This story contains graphic depictions that may be disturbing to some readers. Most girls who engage in compensated dating don't view themselves as prostitutes, a social worker says. Her father doesn't know what she did as a year-old, and she hopes he never finds out. But Sze, now 19, wants young girls to hear her story so they never make the same mistake.
We skipped the dinner part and went straight to the guest house for sex," Sze recalled. This customer wasn't bad, though. We just had sex, he paid, and then he left. I thought this was easy money, and that's why I continued doing this kind of thing. For a year and a half, Sze was part of a growing social phenomenon among teens in Hong Kong called "compensated dating," a practice in which a young woman agrees to go on a date with a man for a fee.
More often than not, the date involves sex. Sze said she started compensated dating because many of her classmates at an all-girls school were doing it. She says she became jealous when she saw the designer clothes, bags and cosmetics they bought with the money they earned through compensated dating. Sze wanted the same for herself, so her classmates introduced her to Internet chat forums where she met male customers.
The practice can have deadly consequences. Last year, a year-old Hong Kong girl was killed in a gruesome murder after she went to a year-old man's apartment for a compensated date. The man, Ting Kai-Tai, killed the teenager, dismembered her body and flushed the remains down the toilet.
A jury convicted him of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. Sze told CNN she knew a compensated date could go horribly wrong. She would set ground rules with clients on the phone first.
