A HARD-hitting report laid bare the truth about sex workers – the truth those working with them have always known, but that the public are less aware of.

This newspaper ran a front-page story on the fact that most sex workers are lured in as minors, and often encouraged to become hooked on drugs at a tender age.

Far from the romantic ideals of Pretty Woman or Belle de Jour, many of these women haven’t got the freedom to choose the life laid out for them, and are never rescued by handsome millionaires.

The report – put together via the charity Changing Lives by sex workers in County Durham – lifted the lid on what these women have to live through each day.

Street sex workers put themselves in peril every time they get into a car with a punter. One said she had been kidnapped, tortured, gang raped and left for dead.

These women are victims.

Often the poison starts when they are vulnerable teenagers, when they are groomed by male predators with the sole intention of turning them into sex workers.

It is often a gradual process. Any teen who walks around the streets with her friends is susceptible. These predators will often play on her vulnerabilities, flatter her, play the “older boyfriend” and then get her drunk or high so she takes part in sexual encounters she may later be deeply ashamed of. Then he threatens to tell everyone unless she does it again, with someone else. Before a young girl might know it she is in a downward spiral of drug addiction, shame, isolation from family. And it doesn’t just happen to girls – boys can be victims too.

So I was shocked to read some of the unforgiving, ignorant and crass comments on the story, which revealed the real reason behind most sex workers getting involved in a world of danger and exploitation, here, beneath the radar, in our own county. One just said: “Get a job”, while another said: “Are we all not simply exploited into giving our time to pay taxes and pay lifetime mortgages to survive?”

And then, more shockingly: “I don’t see any difference between someone buying drinks for a woman all night in the hope of a sexual encounter to simply giving them the money and skipping the small talk.

“Exploitation is a matter of perspective. Didn’t anyone watch Indecent Proposal?”

Thankfully some of these comments were tempered by more forgiving insights.

It’s so easy to sit at your computer and judge. But until you are in that situation, how is anyone to know they would do things differently? One wrong turn as a child or teenager, and things could have been very different for any of us.

THANK god it’s not just me. A mother-to-be asked a forum on Mumsnet this week “What happens to your body after birth?” and received some very honest answers. One was “Sneezing involves weeing on yourself 50 per cent of the time.”

Without wanting to get too personal, I had three children in just over four years – the last an eye-watering 10lb 7oz boy – and five years later I still can’t bounce on the trampoline for more than about two minutes without having to dash inside to the loo. If I feel a sneeze coming on while walking, I have to stop and cross my legs to avert certain disaster. Let’s keep sharing our childbirth-induced incontinence stories, please ladies, if only to make me feel better.