I'm torn, because I'm pretty live and let live, but on the other hand it was genuinely one of those rare 'oh shit, trouble' stomach knot moments.[/QUOTE There are also general laws on public nuisance and decency which can be used to target the sex trade. What is a brothel? Police know the women by name and look out for them. But if I was to take them around Manchester they would not know who any of the lads are,” he says. We work with a lot of lads in their mid twenties who are out having a great time in the Village, have a home but no job, with high drug and alcohol use and use sex work as something to do,” he says. “They are comfortable with it and happy with it.

Pop up brothels. Survival sex. Slavery. There's a lot more to Manchester's sex trade in 2017 than the calling cards that used to line phone boxes a decade ago. The level of vulnerability is extremely high on the street. It’s a very dangerous thing to be doing,” says MASH CEO Cate Allison. DC Nield explains: “A lot of the time we find out about pop up brothels because neighbours don’t want it on their street. The girls working in these premises are looked upon as a problem rather than human beings. Everyone surrounding them hates them because they are causing a problem in the area.

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There are currently hundreds of young men across Manchester selling sex. Many are homeless or unemployed, dozens have recently been released from prison. And then there were brothels, in many cases operated with the tacit knowledge of the police as long as they were drug-free and didn’t use underage girls. One particularly startling statistic is that many of these men told charity workers they started doing sex work from as young as 14. Inevitably many of them are in care. They’ve had information from people working in dilapidated properties such as carpenters and plasterers - and some of their best successes have come from nosy neighbours.

As Helen says: “Women do not have to come here at all so they have to know that we are trustworthy. It may only be when they’re in crisis that they ask for help. For some people there is nowhere else they can go.” A ‘dodgy punters’ display board - sponsored by charity ‘Ugly Mugs’ - gives details of all the potentially dangerous people who could target sex workers in Manchester. It’s a hidden, yet sprawling world which is increasingly complex to understand making it tougher than ever to keep victims safe. Manchester’s troubling homelessness problem has led to a rise in so-called ‘survival sex’ where young men, often with drug and alcohol problems, are forced to sell themselves to live. It’s part of a huge increase in male sex workers. Romanian couple Alexe Popa and Gabriela Diac were last week convicted for operating pop-up brothels around south Manchester and employing Eastern European women as prostitutes.

Then there is ‘survival sex’. That’s more the young homeless lad out of prison, or highly addicted, who identifies as straight. They hate it and they hate themselves for doing it but it’s a way of making money. They will likely do a bit of burglary, some drug dealing and a bit of sex work too.” He says sex work has always been connected to Manchester gay and cruising scenes and was concentrated around Canal Street, the Undercroft and Tariff Street although that has changed. Many, but not all, of these are run by violent and bullying pimps and populated by vulnerable Eastern European women. And contrary to their female counterparts, male sex workers don’t answer to a pimp or work in saunas or brothels. They advertise online. It’s something that DC Nield agrees with: “We would love to get more intelligence that allows us to help male sex workers but we just don’t get any,” he says.