To be upset a brothel has opened next door to my child's school

[OneJadeEagle]

Walking past school last week I noticed a shop next door that had been shut for ages has now turned into a 'massage' place. Curtains firmly shut, doorbell on, locked door, 'calling cards' left on the outside for people to pick up discreetly. Checked online and the gumtree ads and reviews from men leave no doubt the type of massages they are offering.

The school is a special needs school and some of the older children, whilst vulnerable with learning disabilities, do walk to school alone past the premises. The whole thing just really gives me the creeps, the idea of a bunch of creepy men being attracted to the road right by all these kids, possibly drugs etc.

Anyways I messaged the class WhatsApp to try and co-ordinate complaints to the council and the general vibe was I was overreacting. We are in a big city, there's always going to be something going on in the vicinity. Why put some ladies out of work when they're trying to earn an honest living and as long as they aren't parading into school what's the drama.

I don't know, AIBU?

Most likely operating without a licence, a licence would not be issued due to school proximity

They’re still plastered all over phone booths in the soho area 😂

I would feel the same as you, disgusted.

Report it to the police and the council along with the evidence from punters' 'reviews'. Use the fact that this is an illegal brothel as the first point and the issue that it is next to a school as a reason to treat this as an urgent matter. Good luck op. You are absolutely justified in objecting to this.

Modern slavery. Report it please x

There's a difference between predatory men being everywhere and having a specific gathering point for them next to a special needs school.

Most of those creepy men will be husbands and fathers

Report it as a brothel to the police, if a few prostitutes lose business because of it then good. They can legally sell sex privately if they want but running a brothel is illegal, as is advertising sex for money.

Special needs kids, especially girls, are often more vulnerable to ending up in these kinds of businesses. It's really concerning this is so close to a school. It normalizes these to kids and even these so called pro-prostitution moms wouldn't be happy about their daughters ending up "working" in a place like that.

to be honest I wouldn’t care if they were keeping everything inside. How would kids know what’s going on? There’s a brothel near my place of work and customers and workers come in regularly for shopping and they are just normal people. I also know a few people that work from home giving “massages” and they are discreet and there has never been any issues with neighbours etc. Unless there is a problem you should leave them alone. I’d rather these women be indoors and much safer. Would you prefer them to be on the streets in danger?

The only people you are going to hurt will be the sexworkers. It's illegal for them to work together for safety under brothel law in all of the UK, and your reports will probably end up with the suspected brothel being raided by police who can confiscate their earnings, property and charge them under the brothel law and throw in extra charges if they find any cannabis or anything like that. They aren't going to stop being sexworkers either they will just go elsewhere but this time poorer and with criminal charges.

If it's any consolation, discretion is a big part of the sex industry (you have noticed they don't have a big neon "brothel here" sign up for example) for both sexworkers and clients who will both make efforts to come and go as discreetly as possible. It isn't what you might have seen in movies, the women won't walk in dressed like strippers or Pretty Woman with huge heels and the men won't be wearing stained trenchcoats. Everyone who comes and leaves out of there will be plain clothes like anyone else and not drawing attention to themselves.

And for the poster who said "film them and ask them to smile" there is a problem with that and you don't know how people are going to react. Discretion is important for clients, sexworkers and anyone else present (there could be men taking the role of security or "pimps") and they may be terrified of being outed (yes this includes the sexworkers themselves for several reasons) and like I said, you just don't know how people are going to react to this. It's a dangerous game to play.

I agree about leaving it to the police and not taking direct action such as filming.

I am very much not an apologist for people who think they can buy consent to sex. That being said, there are two brothels within a 5 minute walk of my house - the joys of city life - and I have not noticed any antisocial, risky, or otherwise undesirable behaviour around these premises, one of which is right opposite a prep school and a park. One advertises as a "massage spa" in the window. The other doesn't advertise itself at the premises and I only know about it because of a local news story. It makes me sad to think about the people working there, but it has no impact on me as a near neighbour.

By all means report it, but I understand from local neighbourhood forums that the police and local authority aren't interested unless there's significant evidence that the workers are trafficked or under age.

While I think those places are everywhere, I do think there are some unique concerns being located next to a school for pupils with SEN. It is more common than people may be aware that SEN teens/adults often are more vulnerable to using brothels/massage parlours. They were taken advantage of for money, told sob stories to get them to take their parents cards, give them cash etc. "If you don't help us we will die/be beaten" . This can create feelings of needing help. In addition the social isolation that can come with SEN makes people are target as they are made to feel special etc. and they are more likely to genuinely believe they've made a girlfriend as compared to the reality of the situation. These relationships can become extremely coersive and are always financially abusive.

