Brothels advertising openly in shops

10:42am Thursday 16th October 2008

By Eleanor Harding and Jamie Henderson

Massage parlours advertising in the windows of two Tooting newsagents have been exposed as brothels.

Tooting Mini Market and Broadway Candyland, both in Tooting High Street, have been displaying prostitutes’ cards advertising massages However, since we presented its findings to both newsagents only one of them has agreed to withdraw the offensive advertisements.

Adverts featured pictures of women and were displayed in full view of children who use the shops.

When our reporter called the establishments, five receptionists openly offered our reporter sex while others said services would be discussed on arrival.

He was told by one: “We have a lovely girl for you today darling, she’s a beautiful Polish lady.

“Beautiful long dark hair to her bottom. She’s 5ft 7in, very busty, 36FF, 23 years of age and she does a good service.”

Our reporter was offered sex services at Golden Sara Oriental Massage and Tooting Broadway Relaxing Massage, just a few feet away from Tooting Broadway tube station.

Prices ranged from £60 to £120 for full sex with girls who were Polish, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and one establishment, Paradise in Croydon, offered £10 for “extras”.

Three of the houses had more than one girl on offer, meaning legally they are considered brothels, but so far police have failed to close them down.

Staff at the newsagents said they did not see it as their duty to investigate the adverts, although when Tooting Mini Market was informed of our report they agreed to remove those advertising prostitutes.

But Mrs Patel at Broadway Candyland said: “I’m not doing anything wrong. They’re all over phone booths anyway. The law should be coming down hard on them; I’m just running a business here.”

Susan John-Richards, Tooting councillor, said: “I’m totally shocked with this news and I will follow up this story.

“As citizens, it’s every shopkeepers’ duty to know their customer. If we want to stay a successful community we have a duty to each other.”

The law surrounding the issue is complicated. The act of one consenting adult paying another for sex is legal, so when a woman works alone, in her own house and charges people for sex she is not breaking the law.

However, brothels - a room where more than woman works, even if they work on different days or at different times - are illegal which makes it almost impossible to carry out prostitution legally.

It is also illegal to live off immoral earnings, which could include anyone associated with brothels such as receptionists, pimps or massage parlour managers.

When we approached the police for comment, an officer in the borough commander’s office initially said there was no prostitution problem in Wandsworth.

Later, however, PC Josh Taylor from Tooting safer neighbourhood team implied that only brothels which caused a problem would be investigated.

He said: “There is no legal definition as to what constitutes a nuisance brothel but nuisance may take the form of complaints from neighbours of premises or complaints from the local community about the presence of prostitute cards.

“Should we receive complaints about a nuisance brothel we would take the information seriously and look to conduct a visit to inform the occupants of the premises about the offences they are committing and ask them to stop this behaviour due to local community concerns.”