Students selling sex to survive
How respectable middle-class girls are being forced into prostitution to pay their way through college
STUDENTS in Scotland are being forced into prostitution by the soaring costs of completing their education, according to a shocking investigation by the Scottish Mail on Sunday.
Extortionate university fees and rising rents – as well as increasing costs of food, electricity and textbooks – are pushing students into the sex industry.
For some, the cost of living is so high that even a part-time job won’t cover basic needs. For others, university hours are so demanding that students have little time for regular work.
Now, desperate students are turning to better-paid, but demeaning and potentially dangerous sex work to fund their education.
Young middle-class women have shared their harrowing stories under the cover of anonymity and described how financial pressures drove them to sell their bodies.
Meanwhile, our investigations have highlighted the alarming extent of the problem. This paper found dozens of explicit, sexual and revealing posts online which show struggling students offering sex in return for money.
The ads – posted on websites like Craigslist, Vivastreet and Escort Scotland – show young female and male students offering ‘fun’ and ‘discreet’ sex for ‘rewards’.
One such post read: ‘Student Needs Help. Discreet and professional service. Please don’t waste my time. Can accommodate, but only tonight! If seriously interested feel free to contact me.’
Another stated: ‘Help a Student Out: Hi everyone, I’m a skint 22 year old student who needs some help. Willing to do most things, but discretion is a must.’
Our reporter met two young students who had posted adverts.
One 22-year-old described how she would perform sexual services in her family home when her mother was working, so that she could pay off a loan of more than £10,000 for her Master’s degree.
The other 19-year-old student described how she would either have sex with older men in upmarket hotels or in her flat, so that she could afford to pay her rent.
Last night, politicians said the revelations were ‘shocking’ and called for more Scottish Government support with education and living costs.
Meanwhile, campaigners urged the SNP to scrap loans and increase grant and bursary funding to prevent students falling into debt and turning to the sex trade.
Labour MSP Rhoda Grant said: ‘This will shock people across Scotland. There are clear cost of living issues for students but readers will be gobsmacked to see young women forced to offer sexual services.
‘This follows on from stories about ‘sex for rent’ – men offering out spare rooms in exchange for sex. Clearly, the SNP government must do more to help students.’
Carrie Mitchell of the English Collective of Prostitutes added: ‘The best things for students would be to have loans scrapped in Scotland and grants reinstated.
‘Before loans, there were much, much fewer students going into the sex industry. It’s really an outrage that governments expect people to borrow money to pay for education and then borrow money to pay for a loan – it leads to a very difficult and indebted adult life. This is why students go into sex work, so they don’t have to borrow such heavy loans or don’t have to pay them off after university.’
Currently Scottish students do not have to pay tuition fees for undergraduate degree courses.
They can get up to £1,875 a year in a Scottish Government bursary – which doesn’t need to be paid back – and a loan of up to £6,750.
However, Scottish Labour analysis of figures from Student Awards Agency Scotland last week revealed the value of the average bursary had been slashed by 40 per cent since the SNP came to power in 2007, leaving graduates ‘abandoned on a debt mountain’.
The average non-repayable bursary is now worth only £1,344 compared with £2,092 in 2007. The amount borrowed by students has soared in the past decade, with the average loan now £5,303, up from £2,741 ten years ago.
Anastasia Ryan, a volunteer and spokeswoman for sex worker support group Umbrella Lane Scotland, said the number of students in the sex industry was a direct result of increased education fees and cuts.
She said: ‘The number of students who work in the sex industry in complete secret from peers, family and services is alarming.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The reasons for people entering prostitution are often complex. Scotland continues to have the lowest average student loan debt in the UK.’
If any students working in the sex industry need advice or help, contact www.umbrellalane.co.uk.
‘This will shock people across Scotland’