s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/welcome-to-paradise/index.html
"All the sex workers I spoke to, in Britain and in Germany, told me it’s “not for everyone.” Kristina Marlen, the Berlin dominatrix, sees her work in terms of “celebrating the sexual part of the person” (though “sometimes people come in and I am like ‘Ew’. But I can work with them.”) She’s bisexual and currently in an open relationship with a woman. She thinks of prostitution as its own kind of “sexual orientation”.
But, she says, “there are some people working in the sex industry who shouldn’t be there.” Sex workers can find themselves in “very precarious positions and not all the women can articulate themselves as I can.” Even she has had “moments in which it wasn’t clear to me how to communicate boundaries.” You need to be thick-skinned and good at negotiating with strong boundaries and high self-esteem. There isn’t much of what’s been called “willing supply”.
Back in 2002, the liberal left imagined a sex industry in which responsible managers would push out exploitative pimps. Empowered prostitutes would work in safety and the money from this hitherto black market would go into pension pots and the German treasury. Well, they got their taxes.
Paradise’s Jürgen Rudloff appeared in a documentary, “Sex - Made in Germany”, which aired on the German public broadcaster ARD last summer. In one scene he’s sitting in his spacious kitchen dressed in an open-necked white shirt and linen jacket, surrounded by his four shiny-haired, privately-educated children.
Would he be happy for either of his two daughters to work at Paradise, the interviewer asks. Rudloff turns puce. “Unthinkable, unthinkable,” he says. “The question alone is brutal. I don’t mean to offend the prostitutes but I try to raise my children so that they have professional opportunities. Most prostitutes don’t have those options. That’s why they’re doing that job." He pauses and looks away.
“Unimaginable”, he repeats. “I don’t even want to think about it.”