London students are increasingly becoming red light district part-timers to afford university fees, the BBC has revealed.

But whereas if some London-based students are wilfully choosing to sexually hire out their bodies for cash to finance their university tuition fees, many young women from around the world have been lured, trapped and sexually enslaved into prostitution and/or pornography without their consent – in a multi-billion pound industry that enriches a handful of predators while the rest of community is left to pay for the damage.

Prostitute The Bridge MAG image

On December 14, 2011, The National Union of Students (NUS) told Kieran Turner and Owen Phillips of BBC Radio 5 live’s  Breakfast programme that it estimated  around one in five women working in lap dance clubs were students.

Also, according to research published last year by Kingston University, the number of students who knew someone who had worked in the sex industry to fund their studies had gone up from three to 25 per cent in 10 years.

The English Collective of Prostitutes, which runs a helpline from its base in London, says the number of calls it receives from students had at least doubled in the past years.

Sarah Walker, a spokeswoman for the organisation, has seen a “steady increase from students over the past 10 years” but says her group has received an unprecedented number of call since the Government’s announcement that universities in England could charge tuition fees up to  £ 9,000 a year from September 2012.

There is no point in making the story a scoop since prostitution is not a crime in Britain , one may argue.

However, it becomes crucial to stress that, from De Wallen (Amsterdam) to Sunset Boulevard (USA),  from Pigalle (Paris)  to Soho (London), the hidden , insidious,  crude  and less discussed side of  prostitution in real life is far from the fairy-tale that has once been glamorised by the Eighties’ big-screen romcom Pretty Woman, featuring Julia Roberts and Richards Gere, about  a businessman  who initially looks for an escort to attend social events but ends up falling in love with a beautiful prostitute he randomly meets on Hollywood Boulevard.

Far from the London students and Pretty Woman prostitution style, that might imply an element of choice…

Marlene and Chloe – names changed – were both forced into the dark labyrinth of prostitution.

Chloe, the daughter of a Russian academic and diplomat, now age 32, was forced into prostitution at age 21…

Sex brokers The Bridge MAG image

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Sex trade The Bridge MAG image

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Rachel Tcheungna, Author, Writer of 

The Bridge Books and 

The Bridge Magazine Editor.