Business is good for career prostitutes charging thousands of pounds, says john gibb
Prostitution in Britain is booming. Not among the street girls paying for their drugs habit, nor the desolate young women working in massage parlours to pay off the men who trafficked them.
Instead, I am talking about the thousands of young women who have chosen prostitution because they want independence and financial security and - not in all cases - because they enjoy the work.
If, as was claimed in the News of the World on Sunday, Faria Alam is now working as a prostitute, then she would be typical in many respects of the girls attracted to the work: she apparently made it clear that she wanted to earn good money and was happy to have sex with strangers.
What is atypical is that the former secretary at the FA, famous for her affair with Sven Goran Eriksson, was capitalising on her notoriety; also, at the age of 40, many girls would have made enough money to be able to retire.
Two key factors have led to a huge rise in this kind of prostitution - the influx of girls from Poland and other eastern European countries which acceeded to the EU in 2000, and the increasing use of the internet to advertise their services.
Katarzyna arrived in London in 2001 on a student visa to learn English. She was 22 and fluent in Russian and German, with a degree in world literature from Wroclaw University in Poland.
Within a year, she was studying beauty at the London College of Fashion and working at a bar in the evenings. She earned very little. "My Polish friends were sleeping with men for money so I did it too."
It wasn't hard to get started. She signed up with Aprov, one of dozens of London-based agencies promoting prostitutes. It's a management company with around 30 girls on the books; all attractive young eastern Europeans.
"They find you a flat, take photographs and advertise you on the website," Katarzyna told The First Post. "They won't take you on unless you're legally in the country and over 18. The clients are checked in and out of the girls' flats on mobiles and the rates are up to £350 an hour.
"You can take me to dinner and I'll spend the night with you for £1,200. I enjoy it. Mostly men just want sex and some company; no relationships, no complications, no risk. It's all cash. Get it right and there's no shortage of men happy to pay."
Katarzyna worked as a prostitute for two-and-a-half years and bought a house in Surrey on the proceeds. She gets a good rent from the property, and when she needs a little extra, she'll go back on the web. She sees sex for money as a career move.
Students, nurses and women from a wide variety of backgrounds frustrated by the cost of living are on the game all over the UK. Barbara, reading classics at Oxford, works in the evening from a flat in Abingdon.
"I don't want to leave university owing money to the Government," she told me, "and I'm not prepared to be exploited by some tightwad employer. I want independence and I want it now." She added: "There are dozens of NHS workers selling sex in Oxford. Anyone forced to survive on the pittance paid to student nurses will have considered it."
Agencies like Aprov and Oriental Gems represent the new face of prostitution in Britain. The police leave them alone unless there is a hint of trafficking or violence. Men with cash to spend can enjoy sex - with no strings attached - with a seemingly endless stream of attractive women.
A Vice Unit officer told me: "If a girl makes the choice without duress and is not exploited, the police are happy. The taboos have gone. It's become a career. They're even advertising in the back of the Spectator, for God's sake!"
Faria Alam has apparently gone into hiding after being caught by the News of the World sting operation. Prostitution may be a good career move, but it's still not one you can boast about to your family.
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