A website has been accused of promoting prostitution by helping cash-strapped college students pay off their debts by dating older men.
SeekingArrangement.com offers its ‘sugar babies’ the opportunity to collect money through ‘dates’ with older, more financially set men.
One of the site’s users, ‘Taylor,’ said she was paid $350 to have sex with a man more than twice her age.
Taylor said: ‘I just wanted to get out of that situation as safely as possible, pay off my debt, and move on.’
Brandon Wade, the founder of Seeking Arrangement, told the Huffington Post that business is booming.
‘Over the past few years, the number of college students using our site has exploded.
A growing number of strapped college students are finding their way to ‘sugar daddy’ sites to help pay the bills
A growing number of strapped college students are finding their way to ‘sugar daddy’ sites to help pay the bills
‘College students are one of the biggest segments of our sugar babies and the numbers are growing all the time.’
The ‘sugar daddies’ are offered companionship and possibly much more, depending on how much they’re willing to pay.
And Seeking Arrangement isn’t alone – several other sites operate under the same pretenses.
And this raises the question: Are Seeking Arrangement’s 800,000 members guilty of prostitution?
Ronald Weitzer, a sociology professor at George Washington University, said: ‘Under the banner of sugar daddy and sugar baby arrangements, a lot of prostitution may be going on.’
Las Vegas lawyer Allen Lichtenstein said the legal parameters of prostitution are clouded.
Mr Lichtenstein said: ‘Any relationship that is an ongoing one that’s not purely about sex but may have a sexual aspect to it, you can’t really classify as prostitution.’
A study in Berlin found one in three students there would consider sex-for-money trades as a reasonable way to fund education.
