"Actually, I was a bit scared, but I knew this was the only way I could get money. We just had sex, he paid, and then he left. I thought this was easy money, and that's why I continued doing this kind of thing."įor a year and a half, Sze was part of a growing social phenomenon among teens in Hong Kong called "compensated dating," a practice in which a young woman agrees to go on a date with a man for a fee. More often than not, the date involves sex. Sze said she started compensated dating because many of her classmates at an all-girls school were doing it. She says she became jealous when she saw the designer clothes, bags and cosmetics they bought with the money they earned through compensated dating. Watch young women describe why they do it » Sze wanted the same for herself, so her classmates introduced her to Internet chat forums where she met male customers. The practice can have deadly consequences. Last year, a 16-year-old Hong Kong girl was killed in a gruesome murder after she went to a 24-year-old man's apartment for a compensated date. The man, Ting Kai-Tai, killed the teenager, dismembered her body and flushed the remains down the toilet. A jury convicted him of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. Sze told CNN she knew a compensated date could go horribly wrong. She would set ground rules with clients on the phone first. She charged them $350 for a date and clarified how many times she would have sex with them. She said sometimes the customers would stray from the rules, asking for more sex or refusing to wear a condom. Youth caught in wave of ketamine addiction.Organizers: 150,000 at Tiananmen vigil in Hong Kong.24 hurt in Hong Kong's third acid attack in 6 months.Hong Kong hotel guests freed from flu quarantine.I kept asking myself why I had to do this kind of thing to make money. I would relax when I wanted to buy something. I just thought I could always quit after a short time or whenever I wanted," Sze said. Most girls who engage in compensated dating don't view themselves as prostitutes, said social worker Chiu Tak-Choi. "For the girls, they don't think so because they think they can quit anytime. The girls - even though they post their details on the Internet - they think they can quit. Even if they encounter the guys, if he is not good-looking, she can quit and say 'I don't do it.' They think they have a lot of power to control whether they do it or not, so they think of it very differently from prostitution."Ĭhiu, the social worker, is currently working with about 20 girls who are trying to leave the world of compensated dating. It is hard to quantify how big the problem is in Hong Kong because the business is conducted under the radar, he said.Ĭhiu believes the problem is getting worse because his caseload has doubled in the past two years. Prostitution is illegal in Hong Kong, and legal experts say that compensated dating is a form of prostitution. "When a court looks at sentencing, the greater the age difference, the more serious it (the sentence) is." "The law prohibits soliciting for immoral purpose," said Stephen Hung, a criminal litigator with Pang, Wan & Choi. Why do young girls get involved in compensated dating? The reasons vary from an unstable home life to a desire for material goods, Chiu said. One 14-year-old girl told him she started compensated dating when she lost her cell phone. She said her parents wouldn't buy her a new one, so she thought she could earn some fast money with paid sex. She had her eye on an expensive cell phone. When the money from the first compensated date didn't cover the cost for the new phone, she went on a second paid date. Girls involved in compensated dating don't necessarily come from poor families, Chiu said. They are from all levels of socioeconomic classes, he said. Improved family communication is one solution to preventing girls from becoming involved in compensated dating, Chiu said. I think caring for children is very important.
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