while helping often vulnerable women to leave prostitution.

“We are determined to tackle the demand for prostitution and provide help for those who wish to leave prostitution,” he said.

“These new measures build on the significant action we have already taken to tackle prostitution and trafficking for sexual exploitation. They will help bring greater protection to vulnerable people involved in prostitution.

“Alongside this we are also continuing our funding to tackle the appalling crime of domestic violence with £4.3 million to support help for victims.”

From April 1, a man paying for sex with a prostitute who is being exploited through force, deception or threats will be breaking the law, whether or not he knows that she is selling her body against her will.

A stunning development across the pond!  Read more at The Telegraph…

Brothels and prostitutes to be banned from advertising
By Heidi Blake

Massage parlours and escort agencies will be banned from advertising their services in newspapers under Government plans to stifle the sex industry.

Publications carrying advertisements for prostitution could be fined £10,000 under the new law, which will be put forward in Labour’s election manifesto.

The assault on the sex industry is being led Harriet Harman, the women’s minister, and Vera Baird, the solicitor general, amid concerns that many of the advertisements are offering women who have been forced into prostitution by criminal gangs.

A request by the Newspaper Society to remove the adverts in 2008 has had only partial success, with many publications continuing to print them.

The Crown Prosecution Service has already studied a similar law in Ireland and concluded that it could work in the UK.

Mrs Baird said: “It is now appropriate to move against people who make money from advertising prostitutes. The Newspaper Society tightened its guidance on taking such ads but there is still a market that we now have to look to legislation to disrupt.”

A survey of London’s sex industry commissioned in 2008 by Poppy Project, a government-funded group that helps trafficked women, estimated that the 921 brothels it examined made at least £86m a year through their newspaper advertisements alone.

The new law would set clear guidelines about which advertisements will be banned by defining the difference between brothels masquerading as massage parlours and spas offering therapeutic massages.

Advertisements for sex phone lines, carried in many tabloid newspapers, would not fall under the law unless they were a front for arranging prostitution.

It would also become a criminal offence to print cards advertising prostitutes for distribution in telephone boxes and shop windows. Under the current law, it is only an offence to be caught in the act of posting such a card.

What if someone made a startling confession and nobody cared? She was better off as anonymous. Read more at The Jackson Sun…

British scientist says she penned call-girl blog

A British scientist says she is Belle de Jour, the anonymous blogger whose accounts of life as a call girl were turned into books and a TV series.

Brooke Magnanti was quoted by the Sunday Times as saying she decided to reveal her secret because she was afraid an ex-boyfriend would expose her.

Magnanti, 34, is a child health researcher at the University of Bristol in western England. She told the newspaper she turned to the sex trade in 2003 while finishing her Ph.D. and worked as an escort for more than a year.

She blogged about the experience in the guise of Belle de Jour, a legal secretary who moonlights as a sex worker.

The blog formed the basis of three books and the British TV series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” shown on Showtime in the United States.

Debate swirled about whether the anonymous author was real or fictional, and Belle de Jour was accused by some of glamorizing prostitution.

Read more at This Is Oxfordshire…

Prostitution alert on estate
By Emily Allen

PROSTITUTES are selling sex from homes on Oxford’s largest estate, police have warned.

Officers on Blackbird Leys revealed they are investigating claims sex workers are trading from private homes after receiving tip-offs from members of the public.

People on the estate said they were shocked – claiming it was the first time prostitution had been associated with the 52-year-old estate.

It is not known where the prostitutes are operating from or how long the problem has been going on.

Blackbird Leys Sgt Rob Axe said: “It’s something we’ve been aware of recently, it’s just come on the radar on the estate and we are in the early stages of investigating it at the moment. We’re trying to find out where the hotspot is.

“We’ve had intelligence to suggest they’re coming on the estate and doing business in private dwellings.”

Read more at The News & Star…

Carlisle prostitutes sex site sparks political storm

A website which allows men to rate Cumbrian prostitutes is at the centre of a political row about whether the internet is fuelling demand for the sex trade.

The site lists around 18 prostitutes in the Carlisle area complete with mobile phone numbers with others listed around Cumbria including Keswick, Barrow, Kendal and the Lake District.

Postings go back several years with the most recent added last month.

The American-based service then allows men to write about their experiences with the prostitutes.

The Cumbrian “reviews” go into the most intimate details.

Many boast at being allowed to have sex without a condom and one young woman is criticised for appearing to be shy and refusing some requests.

Prices and locations are also listed with one man describing a liaison in Botchergate’s Ibis hotel and another detailing an encounter in a Lakes cottage.

Attention has been focused on the website since Harriet Harman used her speech at the Labour Party Conference last week to describe it as a “sinister development”.

