VIRGINITY FOR SALE
An honest dating site pairing young women with wealthy men ...or one that’s putting its naive ‘sugar babies’ at risk of abuse?
IT’S the website that promises to bring together ‘sugar babies’ and ‘sugar daddies’ in a thoroughly modern take on the dating game. But an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed the disturbing reality lurking behind the Seeking Arrangement site, with scores of young British women resorting to selling – or even auctioning – their virginity.
Experts have described t he ‘no-sex required’ claim by the website as ‘disingenuous and misleading’, putting some women in a vulnerable position. In one appalling case (see panel below right), a Cambridge University student says she was sexually assaulted with a beer bottle by a wealthy ‘date’.
Yet despite hosting such murky content, SA’s founders were yesterday brazenly holding a ‘Sugar Baby Summit’ in New York, with one topic for discussion billed, without apparent irony, as ‘understanding sexuality in the #MeToo era’.
Launched in 2006, SA claims to have brought the concept of ‘sugar babies’ and ‘sugar daddies’ into the mainstream world of online dating. It boasts more than ten million users across 139 countries, with hundreds of thousands in the UK alone.
It claims to be a more ‘honest’ way of dating in which both sides are candid about what t hey want from the relationship. But a disturbing g and increasing g trend has emerged d of women aged between 18 andd their early 20s s offering to sell l their virginity on n the site.
After creating a fake sugar daddy profile to gain full access to the website, our reporter found more than 70 women in the UK alone – and hundreds more overseas – who stated in their profiles that they were virgins. Around a fifth of those in the UK clearly mentioned their virginity to signal they were not open to a sexual relationship. But others either explicitly or implicitly suggested they were willing to have sex for the first time for a financial reward.
One 20-year-old medical student, who registered as a sugar baby last year, stated in her profile: ‘Auction for my virginity.’ She added: ‘Highest bid before midnight on New Year’s Eve wins.’
Another 18-year-old woman from Britain advertised in her profile: ‘I’m offering a triangle with 2 virgins (me and a good friend of mine). Candidate who offers the biggest amount of money will get to be our first romance.’
A third student, aged 18, advised on her profile: ‘I need money as I am a student. I am willing to do anything except sexual intercourse .’ She then added :‘ If I was to do that it would come at a very high cost because I am a virgin.’ A fourth woman, who claimed to have two degrees and was looking for someone to ‘invest’ to enable her to continue her studies, revealed that she too was ‘auctioning’ her virginity and invited men to message her.
SA claims to go to great lengths to insist that sugar babies are neither prostitutes nor escorts, though the distinction is difficult to see in many adverts. A blog on the site points out the differences between ‘sugar and prostitution’, claiming that sugar daddies and babies have an ongoing relationship, and not just a financial transaction.
It also claims that women on the
‘I had no idea it was prostitution’
site are not sexually abused as in prostitution and that sex is an aspiration, not a requirement. Yet evidence from women who spoke to the MoS tells a very different story. They claim that they were treated like prostitutes after signing up.
A young single mother joined SA while she was a student at a Scottish university. She wanted extra money to cover her univer-
sity costs while also supporting her four-year-old daughter. What turned out to be her only dates arranged through the website were with a 56-year-old man.
At their first meeting, he paid for dinner and took her to the upmarket women’s clothing shop he owned, allowing her to take home any of the expensive dresses that caught her eye. But on the second date, the mood changed after he made clear to her that on the third date he expected sex. When she declined, he became enraged and began to reel off the explicit sexual services other women he had dated through Seeking Arrangement had provided him.
She said: ‘I remember a particular phrase he used. He said, “This Asian girl bent over.” I remember feeling so shocked with the realisation that he expected sex. I thought, “Oh my God, this is completely screwed up.” So I just dropped him, deleted my profile from the site and got out.
‘I was naive and I did think it was a free lunch. I thought maybe you had to be seen with these men or they wanted a date for an event, a high-class escort type thing. I had no idea it was prostitution.’ The rise of university tuition fees has been beneficial for SA’s recruitment and the company aggressively markets itself to students, claiming in 2016 that more than 250,000 UK students had registered as sugar babies.
Undaunted by such adverse publicity, this weekend the company is proudly hosting its latest Sugar Baby Summit in New York. In adverts for the event it says that sugar daddies, sugar babies and psychologists will all be in attendance to advise young women who attend on ‘how to bag a millionaire’.
In the# Me Too era session, ‘experts’ are discussing what the movement highlighting sexual harassment and assault means for so-called ‘sugar’ relationships.
In an explanation on the session, SA says: ‘ In the current media climate, finding and owning your sexuality has become a hot button issue. Heart he experts explain their views on what the “female reckoning” means for sugar relationships and for women in the workplace.’
SA was set up by thrice-divorced Las Vegas-based tech tycoon Brandon Wade, 45, whose last wife was 20 years his junior. Wade – said to be worth around £30 million – has a singularly cynical motto: ‘Love is a concept invented by poor people.’
One sugar baby from Ohio at the New York summit said she had been on a few dates with men on SA and they had all been ‘sleazeballs’.
Another 26-year-old from New York said: ‘I’ve had men asking for this and that, to the extent that you think is this an escort site or is it what it says it is?’
During the #MeToo session, SaraKate Astrove told the audience of mostly young women: ‘ As sugar babies, if we want to use our sexuality to our advantage, that doesn’t mean that we owe anyone sex. I felt very respected as a sugar baby.’
When the MoS put our allegations to Brandon Wade, who has dated a number of sugar babies himself, he said: ‘It is very difficult to
‘Love is a concept invented by poor people’
police but we have made a huge effort to improve our reporting tools and monitoring what happens on the site.’
Of t he Cambridge s t udent’s assault, he said: ‘I hope that she went to police to report that. But date-rape happens in all parts of life and happens in college campuses all the time.’
Asked about girls offering their virginity for sale, he claimed: ‘When we see that we boot them off straight away. They would be banned. People are using the website against our terms.’ As he spoke, police in Memphis, Tennessee, charged 52-year-old businessman Mark Giannini with the statutory rape of a 17- year- old he met on Seeking Arrangement. The age of consent in the state is 18.
Psychologist, intimacy coach and author Dr Lori Beth Bisbey said it was ‘disingenuous’ to suggest sex wasn’t part of the SA deal.
‘That concerns me as it misleads the young women into believing that all that is sought is their company and they may feel coerced once they meet the men.’
On virginity being traded she said: ‘The girl who sells her virginity loses the connection between emotion and sexuality. The first experience of sex becomes a transaction devoid of feeling.
‘That does not bode well for how the woman will experience her sexual life going forward.’