A former sex worker from Manchester has set out to warn others about the realities of prostitution.
Maeve Moon was just 18 when she started working as a ‘sugar baby’ who dated older men in exchange for money.
She then began to work as an escort while she was a student studying for a degree in Surrey – sometimes earning £1,000 a day – before training to be to be a dominatrix.
READ MORE: The lost Greater Manchester village that’s completely submerged under the water of a scenic reservoir
Maeve is now determined to become a psychotherapist in order to help others overcome trauma.
She was just five years old when she was sexually abused by a teenage girl, LancsLive reports.
Now 23, she says that childhood abuse led her towards a sex industry which only damaged her physical and mental health.
Speaking on her YouTube channel, Maeve said she initially charged people £150 an hour while working out of her student accommodation.
She believes that the trauma she suffered as a young girl led her to see her own body as a commodity.
“When I became an escort I didn’t question the nature of it, I didn’t have an attachment to my own body,” Maeve says.
“I didn’t think it was sacred; nobody had ever told me that. I just thought: ‘You can use this to get money’ it was a useable commodity.
“It made sense, it made financial sense but it led me down a dark road; I didn’t care what people did to me as long as I got money.”
‘When I became an escort I didn’t question the nature of it, I didn’t have an attachment to my own body’
(Image: LancsLive/Maeve Moon)
“I saw my body as a tool for the sexual gratification of others, as an 18-year-old I was carrying those beliefs with me.
“I had been informed about escorting as a younger girl and I decided to give it go.
“I also idolised money as a form of connection with people, I couldn’t connect with people in any other way.”
Get the latest updates from across Greater Manchester direct to your inbox with the free MEN newsletter
You can sign up very simply by following the instructions here
Now Maeve is trying to use her story to help other people stuck in a similar situation.
“I shouldn’t have never ended up on that path in life,” she says.
“I had a traumatic childhood, I ended up being sexually abused as a child and that set up this idea in my head that I didn’t need respect for my own body.”
Maeve believes the sexual abuse that occurred when she was young affected her decisions
(Image: LancsLive/Maeve Moon)
Maeve says she was sexually abused for a second time aged 16 when she was raped by an older man who used social media to groom her before meeting up with her, drugging her and attacking her in his car.
“My abuse was never addressed; at five I never had any therapy after I was abused. I was never told it wasn’t right, I just internalised it,” she says.
“At 16 there was no follow-up, no therapy, no help; I was just forgotten about.”
Maeve began working as a sugar baby at 18, agreeing to date older men in exchange for money.
This later changed to escorting, as she realised that she couldn’t commit herself to the full-time ‘relationships’ that came with being a sugar baby.
‘If it gets to the point where you feel like things have got out of hand and you want to stop; saying no is really hard. You end up switching yourself off and letting it happen.’
(Image: LancsLive/Maeve Moon)
But Maeve quickly learned that paid sex work has its dark side.
“People are paying you a lot of money for a service,” she said.
“If it gets to the point where you feel like things have got out of hand and you want to stop; saying no is really hard. You end up switching yourself off and letting it happen.”
Maeve moved on to working out of a number of illegal brothels across England; considering them safer than her previous set-up.
As the traumatic experiences mounted, she suffered problems with binge-eating, bulimia and cannabis addiction.
“I was juggling quite a lot of issues,” Maeve says. “That (cannabis) addiction took over my life, I had gone through an extended period where I couldn’t work but I still needed weed.
“I would let men visit me from Tinder; if they brought me weed they could do anything to me. Addiction came before anything else.”
Maeve now works to help others through her YouTube channel and support group
(Image: LancsLive/Maeve Moon)
Maeve says that despite spending a long time trying to leave the sex industry, she felt trapped by her own circumstances.
In 2019, she was at her lowest ebb.
“I had just been kicked out of a brothel,” she said. “I had pelvic inflammatory disease, copper poisoning from my coil, a weed addiction and a central London flat to pay for.
“I remember opening my apartment door and thinking: ‘I hate my life, this is it, this is the end of my life’.”
Maeve went on a spiritual retreat which she says opened her up to new ways of thinking, giving her an overall understanding of the life she had led to that point.
She gave up on the sex industry and drugs immediately and set-up the website Profit from Trauma soon after; offering online classes to help other women, using her online presence to warn others about the dangers of the sex industry.
“Escorts usually say that it’s a means to an end, they’re doing it for the rent, to pay for uni, to get more money,” Maeve says. “But the reality is you will never make enough money to meet that end because you always have to spend more to forget about your life.
“Whether its drugs, booze, shopping, holidays; you spend more money numbing yourself.
Maeve is now two years sober
(Image: LancsLive/Maeve Moon)
“The most important thing a young person tempted by sex work should know is this: If money was no object, is this really what you would like to be doing with your life?
“If you force your body to have sex with someone you wouldn’t have sex with if money was involved, then it’s damaging.”
Maeve is now two years sober and a qualified therapeutic trauma coach.
She is currently raising funds so that she can undertake a Gabor Mate Compassionate Enquiry Course and hopes to one day work as a psychotherapist.
You can donate to Maeve’s GoFundMe campaign here.
Get the latest headlines direct to your inbox with our newsletters.
Read More
Related Articles
Read More
Related Articles
If you have questions,