I’ve been bundled into a van, held hostage and threatened at knifepoint aged 18 because of my job – but I’ll never quit
A YOUNG woman has been robbed at knifepoint and held hostage while doing her job – but says she won’t quit as she’s making too much money.
Amy, 23, has been in her line of work since the age of 18 and has described some of her most harrowing experiences, including being bundled into a van.
She is an escort and claims many of her customers have been the rich and famous, revealing how she gets paid to attend lavish parties and mingle with A-list guests.
Amy – who did not wish to give her full name – told The Sun: “You can die doing this job. That’s why I tell people not to do it, you can literally die.”
Asked if that doesn’t scare her, the Londoner said: “I mean, it’s done now isn’t it. You can die anywhere. I’m older now, the crazy guys tend to target the new girls – I’m better at spotting the red flags now.”
She refuses to reveal how much she’s making annually – but since July she’s been living in Australia where escorts on average charge much more than the UK.
When I was a teenager it was either this or working in a warehouse for f***ing Amazon or someone. I thought, working 12 hours straight for £9.50 an hour – there’s no way I’m doing that.
Escort Amy
“When I was a teenager it was either this or working in a warehouse for f***ing Amazon or someone,” Amy said.
“I thought, working 12 hours straight for £9.50 an hour – there’s no way I’m doing that.”
She added: “It was just about the money, initially, and I found I’m good at it.”
Amy began working in the adult industry prior to the Covid pandemic and was making £140 an hour, often seeing six clients a day on average.
“I would take a month off here, a month off there because I was earning enough,” she said.
“Before Covid the rates were lower but because of inflation, it’s like double now.”
Amy started doing ‘out calls’, which saw her carrying out bookings at clients’ homes or hotels.
During the pandemic – after lockdown measures were partially lifted in summer 2020 she even met married customers in alleyways or down the side of their homes.
“The weirdest one was a children’s playhouse in a man’s garden,” she explained.
“It was really weird, but you just have to make do with what you have.”
Amy said their wives and children were usually inside the homes at the time, adding: “It’s f***ed up.”
Asked if the men’s partners ever knew about the bookings, she said: “I assume not. If they know it’s happening the wife is usually in the booking as well. I’ve seen a few couples.”
Amy advertises her services on various sites, which often charge at around £150 a week.
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She now mostly does in-calls, which sees clients come to her home.
When she started in the industry, she signed up to an agency which provided her with a driver.
“They spread the work out so that they’ll only give girls like two jobs a night, so that they keep coming back for more money,” she explained.
“If the girls get good money in one night they won’t come back the next day.”
She said she was sat in the car with her driver one night and was getting offered private bookings.
“I said let’s ditch the agency and we’ll just go do these ourselves and I’ll pay you myself.
“I essentially just poached him from an agency. He’s a good guy.”
Amy’s bookings have ranged from 15 minutes to overnight – with her driver also acting as her bodyguard.
“The driver sits outside and you do like check-ins with them. If you don’t check in, then the driver comes into the building and comes and gets you,” she said.
Without this support, Amy said she would surely be dead.
Sinister clients have tried to douse her with drugs, while others have robbed her or even held her hostage when they couldn’t afford to pay the rate for a meeting.
“A group of guys once tried to put me in the back of a van – some will keep you hostage,” she said.
“If they can’t pay to extend the bookings, but they want to keep going they’ll just lock you inside the house, and then your driver has to come in and save you.”
She added: “You can die doing this job. That’s why I tell people not to do it, you can literally die.
“The crazy guys tend to target the new girls, so they’ll go after teenagers or the girls who have just started out.
“Now I barely have any problems because I’m older so there’s less risk. I’ve got more experience.”
You can die doing this job. That’s why I tell people not to do it, you can literally die.The crazy guys tend to target the new girls, so they’ll go after teenagers or the girls who have just started out.
Escort Amy
Amy has become good at spotting the red flags, even as soon as potential clients first contact – and in such cases will not agree to a booking.
“Sometimes you can tell in the way they message, which you don’t know when you first start. “When you have experience, you can just tell, especially in London.
“But if you refuse one booking, somebody else will fill the slot – like there’s so many people. It’s just it’s never ending.”
If a client wants her to keep her there longer than the booking, she said they’ll keep asking for “five more minutes” or if she wants another drink.
“They’ll just come up with some dumb thing to say to keep you there,” she said, but she always refuses if they haven’t paid and she feels unsafe. She said the key is to “keep my cool”, which she’s learned the hard way.
“I used to kick off and I’ve been like, no, let me f*** out – and that’s when it escalates.”
I make £170k a year HUMILIATING men… millionaire lotto winner paid me to ridicule him while we watched Antiques Roadshow
A FORMER beauty salon owner now earns thousands of pounds kicking men in the balls in car parks, then telling them to “f*** off”.
Mistress Nancy’s clients even include a millionaire lottery winner who requested a two-hour foot worship session while they watched Antiques Roadshow.
The 34-year-old says becoming a professional dominatrix is the best decision she ever made. She makes up to £14,000 a month on average.
After investing thousands into her beauty business only for clients to slowly start to dry up, Nancy – who did not wish to give her real name – needed a change.
“I’ve never had less than two jobs at a time, I’m autistic and have ADHD, so I always like being self-employed because I can’t hold a normal job,” she told The Sun.
“I work to my own schedule.
“I invested about £15,000 into my beauty business, renovating the premises and everything.
“I put a lot of time and energy and money into it and financed it myself. I loved it but because of the economy I wasn’t getting the clients I used to get in a few years ago. It was getting to the point where it was affecting my mental health.
