Sex in the Suburbs: Lift home transformed life into a nightmare

He kept her against her will in a flat for six months, only being allowed out to sell her body for money.

What followed was a 'career' spanning nearly two decades walking the streets of Wolverhampton, Coventry and London offering sex in exchange for money.

Jo, not her real name, is one of the lucky ones.

She has now put her past as a prostitute and drug user behind her.

But her story is one that will worry many parents and break the stereotypical view that women who end up in prostitution have come from disadvantage and poverty.

There are hundreds of other women like her selling sex on the streets of the Midlands.

All of them will have a different reason for doing so, some private, personal tragedy that has led them to take their life into their hands and offer to go off with strangers for money.

Street sex work is one of the areas of prostitution where the police can and do act.

On the internet, as the Express & Star reported earlier this week, people are able to legally arrange for their clients to meet them for sex.

The streets are a different matter. But police will try to get sex workers to receive help, including drug and alcohol addiction services if they need them, before using the last resort of arrest.

Each area has its problems, from Wolverhampton to Walsall, those who want to can find sexual gratification on the street.

The police have an ongoing operation to tackle the issue which has seen hundreds of cautions dished out.

And that is where Jo comes in.

Her story is being used to train West Midlands Police officers as part of Operation Scarlet which runs to tackle to kerb crawling and street sex.

The operation launched in 2012 and since it began 790 street cautions have been issued to sex workers, 99 cautions have been issued to kerb crawlers.

A total of 33 men have been arrested for kerb crawling and 53 sex workers have been arrested.

And the Crown Prosecution Service also recorded a huge jump in prosecutions as police got tough.

Across the West Midlands in 2010/11 there were 70 convictions for being in the street for prostitution

Then in 2011/12, it doubled to 141, falling back to 74 the following year as street workers began to get the message and the support and treatment to change their ways. By 2013/14 it was just 38.

In Staffordshire the problem of street prostitution is nowhere near as severe. The CPS secured 17 convictions in 2010/11, 18 the following year, 15 in 2012/13 and just one in 2013/14. Areas such as Walsall have found themselves a particular target for police. An operation which ran in the borough in 2012 saw the numbers of people arrested fall to a quarter in the space of a year.

It still remains an issue though and Jo, aged 37, says she has spoken out in a bid to help protect other vulnerable men and women.

Now married with a full time job she has taken part in a training video for West Midlands Police to help officers in the region learn more about why women turn to the streets.

Jo described how, when just a teenager, she was befriended by a man who forced her into prostitution and drug use.

Her harrowing tale began when she was late home one night and decided to phone her family from a pay phone in the village where she lived to let them know she was running late.

Jo said: "I was at the phone box and this man got talking to me.

"He knew I was late and he offered me a lift. I got in his car and he started driving down the motorway. He drove me to London and then he told me I couldn't go back home as he hadn't got the money for fuel.

"He said that if I wanted to go home I needed to earn the money.

"He put me out on the streets in London. I thought if I do this once I can get the money to go home."

Jo claims the man kept her locked up at a flat inLondon for six months.

She was expected to earn £150 a day and only allowed out to work on the streets.

If she failed to earn her keep she was beaten.

She says: "I had used drugs when I was taken to London.

"It was a way of coping with the beatings and to block out having to do what I had to do to get money."

Her family had reported Jo as a missing person and it was only after she was left alone following another beating that she managed to escape by climbing out of a window in the flat. She went to hospital for treatment and they contacted the police who re-united Jo with her family following her ordeal.

The teenager went back to school and finished her GCSEs.

But then she turned to street working at the age of 17.

"My background was good, I went to a private girl's school," she said.

"I didn't want for anything when I was growing up.

She rebelled and fell back into taking drugs and returned to London, working in brothels to fund her addiction. Jo then moved to Wolverhampton where she walked the streets selling sex to kerb crawlers in her 20s.

For the last 10 years of her 'career' she was in Coventry.

"For many years I never had much to do with my family and now I am with my family all the while," Jo said.

Jo managed to escape the streets thanks to help from her GP who supported her to give up drugs.

She added: "I had to tell my employer about my past but he gave me a chance and I am now in full time work, happily settled down."