Laura D is not quite 20 and in her second year of university but she has succeeded this week in alerting France to an ugly phenomenon in its midst: student prostitution.

The modern language student at a Paris university has drawn national attention with a book about a first year in which she paid impossible bills by selling her body to men.

Thanks to the internet, many women students are being tempted into occasional paid sex to cope with living costs that can no longer be met with part-time jobs, Laura says.

In Mes Chères Études (My Dear Studies), she describes the trap into which she fell soon after starting university at an unidentified city in 2006.

Talking to The Times, Laura was scornful of claims by prostitutes’ rights groups who argue that tales of students selling sex en masse is a figment of media imagination.

“It’s upsetting the way the experts react when the media talk about this,” she said. “There are a huge number of girls like me who do not talk about it, even with their friends. It’s hard to talk about, so it stays secret and taboo. It’s incredibly easy to get sucked in. There are a lot of students who can’t make ends meet.”

Police estimate that up to 20,000 sell their favours.

Despite working 15 hours a week in telephone sales, Laura said that she went hungry. Her workman father and nurse mother, who live in a council house in the same city, could not afford to help her. Their minimum wage incomes barred her from very basic student aid, like tens of thousands of others.

“Not a bean, unpaid bills and rent to pay. Never a penny in my pocket and forced to cheat on public transport. It was a generally unbearable life,” she writes. A click on the internet revealed a wealth of demand for escorts and masseuses. She decided to answer an advert saying: “Young man of 50 seeks occasional masseuse. Students welcome.”

In her book, written with a 23-year-old student, Laura says: “I said to myself that ‘massages’ would easily give me the luxury of choosing what I would do. I did not realise that it was exactly the opposite: I would never have the choice again. From the moment you reply to an advert, you have been dragged in.”

At her first session, in a hotel room, “Joe”, her track-suited, fiftysomething client, paid €250 (£190) simply to watch her. When she fled to Paris last April, she was making €400 a time but she resolved to give up. “I couldn’t sleep. I turned in my bed with images of horror passing before my eyes.”

Now working in a Paris restaurant, Laura is determined to stick to her decision. She realises that she has been damaged: “It is difficult now with boys. I hope never to go back to it. It is very violent. It’s a money relationship and there is financial domination. It is very difficult to rebuild oneself afterwards.”

Capital lessons

France

£1,078 Yearly education costs of average student
£3,348 Student’s estimated annual living costs
£5 Price of a pint of beer in Paris
£4.10 Price of a McDonald’s Big Mac burger

Britain

£2,019 Yearly education costs
£5,333 Annual living costs
£2.60 Price of a pint of beer in London
£1.94 Price of a Big Mac burger
£2,642 Average student loan
France does not offer such loans

Sources: bath.ac.uk ; pricerunner.co.uk ; educationalpolicy.org ; Times database

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