I'd speak to the Headmistress as a first point and while I wouldn't be vigilante about it, I do think it should be raised and hopefully addressed - if needed with governors and Headmistress starting formal conversations with the council.

Agree. People in modern slavery are often locked in (eg cannabis factories as well as brothels) and as well as the obvious implications of that for their safety and well-being it’s also a fire risk.

You’re assuming the people working there have any choice at all. If they’re trafficked and working as slaves then I don’t think what you’ve said applies. They’re not keeping their wages anyway and are likely to be treated very badly. They need rescuing.

This is absolute nonsense. I, unfortunately, had a brothel in my road for a few months before police shut it down. We had a huge increase in random men hanging around, including at least once having them actually queueing. They'd occasionally smoke weed or be visibly drunk.
There was also at least one incident where one of the workers ran out crying into the street with a man following her and shouting.
Years ago, my mother-in-law unwittingly moved into a flat that had been a brothel and used to have strange men ringing the bell and turning up day and night. A number of times, she had to call the police to remove them because they became aggressive when she told them she didn't offer that kind of service and asked them to leave.
These aren't the kind of men anyone wants near a school and the idea that the women inside are just happily and quietly earning a living is naive at best. The women need support, not people turning a blind eye to the horrible reality of these places or the men that frequent them.

Lost the quote there. That was in reply to Christinapple

Running (and working in) a brothel is illegal, but advertising sexual services is not.

That you even need to ask shows the reality of how much contempt men have for women.

Can you show me the stats on that?

Brothels are illegal though so just report it to the police? Job done

if it continues to carry on get some solid evidence that you cannot refute and go back and back and back. Call your MP. All sorts.

I guess in this day & age you have to strip the morality out of it, though I do see a problem with a place that caters to sex addicts / men who pay for consensual rape, opening shop right next to a place for especially vulnerable children.

Make sure the police are aware, check with the council that it’s licensed, and complain to your local elected members.

I think there are all sorts of adjacent issues which means you have a case. Drug use is high among prostitutes, you don’t want needles and other paraphernalia around the school. There may be trafficking, there may be pimps, or other elements of potentially gangland crime.

If teachers are working late at night at school, then walking home alone, they may find it uncomfortable.

(OTOH, presumably the children are in class most the time, and under close supervision, and the premises empty after 5pm, so to play devils advocate, the location might actually be better than other places.)

Good luck OP

Why is it one hell of an assumption? It’s simple reality. This is the kind of men who use women’s bodies as wank socks. I take it you never had to live in poor areas of the country? I had to walk past similar kinds of scum regularly. I had to fight my way past occasionally too.

You have a very rosy idea of brothel sex (or for that matter, strip clubs) if you think that whatever happens, stays inside and nobody on the outside is any the wiser.

I can think of all sorts of things that absolutely WILL spill out onto the street from time to time, and no ERthree, you don't need to have 'sex in full view of the street' in order for this brothel's siting to be a huge problem. For a start, please be aware that brothels and prostitution in the UK are ILLEGAL. (My pointing this out should in no way be taken as condemnation of women who are often forced into surviving in this way. I would favour the Nordic Model for prostitution, where women who work in this area aren't criminalised but their bloody punters are, and we try to eradicate the whole abusive industry and help the women who probably didn't dream about becoming prostitutes when they grew up, eh?)

-ILLEGAL activities attract and involve - criminals. Well, d'oh! A man who is involved in transactional sex is a criminal, by definition. Men who pay women to have sex with them are committing a crime. Do you want a building right opposite a school to attract them to the immediate area?
-Men who pay women for transactional sex are often involved in other criminality.
-Prostitution is very often messily entangled in drugs dealing and drugs-based gang activity. Brothels often function as 'safe houses' for stashing drugs. Women working as prostitutes are very often, as I'm sure you know, doing this because they've been hooked in by drugs abuse, and before that, good old fashioned sexual abuse. Pimps groom women, drugs are part of that pattern and a way to get them stuck somewhere they can't easily get out of again. Again, just peachy to have that opposite a school.
-Men who view women as rentable holes aren't always that nice in their behaviours. Might surprise you to know that arguments and fights often break out between a punter and the woman he's trying to rent. That often spills out onto the street too. I've seen this happen in a certain area in Oxford and it was a real eye-opener.

Frankly I'm staggered at your attitude towards women in this horrible position, and also towards children who are even more vulnerable than most. Actually, shelve that - ALL children are very vulnerable in this situation - children with special needs may not have a way of understanding or rationalising, or be able to understand that any violence isn't going to directly affect them too. But children who don't have additional needs are going to see this happening to women in their community and it will normalise it. That is fecking terrible, and it's appalling of you to suggest that it's ok.