*Sarah thought she was going to a job interview to become a waitress.

Warning: This story includes graphic descriptions of sexual exploitation and abuse, including rape

Instead, she was lured to a strange man’s flat and held against her will for six months.

“One of the very first things he did was ask for me to hand over my passport to check that I had the right to work,” she says. “I remember him asking me kind of odd questions, like, ‘do you like sex?’

“I remember him taking me into another room within this flat and closing the door behind him, then locking the door. And then I was raped.“

She says her passport was used to create an online profile to advertise her for sex.

She had no control over the adverts, no access to the accounts, and was repeatedly abused by her trafficker and the men who booked her through the website.

“My abuser would say: ‘This man would like to see you, he’s booked you, but he’s requested sloppy seconds. Okay? I am going to rape you again so that when you go and see this man, you will take that to that man’,” she tells Sky News.

Sarah says she was forced to take on different names to match her trafficker’s rotating online personas.

She ultimately escaped after threatening to scream unless her abuser let her go.

“He just glared at me, furious,” she recalls. “But he opened the door. That was the moment I had. That was the moment I took. I ran out and never saw him again.”

Sarah’s abuser is now in prison. But the website that he used to facilitate her abuse is still operating.

A Sky News investigation has uncovered thousands of potential indicators of sexual exploitation on two of the UK’s most prominent adult service websites, raising serious concerns about how traffickers may be using these platforms to advertise and abuse victims like Sarah.

Analysis of more than 50,000 adverts on AdultWork and Vivastreet – two of the country’s largest escorting platforms – revealed a high concentration of red flags linked to organised exploitation, including repeated use of the same contact numbers, and/or duplicated advert text, across adverts for different women in different geographical locations.

These patterns, highlighted by the Sex Trafficking Indication Matrix (STIM), a research tool used to identify signs of trafficking, suggest some profiles may be linked to coercive networks.

In one case, the same phone number appeared in eight separate adverts for at least five different women, all listed with identical ages, nearly identical descriptions, but different photographs and spread across multiple UK regions.

Neither platform is accused of criminal activity, but experts and campaigners say the scale and nature of these indicators are red flags for potential abuse.

Prostitution is legal in England and Wales. But the controlling of prostitution for gain, sometimes called pimping, and the more severe crime of trafficking, are not.

“These platforms make it as easy to order a woman to be sexually exploited as it is to order a takeaway,” said Kat Banyard, director of campaign group UK Feminista.

“There are big questions for national policing to answer about why it is that this important investigation has had to be done by Sky News, and why it wasn’t national policing that was launching an investigation to uncover the scale of potential criminality on these sites.”

Over several months, Sky News used STIM indicators to assess escorting adverts across two platforms. On Vivastreet alone, more than 7,000 were linked to phone numbers that appeared multiple times – more than half the total number of listings at the time.

On AdultWork, over 1,000 ads were found to contain duplicated descriptions.

In one example on AdultWork, the same wording was used in 357 different listings – a sign that content may have been copied and pasted to cover for multiple individuals under a single operator.

The websites told us duplication can reflect legitimate activity, such as touring sex workers using aliases. However, opponents say their structure allows abusers to hide in plain sight.

Sky News can also reveal that officials at the Home Office met representatives from escorting websites 25 times between 2017 and 2024, under the previous Conservative government.

Critics argue these discussions have failed to lead to meaningful safeguards or regulation.

A Home Affairs Committee report in 2023 was highly critical of this kind of engagement.

And in parliament, pressure is building to take stronger action. Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi has tabled an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill that would seek to ban such websites altogether.

“This is a thriving, multibillion-pound industry, and we’re acting like there’s nothing to see here,” she says.

“It’s horrific, and I think more people need to be speaking out about it – this gives parliamentarians the opportunity to discuss and debate it on the floor of the house.”

Read more from Sky News
Life inside a dangerous tower block
More strangulation cases recorded by police

In a statement, a Vivastreet spokesperson said: “Experts are clear that indicators that may suggest exploitation can have innocent explanations.

“For example, it is a fact that many sex workers use different names and personas, and ‘touring’ – moving for short periods of time to different areas to take bookings – is a well-known practice.

“We take safety extremely seriously and deploy industry-leading security measures to detect, report, and remove potentially exploitative content, including new requirements that all adult category advertisers must undergo age and ID verification.”

AdultWork said: “Sexual exploitation is not tolerated in any form.

“We have strict internal policies in place to reinforce this and we are continually updating our internal systems for detecting accounts and requesting additional documents for evidence of legitimacy.

“We make it a priority to fully cooperate and comply with all law enforcement requests. Additionally, any indications or reports of trafficking are fully reviewed and if we find them to be suspicious, we proactively contact law enforcement.”

Whether escorting platforms can be better regulated – or whether they should be outlawed entirely – remains a point of national debate.

But with mounting evidence of potential exploitation and growing political scrutiny, campaigners say inaction is no longer an option.

“These platforms are so poorly moderated and poorly regulated,” Sarah says. “No one can sit behind a screen and know if someone’s being coerced or is at the mercy of a predator.”

*Sarah’s name has been changed to protect her identity

More than 1,000 doctors have written to MPs urging them to vote against the assisted dying bill, calling it a “real threat to both patients and the medical workforce”.

The bill – which is due to be voted on by MPs for a final time on 20 June – would allow terminally ill patients from England and Wales to end their lives “on their own terms”, providing they have a life expectancy of six months or less.

A separate bill is currently passing through the Scottish parliament.

But doctors from across the NHS have written to MPs, warning them of their “serious concerns”.

Notable signatories include Sir John Burn, a geneticist who has led decades of cancer research, Sir Shakeel Qureshi, who was knighted for his work in paediatric cardiology, Professor Aileen Keel, the former deputy chief medical officer for Scotland, and Baroness Finlay, a Welsh doctor, professor of palliative medicine and member of the House of Lords.

