As Anna Rajmon watches her young daughter as they spend time together in her home in the Czech Republic, she is far removed from the hotels, Airbnb rooms, and public transport system which was the bedrock of her work life in Ireland this time last year.
She is reunited with her daughter and her mother, who knew nothing of how she made money in Ireland for over three years, or the lengths she had to take to ensure her work could still continue through the lockdowns of the early days of the covid pandemic.
But her phone stores a lot of images which help to trace the pattern of her life in the days from February 2020 to August last year.
Hundreds of images are there of receipts for hotels across the 32 counties of the island, handwritten tottings of expenses and earnings, videos of hotel and self-catering properties, and text messages with appointments to be kept.
There too is correspondence with landlords who show how some are turning a blind eye to the sex industry in Ireland even while it is being operated from their own properties.
Text messages
One message, sent by a landlord in Belfast, reads: “I’ve had a complaint from my cleaners from last time. My house is now unavailable.”
Later in the chat, he said: “Leave it a few weeks. May I suggest putting all your surplus work rubbish in another bin away from the house not to make it obvious to our cleaners.”
However, a landlord in a different area of the country was not taking any risks. When he received a query about his property in June 2021, he responded: “What is the purpose of your visit? I need to check a few things before I approve you. Apologies for the questions but we have been having a few issues in the building with illegal prostitution and people have been removed swiftly.”
Anna still has the screenshot of the message.
She also has images that transport her mind to a year earlier, when queries were made of a landlord about a property in Cork. Those images show that the landlord wrote, after discovering that Anna worked in the sex industry: “Hi we can sort everything out through Airbnb once you have checked out, left the key in the lock box and the place is not damaged. Sorry about this but I cannot have this happening here.”
And there is the polite but firm response to a query about a property in Dublin, in October 2020, when the owner wrote: “Thank you for your enquiry, would you mind verifying your identity with Airbnb before I accept booking as I had a problem previously with guests and Airbnb advise to get id verified. Hope this is ok with you.”
Lockdowns
Given that much of the first half of Anna’s time in Ireland was marked by lockdowns, the move from hotel rooms to self-catering apartments could be seen in the pattern of bookings. One response from a landlord recalls a time we have almost forgotten — a time when all journeys had to be necessary and where the safest place was deemed to be at home, as per Government messaging of the time. When requesting a booking of a property in Athlone in March 2021, Anna was asked if her stay was essential in keeping with guidelines, to which the response was that she worked as a sales manager for a company selling face masks and other personal protective equipment.
The pattern that can be established quickly from the receipts and messages is that Anna’s modus operandi was to spend three nights in each town or city, before moving on to the next one, mostly by public transport.
“I was moving every three or four days to different towns,” she says. “I was sent anywhere you could possibly imagine, including small towns such as Tuam, Ballina, Mullingar, Enniscorthy, and more. I still have all the hotel bookings in the chats with the agency, videos of the apartments, videos of the money I was supposed to leave in the apartments.”
Bookings
During a perusal of screenshots of bookings, it becomes evident that at times, there are bookings made for the same dates in two different areas. For example, in early February 2020, the images show that she was booked into a hotel in Cork on the same dates as a booking for her in Dublin.
“Sometimes, the agency reserves additional accommodations and sends different girl(s) there. Other reasons for this include booking a more expensive hotel as a backup option in case a cheaper one is not available. If a more affordable option is found, the original booking is cancelled,” she says.
“Another reason is that the agency had experienced issues with that hotel in the past but wanted to give it another try in case there were any changes. They arranged alternative accommodations in case the girl was sent away from the hotel.
“If there were no available hotels close to the girl, it would make sense for her to travel to a nearby city. For example, if she was in Cork and everything nearby was too expensive or unavailable, a hotel would be booked in Belfast. If something became available closer to her later on, the agency would either reschedule or cancel the previous reservation.”
The screenshots also show another pattern — the use of variations of names to book Anna into various accommodations.
“The agency used fake names to book the hotels which caused issues because most hotels require ID at check-in. As a result, some bookings were under different names.
“The agency was handling the bookings for the first two years, and I encountered some issues at a few hotels because the name on the booking didn’t match my ID card. After these experiences, I was given permission to make bookings by myself. The agency had copies of my ID card, passport, and driving licence, but I kept the original documents.”
Given that she worked for an agency which had hired her in her home country, she had to pay them a fee out of every booking made for her, as well as paying expenses including accommodation and food.
“And while she admits that she willingly made the decision to engage in sex work, first in the Czech Republic and then in Ireland, she is unsure if she can say that she is a victim of human trafficking.
However, she tells of having endless clients lined up for her by her agency, even on days where she was the victim of assault by clients, including incidents of rape.
