Fake Escort Website Launches With ‘Dead’ Escorts

A French organization creates an anti-sex work ad campaign featuring images of battered and bloodied women

This morning, I visited the new French escort site Girls of Paradise and clicked a button to start a live chat with “Sonia,” a 25-year-old brunette. A hot-pink chat window popped up, she asked whether I wanted to see more photos, and immediately I was met with an image of her face covered in bruises. Then came a photo with two bloody knife wounds to her chest, right above her lacy black bra.

The text box informed me that Sonia was stabbed 53 times and found dead in the apartment where she saw clients.

As you can see, this is no ordinary escort website. It’s a digital campaign dreamt up by Le Mouvement du Nid, a French anti-sex work organization, and the advertising firm McCann Paris. What appears at first to be a site selling sex quickly reveals itself as a catalog of murdered, maimed, and drug-addicted sex workers.

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