Liberal UK Labour Party bigwig Harriet Harman urges Gov. Schwarzenegger to shut down the California-based PunterNet. Arnold no doubt wonders how the heck he got involved in all of this! Read more at The Guardian…

Harman urges Schwarzenegger to ‘terminate’ prostitute website

Harriet Harman today urged movie star and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to “terminate” a website which allows people to rate prostitutes.

The Labour deputy leader told delegates at the Labour conference: “There is now a website… where pimps put women on sale for sex and then men who’ve had sex with them put their comments online. It is PunterNet and fuels the demand for prostitutes.”

Harman said the site was based in California but had “pages and pages” of women for sale in London.

“I’ve raised it with the US ambassador to London and I’ve called on California’s governor, Arnie Schwarzenegger, to close it down.”

Harman said it should not be difficult for the star to “terminate PunterNet”.

“And I’ve got news for him: if he doesn’t, I’ll be back,” she quipped.

Harman said the British government had made “determined progress towards equality” in the past 12 months.

“It’s been a year of promises made and promises kept,” she said. “For us, for Labour, equality is not just a slogan it’s what we’re about.

Read the story at The Mirror…

Sophie Anderton: I was a £15k prostitute
by Allison Martin

Recalling the first time she was paid for sex, she said: “It was all over in two minutes. I lay there thinking, ‘Is that it? For £15k, is that it?’” Sophie, 32, said: “For a short while I sold my body for a lot of money. I’m not proud of it.”

At the time she was drinking a bottle of vodka every night and using cocaine every day.

She said she turned to prostitution after an introduction from a pal when her money ran out and she needed to pay her dealer.

But she decided to quit after a bad experience with a fat businessman who made her feel “sick”.

She said: “I had slept with five men and made more than £50,000, which paid my drug debts and a deposit on a flat. Now I could escape.”

This poor slob was just out looking for love and got caught in an embarrassing situation.  Read the whole story at This Is Bristol…

Bristol kerb crawler, 74, caught with trousers down

A 74-year-old Bristol man was caught with his pants down when police found him cavorting with a prostitute in his car.

The man had already been warned twice about driving around in the early hours in areas of St Paul’s where prostitutes were on the streets.

Yet he ignored the advice – and an Acceptable Behaviour Contact (ABC) he had signed a month before – by picking up a sex worker in Portland Square on June 5.

Bristol magistrates heard that when officers pulled up alongside the ex-soldier’s grey Toyota Yaris at about 3.30am, they saw a woman looking startled in his front passenger seat.

Giving evidence at his trial, PC Andrew Dino said he went to the driver’s window to ask him what he was up to, noticed his shorts were “down around his thighs”, and he was frantically trying to pull them back up. Meanwhile, a woman who was a known prostitute got out and walked off, wearing only a pink top and no underwear.

The man, a member of the exclusive Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), said he was only in the area listening to the cricket and sport on the radio.

But he was convicted and fined for soliciting a woman for prostitution, in a way likely to cause nuisance or annoyance to people in the neighbourhood.

Read more at lep.co.uk…

‘Prostitute man’ was followed and robbed

Detectives are probing a suspected robbery “set up” after a gang attacked a man on his driveway after watching a prostitute get into his car.

It is thought the group of robbers was watching or using prostitutes to proposition men who members then followed and tried to extort money from.

Investigating officers believe more men could have been targeted by the same group, but have not reported incidents because of how it may look to their families.

The man did not use the sex worker and asked her to get out of his car, but was then followed home and attacked by a group of robbers who were believed to have been watching the woman.

A glimpse into the life of a prostitute. They bear the risk of dangers of the business, too. Read more at The Sunday Sun…

Prostitution was just a nightmare
by Mieka Smiles

AFTER a WPC was jailed for leading a double life as a £100-an-hour call girl, one former sex worker lifts the lid about her time on the streets. MIEKA SMILES reports.

I WAS just 19 and was still living at home.

My parents didn’t know I was a prostitute; of course they had heard things but I always denied it.

I always worked for myself, with a friend. Sometimes we would get 20 calls a night and visit up to 10 men between us.

I got into it through a friend whose mother had girls working for her. She knew a lot of people. If she got me someone then I would give her a cut of what I earned.

Clients would ring me on my mobile and I would go to their homes. Then they would give my number to their colleagues and their friends – it just used to get passed around.

A friend gave me heroin when I was 18. I didn’t know what it was until it was too late, until I had a habit. I needed it every day after that.

The reason I got into prostitution was through heroin.

I needed the money as I was on around an eighth a day which costs around £140.

I didn’t want to shoplift or burgle houses. With prostitution the only person that you’re hurting is yourself and no one else. The only victim is you.

I can still remember the first time. It was horrible. I ran out and left the money. It got easier after that. In fact it got to the point when I didn’t even think about it; it was just another job.

I have been in some awful situations; we have been locked in, attacked and had our money stolen from us by clients.