Assurances given by Honey over her escort service

The Aberdeen-based escort who has recently begun trading part-time in Shetland is seeking to reassure islanders about the nature of her work.

The woman, who calls herself Honey, contacted The Shetland Times after an article about her business appeared in last week’s paper. She insisted that, contrary to any stereotypes about the sex industry, she is “a very professional lady”.

She said: “I just don’t want people to think I’m a drug addict that’s come to Shetland, or that I’m selling someone else or trafficking girls. I don’t want people to think that.

“The papers always talking about the trafficking – the poor girls who are sexually abused in the sex industry – but I’m not that girl … I’m really a business woman, but I do business with what belongs to me: my body, my mind, my soul.”

Honey added that she knew of two local Shetland women already working as prostitutes in the isles, but that she feared more may arrive from elsewhere in the near future.

“My interest is in keeping Shet­land safe from trafficked girls and people who work for pimps,” she said, though she thought it likely that the number of sex workers here would soon increase.

“I think adventurous girls will start to visit. They’ll go for, say, two or three days and they’ll be busy with clients … then they’ll think, ‘Oh, the business is good’, and so they’ll bring two or three other girls.”

Honey explained that she visits the isles around once every three weeks, usually for a long weekend. Most of her clients here are people she already knows from Aberdeen – oil workers, in the main.

She said: “A lot of people who work in Shetland come from Aberdeen or another part of Scot­land, so they probably already know me. So for those guys – they know me, so they feel more comfortable. They know I’ve been here forever, I’m genuine, and they feel com­fortable just to fly me over to see them.

“I don’t want people to feel that I’m encouraging any local person, because that’s not me, that’s not what I want. I just want to go to Shetland, see a few people that I already know, enjoy my days over the weekend or the week, fly back to Aberdeen and carry on doing that as long as they need me.”

Honey also wished to clarify that the address in Lerwick that has been associated with her business online is not, in fact, where she stays or works in the isles.