First brothel for those with mental and physical disabilities to be opened

STANDARD DIGITAL [11/01/13]

- Daily Mail

One of the UK's most famous madams is to open a brothel for people with mental and physical disabilities.

Becky Adams, 44, from Buckinghamshire, who ran an illegal brothel for 20 years and wrote an award-winning memoir about her exploits in 2010, plans to open her 'sexual health centre' in 2014, and has invested around £62,000 in the project.

Adams, who currently runs Para Doxies, a non-profit telephone-based service where volunteers find trusted sex workers for people with disabilities, says such an organisation is vital for those with unique physical and mental problems, and that her clients have included boys with autism whose parents wish them to have some physical contact and injured soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

Adams, who has two daughters, aged 17 and 23, gained notoriety in September when she said she wouldn't mind if her youngest daughter, then 16, became a prostitute.

After selling her brothel to one of her call girls in 2009, Adams' memoir won 2012's Brit Writers Award as well as the Erotic Award, a prize given by Outsiders, an organisation helping disabled people lead full lives.

She now describes herself as a 'sexual activist' and 'facilitator'.

Her tale resembles that told in Helen Hunt's new drama The Sessions, in which she plays a sex surrogate who helps a man confined to an iron lung to lose his virginity.

Adams says that sex is extremely difficult for those who are severely disabled, and that she imagines her centre - open to men and women, gay or straight, with mental and physical disabilities - would be fitted with ramps and hoists, with transport and amenities specially customised to cater for each individual's exact needs.

She added: “Remember, disabled people are the same as anyone else,” said Adams. “If someone likes to cross-dress and they'd like to come along and put on a wig and dress and be a lady and sit in their wheelchair, they can do that. We'll have makeup and fingernails to put on to be a transvestite.”

Adams, who says she herself has never had a sexual relationship with one of her clients, explained that her service is crucial when a third party is needed to facilitate sex.

One of her clients is a disabled woman who likes to be made to look nice before sex with her able-bodied husband, another is a soldier who has returned from Afghanistan wheelchair-bound and needs someone to help him out of his chair and onto a bed - because a woman cannot do it alone.

She has also been approached by mothers who wish their young autistic sons to have some gentle female contact - not necessarily sex - because they don't have any with girls their own age.