On one site alone a total of women and 89 men in Cambridgeshire were advertising as escorts. There are more than men and women across Cambridgeshire currently working as escorts through one controversial adult website. Currently women and 89 men are advertising on the AdultWork website; with even more offering extra services like phone and webcam sex.
In addition to this there are also 12 heterosexual couples offering services throughout the county on the site. And it seems it does not matter where you live as pretty much all of Cambridgeshire is being catered for. Not only are there sex workers in Cambridge and Peterborough , but even other smaller towns like March and St Ives amongst many more. While sex work and the sites advertising it are not illegal, last year a Government report found that a small number of firms were fuelling a boom in 'pop-up brothels' across the country, concluding that prostitution procurement websites were "the most significant enabler of sex-trafficking in the UK," as first reported by Cornwall Live.
The largest concern of these sites was that they allowed traffickers to control the profiles of sex workers and effectively find clients for those under their control. The Government also believes that these sites have made it lucrative for criminals to set up short-term brothels.
Girls are brought to a city for a short amount of time where they then see clients, after which they are taken to a new city and the cycle continues. Gangs reportedly use apartments, usually short-term holiday lets, which are booked online by the sex workers without the owner knowing exactly what's going on at the premises. Sites such as AdultWork and also Vivastreet make money from this, as they charge for sex workers to place adverts rather than charging those who make use of them. A cross-party group of MPs said the owners of such sites were "directly and knowingly" profiting from sex-trafficking.
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