Hello dear Independent journalists,
Lovely story, but the Q&A contains a couple of errors which you might want to correct:
Q. Is it illegal to run a website where men or women appear to provide sex for money?
A. This is a grey area. Owners can be arrested for controlling prostitution if the police can show that sexual services are being given in exchange for cash. But this is often very difficult.
As just the offer to be sexual with someone for money is enough to make someone a prostitute, it is screamingly obvious that, if any real sponsors existed then
a) he's doing enough to count as control, and
b) he's gaining from it - sponsors pay some up front money to him.
Even in the quite likely event that there aren't any, there's "Causing or inciting prostitution for gain": getting people to offer to have sex for money in expectation of gain for himself or someone else. As gain includes getting a discount, the freebies he's been having or hoping to have would count.
Operators can say the sex is a private contract between the client and the sex worker. On the SponsorAScholar.co.uk website the extensive terms and conditions describe an agreement which covers time and companionship together.
They can, but when it's obvious to everyone that prostitution is involved, it doesn't do them any good. The usual way they do this is via promoting 'field reviews' or similar, but this site made it blatantly clear that it was sex-for-money for everyone except him.
Q. Is it illegal to advertise sexual services on the internet?
A. Yes.
No, it's not in the UK.
You might want to make a donation towards the costs of running this site too, especially if you got stuff from here. It is easily the oldest source for the info that he stole the company details of match.com, for example. Just saying...