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Undercover investigation exposes Irish landlords asking for sex-for-rent deals

Vulnerable women being targeted by adverts offering ‘special arrangements’Share

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Undercover RTE investigation exposes landlords asking for sex-for-rent deals

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RTÉ Investigates: Sex for Rent

Today at 09:00

Landlords are seeking sex from prospective female tenants in exchange for reduced rent or free accommodation.

RTÉ Investigates went undercover to meet some landlords who were posting sex-for-rent adverts.

In a special report, which airs tonight, footage from face-to-face meetings shows male landlords asking for sex up to three times a week.

RTÉ Investigates: Sex for Rent

Ireland’s homeless figures are currently at an all-time high, with more than 12,000 in emergency accommodation.

The RTÉ investigation shows how some landlords have been exploiting the housing crisis by offering vulnerable women accommodation in return for sex.

Some of the adverts mentioned “special arrangements” and asked specifically for foreign women.

Dr Clíona Saidléar, executive director of the Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI), told RTÉ Investigates: “What you have right now is something of a perfect storm in terms of the vulnerability that has opened up around housing and around finding somewhere to rent and accommodation.”

The landlords who feature in the programme all asked the researcher to meet them in their cars, but she insisted on public places.

One landlord texted before the meeting asking whether she would perform a sex act on him in his car afterwards.

He also told her that if she wanted, they could book a hotel and see if she “wanted it”. Afterwards, he texted again to say: “I can put u up in a hotel maybe Wednesday night. Enjoy it yourself, I want to call then Thursday morning.”

After she told the man she was not interested in the arrangement, he replied to say that it was a pity because she was “surprisingly pretty”.

The young Brazilian woman pretended she had lost her job as an au pair and was sleeping on a friend’s couch in a crowded house in Dublin.

She responded to adverts from landlords based in Munster, Leinster and Dublin. The men are aged in their 30s, 40s and 50s.

When she texted showing an interest in the adverts, some replied asking for her to send a picture of herself.

An advert by a man in his mid-40s from Leinster read: “Free room for housekeeping and other services when required. No time wasters. No men. Females only thank you.”

He refused to send a picture of the room until RTÉ’s researcher sent a picture of herself first.

In advance of the meeting, he replied by text to give further details of how the arrangement would work.

He said “services are sexual” and she would maybe have to do housekeeping two hours a week.

“Cooking isn’t required,” he said.

The man asked whether she had a high sex drive and whether sex would be a “chore”.

A third advert said an en suite room was available for free in Dublin “with special arrangement”.

The landlord told the researcher it would involve sex maybe twice a week.

He told her: “You don’t belong to me. You will be independent.”

The practices exposed in the programme have led to calls for explicit legislation banning sex-for-rent offers.

In 2022, a bill aimed at criminalising the behaviour stalled in the Oireachtas at committee stage.

Kieran McGrath, a psychiatric social worker said: “We need explicit legislation. A law governing it would send a very clear message, because people who convince themselves this is OK and it’s not illegal, that gives them a green light as far as they’re concerned.”

He said sex-for-rent also raised questions in relation to consent.

“There’s no equality at all. This is basically sexual exploitation where you give sex in return for some economic benefit, whether it might be rent, it could be drugs, it could be alcohol,” Mr McGrath said.

“That’s a well-established definition of sexual exploitation which is a form of sexual abuse. It’s that simple.”

RTÉ Investigates: Sex for Rent will be shown tonight at 9.35pm on Prime Time, RTÉ One.