“I thought, I need to follow where the money is.”
Over the years, she’s worked in various roles throughout the sex industry, namely as a dancer in strip clubs across Yorkshire. But she said the sector is changing, and not necessarily for the better.
Then, she suddenly found a strange niche emerging just for her.
Click here to read the full story
Amy said it’s not necessarily as violent as people imagine.
She described how some men will “keep you there with knives” but usually if they don’t want her to leave they just block off the way out or even lock the door.
However, she always ensures she has her phone and can alert her driver.
“It’s never taken him longer than like five minutes,” Amy said.
“You never give away your phone ever, and you always keep it by you. That’s his job. His job is driver and security. If I don’t continually message him, then he knows something’s wrong anyway.
“We have systems in place. Obviously, I don’t want to tell too much because then everyone will know my system, and I’ll die,” she said laughing.
When such encounters occur, she said she’ll take a break for as long as three months to realign.
“If you’re smart with your money and you save it, then you can take time off when bad things happen,” she said.
But, particularly in the UK, Amy said some men will simply make a fake booking with the intention of robbing an escort, particularly the younger ones.
“It just happens straight away as soon as you open the door,” she said.
“It could be one guy, or two or three turn up. At the end of the day, people view escorts as easy money if they’re working. That they can do whatever they want to us.”
One of her most horrific experiences while working saw her almost bundled into a van by a group of men during a booking at a house.
“I was halfway through the booking, and they must have been waiting and watching, I don’t know,” Amy said.
“But then a big group just swarms in, and they take me out to the back garden… there’s an alleyway and they were threatening me but I don’t really remember much.”
At the end of the day, people view escorts as easy money if they’re working. That they can do whatever they want to us.
Escort Amy
Amy said originally her clients were often much younger, but as her prices have gone up and she’s moved to Australia, they tend to be older.
“I’m getting older, it’s mostly my age and the way I look,” she added, referring to her tattoos.
And while she continues to escort, Amy has also done porn and in 2022 signed up to OnlyFans.
Her working patterns are much more flexible, and she charges between £300 and £350 an hour for her sex services, not including extras.
She said her family and friends are supportive of her line of work.
I was caught in £40,000 marriage scam…then I was forced into sex work in red-light district or my family would be killed
ILJA Abbattista was just 17 when she was taken to a gentlemen’s club in Rotterdam by a gang of pimps.
They told her to claim she was 18 – and, after being given a stage name she was put to work against her will.
A rape and sexual abuse survivor already, she said she was able to “dissociate” what was going on.
Earlier that day she had been given an impossible ultimatum: work for the gang for a week or lose her pinky finger – if she refused, the gang would kill a family member.
She had no idea how serious they were, but had never been so scared. One of the men was brandishing a gun.
Initially, she chose to lose the finger but when the blade touched her skin she changed her mind and agreed to work for them.
She would eventually come to realise that the pimps had hoped all along that that would be her choice.
“I’m thinking, I don’t want to do this,” she told The Sun. “But I’m petrified. I’m trying to save my family’s life here. I’ve got to do whatever I’ve got to do.”
Ilja is speaking out in an effort to encourage survivors of coercion and modern slavery to recognise the signs and help find a way out.
Click here to read the full story
“I’m very lucky, my friends support me,” she said, adding that despite her close calls: “I’ve never had an encounter with anybody where they’ve been genuinely horrible to my face, telling me I’m vile or whatever.”
Instead, it’s online trolls who give her the most abuse.
“The worst one I got was somebody messaged me and said ‘I hope you get human trafficked and get HIV and die a slow death’.
“I was like, that’s just crazy, broski. That’s a crazy thing to say to somebody.
“And to leave the digital footprint of it as well… that’s in black and white, it’s just dumb.”
How you can get help
Women's Aid has this advice for victims and their families:
- Always keep your phone nearby.
- Get in touch with charities for help, including the Women’s Aid live chat helpline and services such as SupportLine.
- If you are in danger, call 999.
- Familiarise yourself with the Silent Solution, reporting abuse without speaking down the phone, instead dialing “55”.
- Always keep some money on you, including change for a pay phone or bus fare.
- If you suspect your partner is about to attack you, try to go to a lower-risk area of the house – for example, where there is a way out and access to a telephone.
- Avoid the kitchen and garage, where there are likely to be knives or other weapons. Avoid rooms where you might become trapped, such as the bathroom, or where you might be shut into a cupboard or other small space.
If you are a victim of domestic abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s email support service is open weekdays and weekends during the crisis – messageinfo@supportline.org.uk.
Women’s Aid provides a live chat service – available weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You can also call the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
However, she said she’s thick skinned about it all. “I don’t really care, I never have,” she said.
“These are the same guys who are drooling and getting semis in public when they see anybody remotely attractive. They’d love me if I didn’t charge.”
In terms of her own love life, she said she had her only boyfriend after she started in the industry but is currently happily single.
“I’m only 23, I don’t really want a relationship because I think I’m too young. I have had one boyfriend, which I was too young for. But it was a nice relationship, if I had been older and more mature it might have lasted longer.
“Most of the sex workers that I know are married, so it’s not uncommon to be in a committed relationship.”
And while she won’t reveal any specifics, Amy said she’s had celebrity clients too.
“Rich people love hookers,” she said. “We’re known for discretion. They hire us for parties where half the time we just walk around, sit on people’s laps. You don’t even have to do much.
“It was more common when I was younger, because obviously I was 18 – I didn’t have the tattoos yet and wasn’t as recognisable.”
Asked how much she earns a year, she laughed and said: “I will never answer that question.”