The number of students turning to sex work is rising as a result of the pandemic, Sky News has learned.
Figures show the percentage of those considering sex or adult work in a “cash crisis” has nearly doubled compared with last year.
Statistics given exclusively to Sky News by Save The Student show that 10% would consider sex work in a financial emergency. The figure was 6% in its 2019 Student Money Survey.
In a separate study, 7% of students said they had actually turned to sex or adult work during the pandemic as a way of plugging the gap. Some 77% were female and 22% male, with 1% preferring not to say.
Rose, which is not her real name, turned to online sex work after she effectively lost her job in a restaurant as a result of lockdown.
She says she is also classed as high-risk in relation to COVID-19, so working through a subscription website was “safer” and “financially easier”.
The woman, in her 20s, says she “loves” her new source of income and refers to it as “one of the best things” she has ever done.
“I used to be anorexic and now I am the most body confident I have ever been in my life,” she told Sky News.
“(It’s) very, very liberating. I’m in control of my own content and of my own body and I can do whatever I want with it because you can set your own levels.”
