Sugar,Spice and everything Vice?

In the world of sugar daddies and sugar babes, Natalie Joy Lee investigates what truly goes on in Singapore’s social escort trade.

From 9am to 5pm, Amelia* is a slim and polished sales executive with a demure smile. At 6pm, she pulls out her makeup bag and shrugs out of her work wear into an LBD. She always keeps a spare dress ready in her office drawer, so she’s ready for her other profession. Because by night, Amelia is a social escort.

Today’s online social chatter paints a picture of social escorts as hard-nosed gold-diggers keen to make fast cash. Agencies quote fees ranging from $600 to as high as $1,500 or more for an hour’s company, but it’s not entirely clear what that hour involves. Is it dinner, or are escorts also expected to have sex?

“Hey, wait, isn’t this illegal?” you may ask. What about the anti-vice squad’s crackdowns on sex rings? Aren’t agents who arrange “assignments” just pimps? And the clients must all be leery old men willing to pay for sex, right?

So are sex work and social escorting legal in Singapore? To find out, we went straight to Sunil Sudheesan, Acting President of the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore. “Both trades are legal,” says Sunil, and “social escort agencies are legal so long as they’re registered with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, and do not involve the provision of sexual services.”

However, for both trades, the law is immediately flouted if a sex worker solicits in public or there is a third party who facilitates the sex work or lives on her earnings – in short, it’s not legal to be a pimp.

To curb online solicitation, earlier this year it became criminal to use “remote communication services” (such as websites or SMS) to facilitate sex work. All can incur a jail term of up to five years, a $10,000 fine, or both.

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