There
are more than 800 women currently offering sex in Ireland for as much as
€400 per hour.
Irish law allows the women to use the
internet to broadcast scantily clad pictures of themselves, detail the
vast range of services which they offer, their price ranges and most
crucially their mobile phone number.
While the women claim the more respectable title of escorts working in
escort agencies, the service that many offer would indicate they are
prostitutes often working in brothels with up to 25 women in each.
The industry is thriving because men are prepared to spend the €150
per-half-hour average price the woman, and in a very few cases men, are
asking. The more exclusive women charge as much as €500 per hour.
That compares with as little as €25 per session with women working in
the legal red light district in Amsterdam.
The escorts are operating out of private apartments and houses, hotels,
even commercial premises which describe themselves as massage parlours.
In most cases the premises are close to the city centre or in the nearby
suburbs.
One of their busiest times is lunchtime when the middle-class
professionals, their typical customers, are able to go for a session
before returning to work.
By only publishing mobile phone numbers they are almost untraceable to
the punters. In order to find an agency for the first time, the men are
told to stand in a certain place and ring the agency once more so that
the women can see the punter before engaging their services.
Anyone who contacts them must use an unblocked number to avoid
“timewasters” who might make a bogus appointment or pose a threat.
One thing that links the apartments, hotels and houses where they ply
their trade is that they are only transient. They do not stay long in
one place as the comings and goings attract attention.
The websites on which the women promote themselves are not illegal
because the majority are licensed and the owners addressed outside the
State.
That means they can give every detail of what the women will offer, with
immunity from prosecution under Irish law.
As the owners of irishindependentescorts.com point out: This site is
not hosted in the Republic of Ireland and both owners live in a country
where it is perfectly legal. The escorts listed on this site do not work
for us, we just make their information freely available to the public.
For that service, the website owners are paid €100 per month for
independent escorts and €300 per month for agencies.
One of the most popular of the sites for both punter and escort is
www.escort-ireland.com
It is the creation of former Dublin escort, Patricia Albright and was
established in 1998. The website, which describes itself as the product
of a reputable and fully registered UK company, claims to be the
biggest in Ireland.
The site boasts: Today we have 381 Irish Female Escorts, nine Irish
Male Escorts, one Irish Transsexual Escort, two Irish Transvestite
Escorts, six Irish Escort Duos and two Irish Escort Couples listed here
on Escort Ireland.
To bolster what it sees as its own legitimacy the website states: We
are a female owned and operated business that cares about the escorts
that advertise with us, the clients that use our website and the overall
well-being of our industry. We work very hard to provide a top quality
service to our advertising customers and website users. We feel our
integrity and dedication to consistently working hard to provide the
very best service we can is the key to our success.
The website is exceptionally professional. After logging on, drop-down
menus allow punters to choose the woman or man they want to visit by,
among others, nationality, ethnicity, hair-colour, age, height, bra
size, services offered and sexual orientation.
There are reviews of the women from previous “customers” as well as a
glossary of terms explaining what terms such as “teabagging” “Russian”
and “rimming” mean.
In such a competitive market the women are willing to offer the most
erotic services. No requirement for a condom for oral sex is almost de
riguer and anal sex is offered by a large percentage though the more
business minded charge an extra €50 to €80 for such so-called ‘extras’.
All the websites claim that the difference between the women they offer
and prostitutes is that while prostitutes charge a fee for a certain
service, the escorts are charging “for their time and companionship
only”.
Anything else that may occur is a matter of coincidence and choice
between consenting adults so far as Escort Ireland and the escorts
listed on Escort Ireland are concerned. We do not condone prostitution,
the Escort Ireland website states on several of its pages, even though
on the hundreds of others featuring the women, their services are
clearly laid out.
The nationwide escort sites have links to websites of individual escort
agencies and it is here that it becomes apparent that the industry is
still growing rapidly.
One thing that is glaringly obvious by its omission from nearly all the
sites, is sexual health screening. While most say they offer a caring
environment to their escorts and customers they make no mention of
checks for sexually transmitted diseases which could be passed on so
widely if the punter is a regular user of prostitution.
Escort Ireland is one of the few that mentions the issue of trafficking.
However, while it says it has become “concerned” about the growing
problem and says it educates the industry about the issue.
The growth of escort websites has mushroomed since 1999 when In Dublin
Magazine hit the headlines for advertising adult services. It was banned
by the Censorship of Publications Board for carrying ads on
prostitution. The ban was later lifted but by then many of the agencies
and escorts had seized on the opportunity the internet provided and
signed up to websites.
