She wasn't your average teenage girl in Hong Kong—instead of stressing about her college entrance exams, she found herself more taken with a life outside of high school. She'd already worked in a nightclub serving beer to support her hobbies. Taking care of animals was one of them. So when her pets cross-infected one another with an illness she just couldn't figure out, she didn't know what do any more. Her mother tried to give the animals antibiotics for humans, but it didn't work. She knew she needed money to bring them to a veterinarian—and fast—so she searched online to find quickly paid odd jobs. That's when Kate first stumbled across online forums for compensated daters: young girls who are paid per hour for sex and talking, who meet their clients at love motels. Read more: In Hong Kong, compensated dating is a trend in sex work that still remains strong. While it was popular in Tokyo about a decade ago, it has since died down there—but in Hong Kong, the ease of the internet means it's on the rise. Hong Kong's compensated daters aren't analogous to America's sugar babies—their differences come down to the clients and what they get from them. Clients usually aren't older, wealthy, or willing to see the girls more than once. These men tend to be in their 20s, and strikingly ordinary. They never give expensive gifts or pay more than a few hundred dollars. Lam says that these clients tend to want to fill an emotional void just as much as a sexual one—even if it's a one-off. They listen to male clients' common complaints: angry wives, over-time at the office, and coping with loneliness. Others begin as bar girls in nightclubs, but eventually leave because the job involves guzzling beer with patrons—a task many 15- and 16-year-old girls aren't up for. Some compensated daters use an agent to find them clients—but these middlemen require a fee, so others opt for listing on Chinese-language internet forums and posting their contact information there. Some guys refused using condoms and then forced me to have sex. But I was paid after, so I was confused. She always met her clients at the train station first to be safe, to check them out before bringing them to a hotel. Sex without a condom was an unequivocal deal-breaker. Compensated daters also have to stay underground—in Hong Kong, the stigma and shame of sex work, especially for a girl who should be studying in high school, is hard to bear. As in so many sex worker—client relationships, this often allows clients to manipulate young women. One of Kate's regular clients refused to pay her. When she wanted to stop seeing him, he called her on her home phone number—which she had never given him—threatening to expose her to her family. He said he had photos of them from the love motel where they'd met, where he said he had set up a secret camera. He said that if she didn't come out of her house, he'd give the photos to her parents—and that she should take his threats seriously, because he'd driven young sex workers to suicide before. Kate, terrified, wrote a suicide note, and then posted a status on MSN chat that she was going to kill herself. Just in time, a friend—involved with Teen's Key—intervened and got her the help she needed. Kate eventually filed a report with the police, who didn't blame her, saying she had been victimized by blackmail and was also underage. While they also never arrested the man, Kate says, they scared him enough that she never encountered him again. One of Hong Kong's red light districts in the daytime. Photo via Wikimedia Commons Kate says that since she left compensated dating three years ago, she understands that what she experienced was violent rape. She started taking ketamine and meth for fun at 15 years old; her straight-laced Christian friends first ridiculed her for being a delinquent. The next year, alienated and frustrated, she started taking jobs as a part-time girlfriend: She got paid a little bit of money for going on walks, eating dinner, and listening to guys talk about problems with their jobs and with their wives. The next year, annoyed by how much time it took to provide the girlfriend experience and the little bit of money she scraped out of it, Candy became a compensated dater, meeting for sex and charging by the hour. But Candy was assaulted, too. Through the phone—like with all clients—she had agreed to meet a man at a hotel, and the service they negotiated on was a hand job. When they entered the hotel room, he grabbed her, forced her down, and raped her without a condom. Candy's been with other clients who have gotten violent—she says they've bitten her, and thrown her head against the wall. She didn't know how to cope in this new environment, embarrassed and lacking the material things she once had. That was last year. Neither Candy nor Kate ever dealt with an unwanted pregnancy during their time as compensated daters, but Lam says getting pregnant from a client is not uncommon. Often, she says, girls must travel to clinics in China for cheap abortions, because undergoing the procedure in Hong Kong just isn't an option: To get an abortion at the city's public hospitals, there's a waiting list of at least two months. And, counterintuitively, Hong Kong's public hospitals will only complete an abortion if the fetus is less than ten weeks old. I've only dated bad guys who've mistreated me and cheated on me. Why not choose them and make money? She says she's seen many girls come back to Hong Kong with infections or other complications; some are still pregnant. But the situation for compensated daters is not always so bleak. She dreams of becoming a truck driver full time, and she puts the money she earns towards language lessons and auto mechanic courses. She knows that she only wants to continue compensating date for a maximum of one more year. But I don't want to be like that. I want to get married. Once, in fact, Christy developed feelings for one of her clients—she says that they had common interests and they were compatible in bed. He rejected her, though, because he didn't want to date a sex worker. Beyond saving for her trucking career, she sees sex work as a way to make lemonade out of lemons. Why not choose them and make money? Indeed, because of organizations like Teen's Key, it's not all unhappy endings for Hong Kong's compensated daters—in fact, it's anything but. Kate, who is 22 years old now, is a happily married new mother, and while she's taking time off to care for her baby, she plans on becoming a makeup artist. As part of a new program at the organization, she helps other young mothers at Teen's Key plan their lives. Candy is now a part-time model, mostly at exhibitions—meaning: She does cosplay—and she's even told her mother that she was once a sex worker. This, in Hong Kong, is nearly unheard of because of the stigma and shame that surrounds sex work. She appreciates that she can have such close family bonds, despite her tough adolescence. And Christy is still working hard on getting her trucking license. Still, Teen's Key is pretty much alone in its fight to help. While there was previously a small handful of other organizations supporting compensated daters, they've been since closed down. She remembers tales of girls douching their vaginas with Coca-Cola to prevent unwanted pregnancies after sex.
