A total of 75 women and 59 men are currently selling themselves for sex in Cornwall on one website alone. Over a hundred men and women are currently selling themselves for sex in Cornwall on one website alone, with the majority based in Truro and St Austell. A total of 75 women and 59 men are advertising themselves as prostitutes on a controversial website called AdultWork, it can be revealed.
Last year, a government report hit out at a small number of internet firms for fuelling a boom in the number of 'pop-up brothels' across the UK.
It concluded that prostitution procurement websites were "the most significant enabler of sex-trafficking in the UK". The report found that the sites were being used by traffickers to control the profiles of sex workers while also fuelling a new wave of short-let brothels allowing women to be trafficked around the country for sex by criminal gangs. It found that a small number of sites dominated the marketplace and named two in particular: Vivastreet and Adultwork.
Both websites make money by charging those who post "adult" adverts rather than the people who then make use of them. The cross-party group of MPs said the owners of such sites "directly and knowingly" profit from sex-trafficking.
Newquay police, who have uncovered dozens of pop-up brothels in the town since then, say the majority of sex workers in Cornwall are from Poland and Romania and are being trafficked by international gangs.
