Sex ads disguised as ‘massage’ services on popular website

POPULAR classifieds website Gumtree is being used by men and women to advertise sex for sale under the guise of massage services.

The website features more than 1,000 adverts for massage-related services in Ireland, a large percentage of which are legitimate professional businesses.

However, in a significant number of cases, the massage operations, often listed under “full-body massage”, are actually fronts for sex services.

In a number of cases, men and women are willing to confirm over the phone that they will offer “oral or hand relief” as “extras” in addition to the massages.

In one case, a woman who answered the phone appeared to be acting as a pimp in a fully-fledged prostitution service.

When she was asked what services were available, she said massage “with oral or hand relief” from two different women in two different parts of Dublin.

She added that if a 45-minute appointment was booked, the women would have full sex with the punter for €200. She even admitted one of the women was prepared to offer oral sex without a condom.

In other cases, the women who answered the phone said any “erotic extras” would have to be negotiated with the girls who were doing the massage when the client arrived.

The majority of the women offering the dubious massage services are Eastern European or Asian.

However, in one case, a woman, who described herself as a “black north American female”, said she offered “covered oral sex” with massage for €100 or hand relief with massage for €60.

On February 17, one of her ads on Gumtree stated “with happy ending”, but that ad was removed by the following day.

The Gumtree site also features ads from men looking for sexual services in addition to massage. In one case the poster of an advert said: “Male 30s looking for masseuse in Naas area for full body massage with hand relief.”

A statement issued by Gumtree last night said: “Gumtree.com is a local community notice board that facilitates face-to-face trade, similar to classified ads in local newspapers.

The advertisement of sexual services is against Gumtree’s posting rules.

“Ads in the massage services section of Gumtree must include relevant qualifications and state that they are not offering a sexual service.

“Gumtree encourages its users to alert us to any suspicious ads that do not comply to these rules via the community reporting system on the site, and our dedicated safety team will take appropriate action as soon as possible.

“In this instance, we will investigate the adverts that you have brought to our attention and remove them from the site if they are found to be inappropriate.”

The proliferation of these advertisements in various media outlets has led the Irish Massage Therapists Association to seek greater regulation of the industry to drive out the unseemly stigma which these other services are bringing to their business.