The letter is signed by four doctors who hold OBEs, two who have MBEs, and one CBE.

The letter says that while a debate is needed on end of life care, “this bill is not the answer”.

It raises concerns that not enough evidence has been heard from doctors, people with disabilities and other marginalised groups.

“This bill will widen inequalities, it provides inadequate safeguards and, in our collective view, is simply not safe,” it goes on to say, calling it a “deeply flawed bill”.

Read more:
Why is assisted dying so controversial – and where is it already legal?
Five stories that bring the assisted dying debate home
Two terminally ill patients give opposing views on assisted dying

Professor Colin Rees, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working group on assisted dying, said it was the “single most important piece of healthcare legislation in 50 or 60 years”.

“It will have very profound consequences for the future and many doctors are really concerned that members of parliament are not hearing the views of the medical profession.”

He said many doctors who remain neutral, or who even support the principle of assisted dying, remain concerned about the bill.

“We don’t think it’s a bill that is safe, that protects patients, protects families, and protects the medical workforce.”

‘No safeguards against coercion’

One of the areas of concern raised by the medics was the inability to properly identify patients at risk of coercive control.

“Vulnerable patients are at risk of coercion with women, victims of domestic abuse, and the elderly at particular risk,” the letter says.

It also warned it would widen social inequalities, with patients who do not have the resources for a comfortable death more likely to opt for assisted dying.

“People who struggle to pay for heating or care or wish to preserve their assets for their children are at high risk of choosing to die if the option is available and the alternative is more difficult.”

Data from the Annual Report of Dying With Dignity from Oregon in 2024 found 9.3% of those people who choose assisted deaths do so for financial reasons.

‘Doctors get it wrong 40% of the time’

Concerns have also been raised around the inaccuracies of medical prognosis.

“Research demonstrates that doctors get prognosis wrong around 40% of the time,” the letter says.

“As such, patients may end up choosing an assisted death and losing what could have been happy and fulfilling months or years of life.”

The bill is also a risk to families, the letter says, as it does not require doctors to speak with family members.

“A close relative may know nothing until they get a call to arrange collection of their relative’s body,” it says, adding that there is no mechanism for a family member to raise concerns about a request.

The letter also addressed the potential impact on the medical workforce.

Evidence from the Netherlands suggests “doctors feel pressurised when dealing with patient requests for assisted deaths, meaning that doctors may end up having involvement despite it being against their principles, because they want to help their patients”.

“It’s a big deal for this government,” says Simon Case.

“It’s the clearest indication yet of what they plan to do between now and the general election, a translation of their manifesto.

“This is where you should expect the chancellor to say, on behalf of the government: ‘This is what we’re about’.”

As the former cabinet secretary, Mr Case was the man in charge of the civil service during the last spending review, in 2021.

On Wednesday, Rachel Reeves will unveil the Labour government’s priorities for the next three years. But it’s unclear whether it will provide all that much of an answer about what it’s really about.

Unlike the Autumn budget, when the chancellor announced her plans on where to tax and borrow to fund overall levels of spending, the spending review will set out exactly how that money is divided up between the different government departments.

Since the start of the process in December those departments have been bidding for their share of the cash – setting out their proposed budgets in a negotiation which looks set to continue right up to the wire.

This review is being conducted in an usual level of detail, with every single line of spending assessed, according to the chancellor, on whether it represents value for money and meets the government’s priorities. Budget proposals have been scrutinised by so called “challenge panels” of independent experts.

It’s clear that health and defence will be winners in this process given pre-existing commitments to prioritise the NHS – with a boost of up to £30bn expected – and to increase defence spending.

On Sunday morning, the government press release trumpeted an impressive-sounding “£86bn boost” to research and development (R&D), with the Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle sent out on the morning media round to celebrate as record levels of investment.

We’re told this increased spending on the life sciences, advanced manufacturing and defence will lead to jobs and growth across the country, with every £1 in investment set to lead to a £7 economic return.

But the headline figure is misleading. It’s not £86bn in new funding. That £86bn has been calculated by adding together all R&D investment across government for the next three years, which will reach an annual figure of £22.5bn by 2029-30. The figure for this year was already set to be £20.4bn; so while it’s a definite uplift, much of that money was already allocated.

Read More:
Reeves turning around UK finances ‘like Steve Jobs did for Apple’
Government struggles to slash foreign aid spent on asylum hotels

Peter Kyle also highlighted plans for “the most we’ve ever spent per pupil in our school system”.

I understand the schools budget is to be boosted by £4.5bn. Again, this is clearly an uplift – but over a three-year period, that equates to just £1.5bn a year (compared with an existing budget of £63.7bn). It also has to cover the cost of extending free school meals, and the promised uplift in teachers’ pay.

In any process of prioritisation there are losers as well as winners.

We already know about planned cuts to the Department of Work and Pensions – but other unprotected departments like the Home Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government are braced for a real spending squeeze.

We’ve heard dire warnings about austerity 2.0, and the impact that would have on the government’s crime and policing priorities, its promises around housing and immigration, and on the budgets for cash-strapped local councils.

The chancellor wants to make it clear to the markets she’s sticking to her fiscal rules on balancing the books for day-to-day spending.

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

But the decision to loosen the rules around borrowing to fund capital investment have given her greater room to manoeuvre in funding long-term infrastructure projects.

That’s why we’ve seen her travelling around the country this week to promote the £15.6bn she’s spending on regional transport projects.

The Treasury team clearly wants to focus on promoting the generosity of these kind of investments, and we’ll hear more in the coming days.

But there’s a real risk the story of this spending review will be about the departments which have lost out – and the promises which could slip as a result.