PRIME TIME – “PROFITING FROM PROSTITUTION”

Thanks to Christine Allen for the tip!

RTÉ Release

PRIME TIME – “PROFITING FROM PROSTITUTION”

TX:  Tues 7th Feb 2012, 9.35pm

Prime Time goes undercover to expose the frightening reality for women involved in prostitution across the cities and towns of Ireland. We expose the people profiting from the sex trade and report on the ever-growing demand in Ireland for paid sex with young, foreign and often vulnerable women.

This Tuesday, 9.35pm on RTÉ One, Prime Time broadcasts an hour-long investigation into the people profiting from prostitution in Ireland.
On any given day there are up to 700 women advertising sex for sale on escort agency websites that circumvent Irish law. More than 90% of the women online advertise as independent escorts, supposedly free from controlling pimps. The opposite is the sordid truth, as Prime Time can reveal.

Following a six-month investigation, reporter Paul Maguire goes right to the heart of organised prostitution. He goes face to face with the pimps behind the criminal networks spanning the country and uses cutting-edge technology to trail hundreds of women being moved, almost without trace, all over Ireland.

Paul Maguire discovers ‘escorts’ being made available in every county. In towns and cities across the country, anonymous apartments are home to young, vulnerable foreign women, kept inside to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of Irish customers. He meets Suzzy in Kildare, 19 years old and working 14 hours a day, seven days a week from a room she rarely leaves.

After months of surveillance, Prime Time can expose a major prostitution ring that systematically moves women, barely out of their teens, between brothels in Ennis, Dundalk, Cavan, Athlone and Dublin. As Prime Time discovers, the authorities are struggling to stop pimps who flout the law without fear of being caught.

Technology, from mobile phones to internet sites, underpins the dramatic expansion of prostitution in Ireland – and helps the organisers evade detection. For the first time, the programme details how names, ages, nationalities and locations of women advertised for prostitution, made available 24 hours a day, constantly change. Viewers will also see first hand the boss of an ‘escort agency’ interviewing a potential new recruit, revealing the sleazy reality behind the glossy websites.

Throughout the programme, the reality of a prostitute’s life in Ireland is laid bare – a rapidly growing phenomenon driven by demand from Irish men in every part of the country.