While female prostitution is visible on the streets of many towns, its male equivalent is not so apparent. Nick Morrison reports on a project trying to bring the trade in young men and boys into the light.

'YOU can usually tell by the amount of graphic language that is being used, and you can tell when it is a child because it's in a child's writing. The type of pen gives it away as well."

These are the telltale signs Paul Richardson notices. For many people, the graffiti all appears pretty similar, if they notice it at all, but for Paul there are clues within the scrawls, pointers towards a hidden world of sex, money and exploitation. Even the type of pen - apparently paint pens are a favourite - can provide a lead.

Paul is the young men and boys project co-ordinator for Barnardo's Sexually Exploited Children on the Streets (Secos) initiative on Teesside. Based in Middlesbrough, Secos is one of the charity's most high profile ventures, winning national recognition for its work with teenage prostitutes.

But, as well as the teenage girls who make up the bulk of their caseload, Secos workers were contacted by a small number of teenage boys and young men who were involved in prostitution. Some of the girls also told of boys they had encountered in the same profession, the stories too regular and too similar to be dismissed.

The result was a project aimed specifically at young men and boys, but whereas the girls have a visible presence on the streets, for the boys it is largely a covert scene.

"We work alongside a lot of other agencies, and it is through intelligence from them and whispers that we know things are going on," says Paul.

"It could be in public toilets, car parks, laybys, motorway service stations, sand dunes - anywhere that is discreet and unobserved. It could be graffiti on a park bench, a public monument or a statue, or it could be written on a rubbish bin. "If you open your eyes and you know what you are looking for, you can find it."

AROUND a dozen sites on Teesside have been identified as being used by male prostitutes, including a number of remote locations. The same telephone number scrawled on the wall in several different places, often some distance apart, can be a clue, as can a number being scratched out and replaced with another. "It's a very competitive market," says Paul.

Prostitution is rarely a conscious choice for these boys. Those Paul has already spoken to tell of how they "just fell into it". Some are gay, or confused about their sexuality, and this confusion leaves them open to exploitation. Others became involved with prostitution as a way of paying for drugs, or funding a certain lifestyle. Many of them have been in care at some point.

"If they identify themselves as gay at 16, it is a very emotional age and there are a lot of things running through their minds. They might be wrestling with their sexuality and experimenting, and when you have got predatory males and young men experimenting it can be dangerous," says Paul.

"When young people leave a children's unit they are vulnerable, and if you have someone sleeping rough or in a layby there is an opportunity for somebody to exploit them.

"It might be about obtaining money just to survive, or it might be about obtaining alcohol and drugs. For one of the lads I've been working with, it's partly about experimentation, but primarily it is about drugs."

He says it can be a chicken and egg situation of which came first, prostitution or drugs? Boys can turn to prostitution to fund a drug habit, or can be drawn into using drugs through contacts made in prostitution.

ONE common scenario is when a young man owes money to a drug dealer, and the dealer sells the debt on to a pimp. The pimp demands repayment, and forces the young man into prostitution. And in another case, Paul knows of a boy who wanted to be accepted by his peer group, and turned to prostitution to buy drugs for the group.

"Some kids are very streetwise and very savvy, and it only takes one in a group to be really streetwise and they will all become streetwise. There is also a hell of a network in the criminal world: the pimp has got links to the drug dealer," Paul says.

His work has also highlighted how boys are lured into prostitution via the Internet.

One classic scenario sees two men working alongside each other in a chatroom, where they target a young boy. One of the men talks to the boy in an explicity sexual way, and when the boy becomes uncomfortable, the other man will play the "good cop", taking the boy into a safe chatroom to protect him from the first man. The second man can then begin to "groom" the boy, exploiting his position as a saviour to gradually entice him into prostitution, a process which can take months.

In another scenario, a woman will befriend a young boy in a chatroom. The conversation may turn to holidays, and they swap holiday pictures. One of the woman's pictures shows her topless, and if the boy shows an interest it is followed by more pictures, increasingly explicit. Once their chatroom relationship has become sexualised, the woman tries to arrange a meeting, which can lead to a sexual relationship. From there, the woman's male partner will join in.

Then the couple will exploit the boy's shame and fear of repercussions to blackmail him into having sex with other men. Boys who are coerced into prostitution can then find themselves shipped from one area to another as a form of human cargo.

But the biggest difficulty Paul faces in uncovering this trade comes not from the abusers or the pimps or the drug dealers, but from the boys themselves. The shame of selling sex for money is greatly magnified when it concerns young men having sex with other men.

"Society has got this great taboo about men having sex with men, and it is very, very hard to get their trust to get them to talk about it.

"Girls talk about problems; boys and men don't. Girls will open up, boys will keep it bottled up because society has got this attitude about men having sex with men.

'WHILE for the girls it is very overt, for the boys it is covert, and to get contact with young men and boys in this scene is very hard and very frustrating. We know what the problems are and where the problems are, but to get them to engage with us is very difficult," Paul says.

He says many of the boys assume Secos wants them to get out of prostitution and are reluctant to give up their lifestyle, knowing that they would be unlikely to fund it through other means.

"Exiting has always been Secos's priority, but if they don't want to exit it is about ensuring their safety and well-being, until they're in a position to say they're ready to exit. In that case, we could help with housing, health issues, or they could just come here and have a shower and maybe sound off to somebody.

"There's one man in his 20s, who has been involved in this scene for a lot of years. He uses it to as a means of getting through life, to earn money for his drug and alcohol addiction. He doesn't see it as harming anybody and he doesn't want to exit."

But for Paul, making contact with these young men and boys is vital, even if they can't always be persuaded to give up prostitution.

"We're trying to punch into this concrete circle and get the trust of these young men. It is an indictment of society that vulnerable people are being exploited in this way, and we are desperate to know what's happening so we can prevent it happening to someone else."