Accessible "brothel" for disabled people to open in 2014 [updated]

One of the UK's most famous madams, Becky Adams, ran brothels for over 20 years. Now the Buckinghamshire based 44-year-old plans to open what she calls a "sexual health centre", specifically for people with learning and physical disabilities.

"We realised that there seems to be a great need for people with disabilities to access sexual services, slightly like they do in Europe," she told BBC Radio Ulster's Stephen Nolan on Tuesday. "So we're basically fulfilling that need in England."

Adams says that disabled people can and do form sexual relationships in their own right. She tells Nolan that, in her experience, they also want access to sexual services as much as non-disabled people do, yet can face physical barriers as sex professionals don't have accessibility on their mind when they establish their service.

"Working ladies often set up in a flat above a chip shop which is difficult to access," she says, "so it is about setting up somewhere that is totally accessible."

Premises which sell sex, known as brothels, are illegal in the United Kingdom. But Adams has an answer ready for this. She believes that her project has a higher positive purpose, maintaining that: "If you are educating or training people with disabilities with their sexual functions, it is not a brothel."

Adams plans to furnish the centre with ramps, hoists and other helpful equipment.

She has invested 62 thousand pounds in the project, which is due to open in 2014. Though the centre may be a year away, Adams says she is already providing an "enabling" sexual service called Para-Doxies for people with disabilities, based out of Milton Keynes. The name of her service is an old English word for prostitute.

Adams says Clients can be men, women or couples, and come from a range of backgrounds.

"We see service men who've been wounded. They are going through traumatic times and so choose not to try and form a relationship. They like to boost their confidence by seeing a lady and maybe having a massage."

The women, who she refers to as body workers, sometimes show men with autism how to chat up girls. Sex, Becky explains, is often not on the cards.

"A lot of our clients have no ability to perform a sexual experience," she says, "it could be just about holding somebody naked skin to naked skin for an hour."

The not for profit company has been running since last year and Adams says she already receives around 12 enquiries a week. The service aims to help disabled people to find workers and there are experts available to give advice to disabled people, parents and carers, on any legal questions arising.

Peter Lynas is Northern Ireland chairman of the evangelical alliance, the largest body representing evangelical Christians in the UK. Joining Becky on the Nolan programme, he comments that "difficulties in forming relationships could be due to disability but it could also be due to the unwillingness of society to accept disabled people."

He is concerned that her service might be exploiting that lack of acceptance rather than helping to fix it.

Lynas suggests that putting "two vulnerable groups together" in this way- prostitutes and disabled people - is "not a good combination".

He cites a recent formal dance evening between regular and special schools as a good example of intermingling and believes there is a host of "healthy" ways for young people to form a relationship rather than "separating sex from relationships".

Defending her service, and the people involved in it, Adams says: "We have a very small number of ladies, most of whom have come from the nursing profession or caring profession. They see themselves as holistic body workers, rather than prostitutes," Becky explains, "and Most work on a voluntary basis."

Does the service cheapen the idea of sex? Adams doesn't think so.

"From the comments we get from clients, they have a much better human experience afterwards, because many of them were in residential care all their lives and have no human experience.

"After his first session with a body worker, one client said that he hadn't realised women have warm skin."

[Update: Thursday 17 Jan:]

Becky Adams has since appeared on Thursday's Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2. Click the play button below to listen to the discussion.

You can follow Ouch! on Twitter and on Facebook.