DRESSED in a demure yellow top and a white mini skirt, pretty Daisy Maskell snaps a couple of cute selfies and writes a short bio, before uploading it all online.
But she’s not setting up a new dating profile – the Londoner is actually advertising her virginity, selling her first time to the highest bidder, and has named her price – £200k.
Daisy was inundated by messages after she posted an advert online offering to sell her virginity[/caption]
Within days, she’s inundated with hundreds of messages from men, all desperate to sleep with her.
They’re willing to pay hundreds of thousands too, with one offering half a million pounds, and they’re happy to shower her in gifts for the privilege.
Shockingly, this type of ‘indecent proposal’ is far from rare – a quick look online pulls up scores of websites packed full of women selling their first time, with prices ranging from a few thousand pounds all the way up to £1m.
And while the lure of quick cash can seem like a great idea for many women, it of course comes with a host of risks, from personal safety fears to scams, and as experts warn, sex exploitation and trafficking risks.
Student Jasmin, 26, from London, claimed to have sold her virginity for £1m in 2018[/caption]
Bidding like on Ebay
Daisy, now 26, never intended to go through with the ‘deal’ – she did it under the name ‘Jasmine J’ as part of a TV investigation into the dark underworld of virginity auctions.
But for hundreds of women, it’s a very serious opportunity to make a life-changing amount of money.
And it’s happening a lot more than you’d think.
While she never intended to actually sell her virginity, Daisy still got a close up glimpse first hand inside the murky world and spoke to a number of serious prospective buyers.
She says: “One of the guys I spoke to was flying into the country and
actually had already paid for another British girl to take her virginity too, so he wanted to take hers one weekend and then mine the next.
“I had messages [with] offers of holidays, gifts, clothes, hotels and nice dinners. There was a big grooming element.
Daisy Maskell
“That’s when I realised it was more common than I thought. It was crazy to see on these sites, men are sort of submitting bids as if it’s Ebay.
“Until I actually started to speak to guys on FaceTime I don’t think I really understood the true reality and how vulnerable I was going to feel in the process.
“As the bids and messages are rolling in – you just can’t believe how much money you could potentially make.
“You see how vulnerable and how dangerous some of these situations can end up being as well.
“I had messages complimenting me and to also supplement their bids with offers of holidays, gifts, clothes, hotels and nice dinners.
“There was a big grooming element.”
‘A dream come true’
Ebay is an apt comparison. When we looked on one website alone facilitating auctions, there were 360 women from the UK, aged between 18 to 29, advertising their first time.
And there have been plenty of high profile examples over the years of women claiming to be selling their virginity to the highest bidder.
For example, British student Jasmin, 26, hit headlines in 2018 after claiming to have sold her virginity online for £1m to a “Hollywood actor” following a fierce online bidding war.
Nineteen-year-old model Giselle claimed it was “a dream come true” to sell her virginity online for £2m to a wealthy Abu Dhabi businessman.
“If I want to spend my first time with someone who is not my first love, that’s my decision,” she said at the time.
In what was probably the most high profile example, 18-year-old model Aleexandra Kefren also caused a storm when she revealed on ITV’s This Morning she was selling her virginity to pay her parents’ mortgage.
She later claimed a Hong Kong businessman offered to pay £2.03million, however in an article a year later she alarmingly claimed it was all a publicity stunt for a website that allegedly tricks young women into sex work, and the deal never went ahead.
In each of these highly publicised cases, the girls had used the website, Cinderella Escorts – a site ran by Jan Zakobielski.
He wrote a book called ‘Selling My Virginity: Inside world’s most
famous escort agency’ and previously said he pockets 20 per cent of the auction price.
He previously told The Sun all virgins needed to show a medical certificate ‘proving’ they were real virgins, while the customer must sign a contract promising he will use a condom and there
will be no bondage or sadomasochism.
Aleexandra Kefren was interviewed on This Morning about her plans to sell her virginity to the highest bidder in 2016[/caption]
A quick search online brings up hundreds of adverts, with girls all over the world offering their virginity for a fee[/caption]
‘There’s a sense of ownership’
However, while medical checks are ‘demanded’ by prospective clients, generally speaking there’s little in the way of any other regulation or governance.
There’s also very little to no guarantee the girl will see any money once the deed is done.
