And contrary to their female counterparts, male sex workers don’t answer to a pimp or work in saunas or brothels. They advertise online. He explains two of the very distinct problems - those working on the streets and those working in pop-up brothels. We work with a lot of lads in their mid twenties who are out having a great time in the Village, have a home but no job, with high drug and alcohol use and use sex work as something to do,” he says. “They are comfortable with it and happy with it. Many, but not all, of these are run by violent and bullying pimps and populated by vulnerable Eastern European women.

Rooms or flats within a building which are let separately to different individuals offering sexual services can also count as a brothel. And then there were brothels, in many cases operated with the tacit knowledge of the police as long as they were drug-free and didn’t use underage girls. Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, it is an offence to cause or incite prostitution or control it for personal gain. One particularly startling statistic is that many of these men told charity workers they started doing sex work from as young as 14. Inevitably many of them are in care.The level of vulnerability is extremely high on the street. It’s a very dangerous thing to be doing,” says MASH CEO Cate Allison.

Running a brothel, being raped while working as a prostitute, paying for sex - stories from the sex trade

One myth is that sex workers can’t be raped. I think it’s still common for people to believe that.” It’s a hidden, yet sprawling world which is increasingly complex to understand making it tougher than ever to keep victims safe. They’ve had information from people working in dilapidated properties such as carpenters and plasterers - and some of their best successes have come from nosy neighbours.