Louise tells of nightmare fall into prostitution

Louise Eek's nightmare began when she was 12 and her parents split up. Her mother's new partner assaulted her, and at 14 she was gang-raped. She had her first child at 17 and went into foster care.

Louise Eek is a Swedish former lap-dancer and prostitute who now campaigns actively against the industry. This is the story she told in Dublin yesterday.

By the age of 19, she was deeply in debt. "Then I met a nicely dressed man, a sweet talker and very manipulative, who came on to me: 'you've got a sexy body, and you're sitting on a goldmine, dear. Why don't you earn money with it?'"

Thus began Louise's career in the sex industry.

She was given a one-way ticket to a club in the north of Sweden by the border with Norway. "I went to work for a week and the week turned into seven years."

Officially she was an exotic dancer but the real money, she quickly learned, was in "selling the entrance to my body".

"It wasn't on the dance that we earned our money, it's on the private services."

She quickly became "a money machine", she admits, but spent most of it on drink, drugs and holidays.

Her fellow dancers convinced themselves they were only there for a year to make some good money but the reality was rather different.

"Most of the women I worked with in the 1970s killed themselves or were murdered.The violence experience by women like me has been overwhelming." Asked what she has to say to men who go to lap-dancing clubs, she replies: "Get a life. Why can't you be close to your own sexuality and do it with someone you like, without relying on the power thing by relying on the money in your hands?"

Lap-dancing is all about male fantasies and has nothing to do with the sexuality of the women dancing.

"If I say I don't want to do this for you, he can always go down the line and find someone else to do the service, or he can offer more money. It's an industry created by men for other men."

Louise says "it's good" if there is no prostitution in Irish clubs.

But she warns: "Money and greed can make terrible things out of people".

And she points out the boundaries of sexual behaviour keep moving.

Louise says she hopes Ireland follows the Swedish example in the area of legislation by focusing on the anonymous clients of prostitutes.

Illness proved the salvation of Louise.

In 1993, she was diagnosed with cancer and almost died.

For the sake of her children alone, she realised she had to change her ways. She went to college, wrote a book about her experiences and became a journalist.

"But you know what - I haven't a single cent left from that period."