A young escort has bravely shared their experiences of being treated 'less than human' and regularly fearing they are 'going to die'. This includes being punched and strangled while selling sex in a hotel with strangers threatening to rape, kill, or throw acid on her.
It's a risk many across the country take to make earnings of thousands of pounds a week. One has bravely lifted the lid on the industry to our sister website, BirminghamLive, to highlight just how dangerous the industry is.
She says she makes large sums of hard cash, likening it to 'drug dealing money'. And along with the gifts she receives she admits it is an 'addictive' lifestyle to just give up.
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It is not illegal to sell sex in the UK, though it is a crime to run or manage a brothel or exploit women into prostitution. Despite this, the woman says that some of the men see her as a "product they have purchased from the shop," who show no hesitation in stalking, harassing, or threatening her.
Online forums where men rate sex workers in 'vile TripAdvisor style' reviews fuel this abuse and violence towards call girls, she believes. "The way they talk about us like we are a piece of meat, like a piece of s***, it fuels that attitude that we're lesser than, it's demeaning and it's disrespectful," she claims.
"Some people make you feel unsafe because you can tell that they don't even respect you as a human being. And if someone doesn't respect you as a human being, they wouldn't give a s*** to abuse you, to harass you, to stalk you, to physically or sexually assault you because they see you as a product they have purchased from the shop - not as a person."
Over the years, she claims she has reported people to the police for stalking, harassment and assault. She claims she has also been sexually assaulted, but says it is "very difficult" to see charges brought.
"I've had acid threats, I don't know how many times I've heard 'I can book you on any number I want and I'm going to come and rape you', or 'I'm going to come and beat you up' or 'I'm going to come snap your jaw.'"
Some, she claims, are enraged over being 'blacklisted', others have become 'obsessed' with the escort, but there are also complete strangers who "read stuff online" about her and decide to issue threats. "It's like they think they're vigilantes," she explains.
"I had someone read something about me online and this person emailed me on a fake email address sending me rape threats. They read stuff online and think it's ok to send us abuse.
"I've had people I don't know send me emails saying they're going to kill me, people texting off different numbers sending me threats. I've been harassed by people I've refused to see at all." She told BirminghamLive she will always report such offences to police, with her calling the force around 100 times.
"I was physically assaulted in Birmingham, he punched me in the face and strangled me, tried to kick me out of a window," she says.
"It went to court and he did get convicted, he was given a suspended sentence. That was quite a bad assault, I thought I was going to die, and if you saw me next to this man - I was no match for him.
"To just get a suspended sentence is so shocking." Any crime against a sex worker, she strongly believes, should be seen as a hate crime.
"We are a vulnerable demographic of people. These types of people, they do it because they know we are easy prey, commonly on our own, might have loads of cash on us, and they think we're not going to tell the police."
"Once you get the ball rolling and do it for a few months, it's like drug dealing money," she adds. "It's a lot of cash and if you get a lot of clients, you can be earning £4,000 a week - if you work hard.
"If you get good clients, they send you gifts and that's a very addictive lifestyle that is." With her own cash, she choses to buy a few nice designer items, but also saves and invests the rest of the money for the future. And like most women, she says she doesn't plan on being in the industry forever.
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