PEEK INTO THE LIVES OF SEX WORKERS

IN the sleepy streets of Garbutt’s industrial estate, workers go about their business without a fuss. Among them are women who are part of the oldest profession in the world. Townsville was without a licensed brothel after the closure of Bluebirds on Carmel more than three years ago. New establishment Seven Veils opened its doors exactly 12 months ago while competitor Onyxx arrived on the scene earlier this year to breathe life into the local sex industry. Townsville Bulletin reporter SAM FLANAGAN spoke to three sex workers to shed light on an industry that is often stigmatised, shunned and slandered. of living off three pies a week,” she said. “I didn’t realise brothels were real. There was a business I thought was a strip club and I said to my family ‘I could try that out’. They said ‘it’s a brothel, not a strip club’.

“For two weeks I was thinking ‘I can’t do that.”

Within a month Sasha, who had a young child at the time, was working and making more money than otherwise possible to support her family.

“I had a few cousins cry when they found out, but my mum and everybody stood by me and said ‘we’re here for you’.

“There was no negativity about it, there was no judgment. My family and my friends always had my back with it.”

Sasha said she had dealt with the stigma of being “dirty” because she was a sex worker, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“This is the cleanest sex I’ve ever had. There’s condoms, there’s gloves, there’s dams. There’s protection for every kind of sex you can have.

“We don’t touch a client without checking them out downstairs first with a lamp. You don’t do that in a club. You’ll go home with someone who’s dirty. You don’t shower beforehand, you don’t check they have an STD and you usually don’t use protection.

“Compared to the real world this is very clean and still fun.”

Seven Veils recently made headlines for banning Indian men not known to them after a string of alleged sexual assaults and rape.

Sasha said she had been assaulted by

Indian men in both Australia and New Zealand.

“They have it in their head they can force you to do what they want and they just go for it,” she said.

“If I say to an Aussie man ‘don’t do that, that’s not comfortable’, they’ll stop straight away, whereas the Indian man will say ‘no, you’ll love it’ and hold you down and make you do it.”

Sasha said since Seven Veils banned Indians, the culprits had returned to ask for forgiveness.

“They’ve been absolutely beautiful since. They’ve come in just to apologise to us, so we’ve welcomed them back and we’ve had no issues.

“They are so polite now and very gentlemanly and we really appreciate it.”