THE pretty, dark-haired former prostitute is in her late-twenties, but years of drug abuse, prison sentences and working in a brothel have taken their toll.

Each wrinkle, looking out of place on her young face, tells a tale of being so desperate that she had to resort to selling herself for £30 a time.

When she fell pregnant, she finally gave up her job at Middleton's Pleasure Zone shop, which provided the front for a seedy brothel.

The Darlington woman is so scared of repercussions that she did not want to be identified.

But she told how Middleton had filmed her performing sexual acts without her knowledge, and then published them on the Internet.

She said: "He was filming me doing things.

"Someone told me they had seen me on the Internet, but I could not get on a computer to check.

"I know I used to work there, but it does not give him the right to own us, to be able to do stuff like that to us."

The young woman also gives a rare insight into what daily life was like at the brothel.

About 15 young women, she believes, worked in the rooms above Pleasure Zone, with bookings being taken downstairs in the shop.

She said that most of the girls were drug-addicts, scraping together what money they could for their next hit.

At the height of its notoriety, the Pleasure Zone, which advertised massage and escort services, attracted hundreds of men.

The former prostitute said: "It was really successful at one point.

"Half the men in Darlington were going there before he got caught.

"By the end, he had too many girls wanting to work there. They only had one day a week each to work in some cases."

She also said Middleton took half the fee for full sex.

She said: "Customers were charged £30 when the girls did a lay-down. They only got half of that. Most of the girls were on drugs so they got to feed their habit, but they should have got more than that.

"He was a great boss in a lot of ways, but I really think, 'how dare he'.

"It's greedy taking half of a lay-down when he had that many girls working for him. It was completely out of order. But when you're desperate, you're desperate."

Fearing that he might be implicated, the girl said Middleton had asked his employees to sign a form to say they would not sleep with customers of the business.

She said: "It was officially a massage parlour, but he wanted me to sign a form to say that I would not do anything more."

As a prostitute, she had no employee rights.

She could not take maternity leave, she could not take her employer to an industrial tribunal, and was not a member of a trade union.

All that is left for her is to try to find a job as best she can, even with past prison sentences and an ongoing drug addiction to contend with