On a dingy estate in St Petersburg Stacey Dooley sits around a kitchen table with three Russian sex workers. A security guard stands by the door, ushering in clients β often three or four at a time. Single beds are cordoned off with ragged curtains. Instead, each of the women, including a resident dominatrix, pay towards the rent and a security guard.
The rest of the money is theirs. They beat up the guard and rob the women. Prostitution is illegal in Russia. Read more: Prostitute takes us inside Britain's legal red light district. Shocked by what she saw, she took her concerns right to the top of the Russian government. For the Russian rich elite however, there is no need to walk the freezing streets to find sex.
They go online. On the other side of the world, Stacey uncovered another side of the sex industry. Around a million transgender people live in Brazil, many of them facing such ingrained prejudice that they struggle to find a job and resort to making a living selling sex. Stacey meets Aninya, formerly Phillipe, a year-old transgender sex worker from Rio. Clutching her pet chihuahua in her modest apartment, Aninya shows Stacey the special trikinis she wears for work.
Designed to hide her penis by tucking it in a pouch between her legs, they make her appear completely feminine.
Others talk to her about the discrimination and dangers they face finding customers on the streets, setting out in the dead of night to earn a living with the very real fear that they may not make it home. Violence against gay and transgender sex workers in Brazil is endemic. The country has the highest murder rate of trans women in the world and they have a life expectancy of just Oscar rents out hotel rooms by the hour and boasts of sexual conquests with the women that work there.