Despite the seriousness of what happened to her, Anna is trying to turn the page on her life in the sex industry and move on, working now in graphic design in her home country.
She finds it hard at times to process what she experienced but recalls that she was “forced, threatened, raped, lied to, etc” during her time as a sex worker.
She accepts now that she willingly entered the sex industry herself but believes she was manipulated by those running the agency.
Several times I was raped and yet forced to take another ‘client’. In tears and depression, I was thinking about suicide, but I stayed strong only because of my daughter.”
She finds it difficult to discuss some elements of what she recalls, including the rapes, saying: “It’s tough for me, and I’m still dealing with some past traumas.
“I was down, depressed, thinking about ending my life. It was one of the lowest points in my life. Lonely life with a suitcase, full of stress, pain, and strangers. I mainly interacted with people from the agency only.”
She is circumspect about why she decided to enter the sex trade.
“In late 2019, I found myself out of work and struggled to find a new job for a long time. With a daughter to support, despite my best efforts, I reached a point where we had no food on the table.
“I set aside my pride and, in 2020, decided to reach out to a Czech agency that arranged escort work in Ireland. I thought it would be a temporary fix until I found a job, but the pandemic changed everything, and I ended up staying in Ireland for much longer than intended. I didn’t fully understand what I was getting myself into at the time.”
The ad which prompted her to apply to consider the sex trade in Ireland promised “effective advertising, accommodation, transportation, and a team of trained people who will care for you and are available to you due to their professional conduct and experience”.
With a promise of earnings of up to €4,000 per week, Anna hoped she would quickly earn enough money to enable her to return home and build a better life for herself and her little girl.
When she responded to the ad, she was told that prices for her services would range from €100 for 30 minutes to €200 for an hour. It was also outlined to her that 40% of her earnings would go to the agency.
But first things first — she needed to enlist a photographer in Prague to take photos which would be used to advertise her online as one of the options for men looking for a sex worker on escort sites.
She left her daughter behind in the Czech Republic with her parents and led them to believe she was based in Dublin in a good job. Her brother, who had moved to Ireland before her, was aware of what she was doing but kept her secret.
She didn’t have a home in Ireland, travelling around to each location, in constant touch with the operators handling her bookings for the agency.
And while in the early days, she worked alone, the move to short-term lets during the pandemic led to her sharing accommodation with one other sex worker for a long period of time. She subsequently went on to other sharing arrangements with other sex workers from time to time, a move which could have brought her into contact with An Garda Síochána.
Legislation
At present, under the Sexual Offences Act 2017, those who offer their services as a sex worker are no longer committing an offence. Part 4 of the legislation introduced two new offences — the payment for sexual activity with a prostitute, and paying for sexual activity with a trafficked person.
Under the legislation, a provision was also included for a review of the measures after three years. The terms of reference were published in July 2020. The review is to include an assessment of the impact of the act on the welfare of those who engage in sexual activity for payment.
Earlier this year, it emerged through a reply from Justice Minister Helen McEntee to a parliamentary question put down by Independent TD Catherine Connolly that the department plans to finalise the review internally.
One part of the legislation which could have spelled trouble for Anna was the significantly increased penalties for brothel keeping — two or more sex workers selling sexual services from the same premises — to a €5,000 fine or a jail term of up to 12 months.
“I was familiar with the law, and I often argued with the agency. The agency had established protocols for how to handle these situations. They were convinced that as long as there were no drugs involved, no one could arrest us. Perhaps we accepted that as a good enough excuse because we didn’t want to be alone.
You may think it’s ridiculous, but we feared clients more than prison. It had benefits not to be alone.”
During her time in Ireland, the death of Romanian sex worker Geila Ibram in an apartment in Limerick on April 4 last year shocked Anna. A man has been charged with her murder.
She recalls of the time: “You know, most of the time, I was aware of the horrors and risks that all this entailed, even though I often forgot them. Moments like in Limerick reminded me how real it is; the numbness that became natural disappeared. Maybe it was good that I learned about it later, as I was already quite anxious.
“Of course, I was scared. I was at the mercy of fate and fear with every opening of my room door. It’s hard to describe what I felt. I was scared to death, expecting the worst, shivering, crying, and imagining the worst things.”
Shortly afterwards, an encounter with a client led to an entirely different outcome for Anna — a growing friendship which led to the generous gesture by her former client who gave her enough money to repay her debts and return home to her daughter and mother.
Now, she is glad she has managed to escape Ireland’s sex trade but remains traumatised by what she encountered.
She has self-published an account of her time in Ireland’s sex trade, called Elis — Irish Call Girl, partly as a means of processing what happened to her, but also in the hope that it will shine a light on the sex industry here.
Of the agency which she thought would help her bring herself out of debt, she says: “I do not want to get involved with them again.”
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