Most girls who engage in compensated dating don't view themselves as prostitutes, a social worker says.
She doesn't want to be identified, except by her nickname "Sze," and she has a secret past. Her father doesn't know what she did as a 16-year-old, and she hopes he never finds out. But Sze, now 19, wants young girls to hear her story so they never make the same mistake.
"My first customer was an ordinary man in his 40s. We skipped the dinner part and went straight to the guest house for sex," Sze recalled. "Actually, I was a bit scared, but I knew this was the only way I could get money. This customer wasn't bad, though. We just had sex, he paid, and then he left. I thought this was
easy money, and that's why I continued doing this kind of thing."
For a year and a half, Sze was part of a growing social phenomenon among teens in Hong Kong called "compensated dating," a practice in which a young woman agrees to go on a date with a man for a fee. More often than not, the date involves sex.
Sze said she started compensated dating because many of her classmates at an all-girls school were doing it. She says she became jealous when she saw the designer clothes, bags and cosmetics they bought with the money they earned through compensated dating. Sze wanted the same for herself, so her classmates introduced her to Internet chat forums where she met male customers.
The practice can have deadly consequences. Last year, a 16-year-old Hong Kong girl was killed in a gruesome murder after she went to a 24-year-old man's apartment for a compensated date. The man, Ting Kai-Tai, killed the teenager, dismembered her body and flushed the remains down the toilet. A jury convicted him of murder and sentenced him to life in prison.
Sze told CNN she knew a compensated date could go horribly wrong. She would set ground rules with clients on the phone first. She charged them $350 for a date and clarified how many times she would have sex with them.
She said sometimes the customers would stray from the rules, asking for more sex or refusing to wear a condom.
"Sometimes, I did feel shame. I kept asking myself why I had to do this kind of thing to make money. But the feeling didn't stay long. I would relax when I wanted to buy something. I just thought I could always quit after a short time or whenever I wanted," Sze said.
Most girls who engage in compensated dating don't view themselves as prostitutes, said social worker Chiu Tak-Choi.
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