The 24-year-old Liverpool Echo reporter discovered adverts online offering 's***** young ladies' who they could 'be naughty with' places to live.
One of the men she contacted described over the phone and in graphic detail the things he wanted to do to her in his 'sex flat', despite him being married.
Another man admitted he hadn’t placed an ad like this before, but ‘had needs’ and that they were ‘both single and both adults’ before asking if she had a boyfriend.
These 'arrangements’ based on sex for rent are illegal. As well as having the potential to leave vulnerable women in an incredibly tenuous living situation, it’s against the law.
Emilia contacted two men offering a flat in exchange for sex and here's what happened.
“I would like a young lady who is living in the flat, she doesn’t pay me any rent, but a couple of times a week we meet up and we f*** like crazy, okay?”
I’m speaking to Dave he’s never met me, he has no idea who I am, but he’s just offered me a place to live in exchange for sex.
This is the sinister reality of men trying to rent their homes out for sex on Merseyside - arrangements which the government says are illegal and could lead to prosecutions.
Posing as "Emma", a young woman in need of a place to live, I contacted two men who advertised flats to rent online promising reduced or free rent as part of a private arrangement.
Neither of the men asked about my personal situation, why I might need free housing or whether I was vulnerable in any way.
However, within moments of my first call with a would-be landlord it became clear what he wanted from me.
The first man I spoke to called himself Dave. He’s married and he told me he works with computers.
Dave says he has a flat on the Wirral which he offers to let me live in for free if I agree to let him ‘f*** me silly’.
Within 10 minutes of speaking to him over the phone, he’d reeled off a list of ‘naughty’ things he wanted to do to me in his Wallasey 'sex flat'.
At 48, Dave is exactly double my age - but that’s precisely what he’s looking for. His advert said he wanted to be a ‘daddy’ to a ‘younger lady’, who he wants to ‘wine, dine and spoil’. What he asks in return is a woman who is willing to ‘be good for daddy’
When we spoke on the phone, Dave said: “I enjoy the company of younger ladies and I enjoy sex. If I could, and if there was an Olympic [event] in it I’d be winning gold every day of the week.”
I asked Dave what he would expect from me in exchange for a place to live rent free. He said: “From my point of it, I would like to see you a couple of times a week, have mad passionate sex, do all sorts of naughty things.”
As our conversation went on, he went into graphic detail about some of the things he wanted to do to me the majority of which are too explicit for publication.
Dave didn’t ask any questions about my personal situation or my reasons for responding to the advert. He did ask whether I had a boyfriend and whether I lived with my parents.
When it came to surrendering his own personal information, Dave was surprisingly forthcoming. He said: “I’m probably a very unusual character, you ask me a question, I’ll give you the answer - you might not like it but it will be the truth.”
The truth is that Dave is a married man. He told me his wife knows he has sex with other women.
Dave told me there were things I might do for him that his wife didn’t want to - including specific sexual acts and going to "rock concerts".
At one point in the call, he said: “I am more than happy to let you explore but safe in the knowledge that I am never, ever going to let any harm come to you in any way, shape or form.”
Despite the explicit and unsettling nature of some of Dave’s desires, during our conversation he was unfailingly kind, friendly and almost paternal. He kept calling me ‘hun’, ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’ throughout the call.
He tried to put me at ease in a situation I told him I’d never been in before, telling me we wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. He said he wasn’t ‘looking to take over my life in any way, shape or form’.
He didn’t pressure me or place any expectations on me at all and this was one of the things that left me feeling incredibly uncomfortable when I got off the phone.
This was a man who was offering to act as my landlord and ‘daddy’ - he would be in complete control of my living situation and I would be entirely beholden to him. Whether he felt he was exerting pressure on me or not, problems of power and repayment could all come into play if you were indebted to a man for hundreds of pounds every month.
Had I been in a vulnerable position, or not in a sound state of mind, I can see how Dave’s gentle reassurance and kind nature would lull me into a sense of security in what could quickly become a toxic situation.
He asked me to meet up over the weekend for a meal and some drinks. I told him I’d think about it.
Dave isn’t the only man offering free or discounted rent in exchange for an ‘adult agreement’. To find him, all I had to do was search for housing ads on Merseyside using the free classifieds site Craigslist.
But problems arise when vulnerable women are drawn in by these adverts because they need somewhere to stay due to financial or personal problems, or because they are new to the country and in a precarious housing situation.
These women are still consenting adults, but their situations place them in a position where they may be forced to do things they feel uncomfortable or unsafe with, in order to have a roof over their heads.
I was fortunate enough to be contacting these men from a position of complete security, but the conversations I had with them still left me feeling incredibly uncomfortable.
Within minutes I was being offered a place to stay in exchange for sex. These men didn’t know me or my personal circumstances.
I could speak to these men safe in the knowledge I would never have to consider such a risky situation in order to have a roof over my head.
Not every woman is that lucky.
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