Anti-sex trafficking campaigners plan to name and shame men who use brothels.

Croydon Community Against Trafficking (CCAT) are considering taking photographs of men who visit brothels and put them on the internet in an attempt to stamp out the sex industry in the town.

A spokesman for CCAT said the demand for the sex industry in Croydon was directly fuelling the supply of trafficked women. He said they were going to target punters visiting brothels to reduce the demand for sexual services.

He said: “We are going to hit this hard until those guys zip up their trousers, stop thinking between their legs and start thinking with their heads.

“We have thought about standing outside known brothels and taking pictures of car number plates and the men that visit and putting them up on a website like isthis-yourhusband.com.”

One of CCAT’s main aims is to stop local newspapers carrying adult advertisements. Over 40 per cent of men access off-street prostitutes through the local media.

The Croydon Guardian, and publisher Newsquest’s 305 titles nationwide banned adult advertisements in July. CCAT said it is putting pressure on other local newspapers to follow our example.

A report entitled Sex in the City released in August 2004 identified Croydon as having one of the largest sex industries in London. It is one of the towns where trafficked women are sent in significant numbers.

These women and girls are lured from their homes with the promise of a better life. Once in the UK many are kept as prisoners in their brothels and are exposed to intimidation and physical violence that often includes rape. “The people that traffic them see them not as women and human beings, but as an object to exploit time and again,” said CCAT spokesman.

The profile of the average punter is someone in their mid-30s who is married with children and has a mortgage. UK figures show that 1 in 10 men will pay for sex.

A spokesman said: “Men fear getting caught more than they fear contracting an STD or worrying about whether or not the women they are visiting are trafficked.”

He added that if men were unable to access sex adverts in local newspapers, accessing brothels online through their work and home computers would become more risky for them.