An investigation has revealed how some of the UK’s top female social media influencers are being propositioned as much as £20,000 to go on a date.
They say the requests from strangers arrive daily with some offering thousands of pounds in return for sex.
Former Love Island contestant Tyne-Lexy Clarson, who has more than 420,000 followers on her Instagram account, described it to Ellie Costello of the Victoria Derbyshire show as “high-end prostitution”.
She added: “It’s just scary to think if they’ve messaged me, they’ve probably sent it to thousands of pretty girls on Instagram.”
She says she was only 19 when she was first propositioned, with an offer of £20,000 for dinner and drinks. Another time an agency emailed her, offering £50,000 for five nights in Dubai.
It contained a non-disclosure agreement, stating that the details of what she would be required to do would remain confidential.
Tyne-Lexy says she refused the offer, but fears that struggling influencers who do not receive luxury items for free would feel pressure to “keep up appearances” and become vulnerable to these kinds of transactions.
“It’s a lot of money for some people, it’s life-changing amounts of money,” she says.
Another former Love Island contestant Rosie Williams told the BBC programme that she was offered £100,000 a year plus all her clothes and bags, to become a companion to a man in Dubai.
She tells the programme: “You’re warned about trolling, you’re warned that your life with change dramatically, but you’re never warned that you could get bought by men.”
And she says it is not spoken about in influencer circles: “We either aren’t in a position where we need to do it so we don’t speak about it, or we’ve done it and we’re too ashamed.”
This programme says it has seen several messages which influencers have received. The approaches vary from men directly suggesting sex, to agents acting on behalf of a wealthy client.
They also have anonymous written evidence from a person claiming to be a British reality star, who said she had been offered £10,000 for sex as part of a holiday package.
“Isabel” said she was first approached on Instagram by a man 10 years older than her, after she had competed in a TV talent show.
“I was initially offered designer handbags. He had a fetish for being financially dominant so he would get a sexual kick out of spending hundreds and hundreds of pounds on bags for me,” she explained. “I would also struggle to keep my followers engaged online. So I guess that’s why I accepted the offer. ”
“He was really pleasant when I was there. At dinner we started drinking and he was asking about my finances – I explained I was in £5,000 of debt. He said: ‘Have sex with me and I’ll give you double that’.”
“Isabel” said she went up to his hotel room and went through with it. “I felt a kind of a mixture of degraded, really annoyed at myself, violated.”
But she insists it is not a form of prostitution: “It is a targeted relationship that progresses over time… Whereas I think prostitution is when you agree a fee with a stranger.”
Celebrity agent Rob Cooper also tells the programme it was not only women who were approached. He said one man who was posting online was regularly offered money to perform sex acts.
“I would say a high-level influencer or reality star receives these messages every single day.”
A Facebook company spokesman said: “Sexual solicitation is not tolerated on Instagram, and those who repeatedly break our guidelines will be banned.
“We want Instagram to be a safe space for people to express themselves. We invest heavily in tools and technologies to prevent harassment on the platform.
Souruce: MSN.com