Within their adverts, many girls warn scammers not to get in touch – suggesting this is an area in which fraudsters are known to operate heavily.
Because the prices are so high [the men] know they are paying this life-changing amount of money and there becomes this ownership element.
Daisy Maskell
Daisy says: “A lot of the women that we spoke to, there were instances where they either didn’t get paid or they agreed to a certain service, which was that man taking their virginity, and actually once they’re in that hotel room alone with that person, you have no idea what is going to happen.
“Because the prices are so high [the men] know they are paying this life-changing amount of money and there becomes this ownership element.
“The boundaries are often pushed a lot more and there is this sort of sense of ownership – that they can do whatever they want with you.
“It’s completely unregulated so there’s no guarantee that you’re even going to get that money.
“The guys that I spoke to, I would say the vast majority of them you would not assume that they would have that cash to spend or pay out the amount of money they were saying.
“It was really shocking to see that these were just your ‘average guys’.
“These were husbands, dads, just your average everyday person that you’re walking past in the street.
“It would have been highly likely I would have ended up sleeping with one of these guys and not getting paid for it.”
Tricked into sexual exploitation
Another major concern is the risk of sex trafficking and sex exploitation, particularly if the women are vulnerable, forced into selling their virginity by a third party or simply desperate for
money.
Speaking to The Sun, Kathy Betteridge, Director of Anti Trafficking and Modern Slavery for The Salvation Army said: “The use of online platforms to sell sex can make it easier for people to be tricked into sexual exploitation.
“Criminals use these spaces to hunt for vulnerabilities — whether it’s financial hardship, past trauma, or a fragile community or family support network — and target people to exploit.
“Survivors we support tell us how they were coerced or deceived, often believing they had no other choice, and found themselves trapped in situations they hadn’t imagined possible.
“It is vital we recognise these dangers and put measures in place to protect those at risk.”
It was also something that Daisy became highly aware of.
She says: “I got a lot of messages from people working on behalf of a client, so it almost felt like there was this wider operation at
play, which was scary.
“There were a lot of messages requesting to fly me overseas, which then [raised concerns around] sex trafficking.”
Walking the line of ‘barely legal’
One man who contacted Daisy even referred to 2008 film Taken – which stars Liam Neeson as a dad who sets out to track down his teenage daughter Kim after she’s kidnapped by Albanian human traffickers while on holiday.
She says: “He revealed that at some point in his life he ended up busting a sex trafficking ring abroad.
“He said the reason that he wanted to buy my virginity and for me to go choose him out of the other bidders was because he’d seen the horrors of what [other] women go through and said he knew that I’d be ‘safe’ with him.
“Super terrifying. There were just some really, really scary, really concerning messages.
“I think a lot of the connotations that come with virginity or taking someone’s virginity are associated with teenage years… My biggest concern was it really felt like it was walking the line of ‘barely legal’.
“A lot of the men were really preying on this idea of me being this vulnerable, naive young woman even, to the point where they thought I didn’t understand basic sex education.”
‘Reborn again virgins’
Keen to ensure they’re getting their money’s worth, the clients will ordinarily insist on some sort of ‘proof’ the woman is a virgin.
This is something which, according to almost all medical experts, is impossible to prove given the hymen can break before you have sex from everyday activities like exercise or inserting a tampon.
However, there’s a whole industry geared up to enable customers to become ‘born again’ virgins, with ‘virginity kits’ containing fake blood capsules and vaginal tightening creams readily available online.
Daisy says: “All of the guys that we spoke to were asking for some sort of verification, some sort of check I was still a virgin, which obviously doesn’t exist.
“There is no way to tell if someone is a virgin but that was sort of common practice.”
Dr Joseph Ambani says: “So-called ‘virginity kits’ are nothing more than a harmful mix of pseudoscience, cultural pressure, and medical misinformation.
“As a medical professional, I find these products deeply concerning.
“They prey on fear and societal expectations, offering nothing but deception.
“There is no medical test that can prove virginity.
“The idea that an intact hymen signifies virginity is a myth as hymens vary in shape and elasticity, and they can wear down naturally through physical activity, without any sexual activity involved.”
Daisy adds: “There is obviously a whole industry that is set up surrounding virginity and that is really sort of skewed towards youth and ‘barely legal’ and young virgins.
“The more you dig into it, the creepier it is.”
