One of the insidious things about clients who intentionally break condoms is that in most cases where they do it, you’ll never be certain. For clients who frequently break the condom while meeting with sex workers, they develop a technique over time to avoid getting caught. Often they’ll combine tactics like suggesting a position where the sex worker’s back is turned alongside pretending to pull the condom on further for re-insertion.
“Stealthing”, which usually refers to intentional condom removal during sex, is a crime in the UK and is considered a form of sexual assault by the law. This also applies to cases where to condom is purposefully broken. However, in practice, this law is even less enforceable than those against other types of sexual assault (which have a tiny conviction rate already!). The standard of evidence required to convict someone for sexual assault is already very high, and with various additional issues at every level of the justice system… practically all someone who engages in stealthing has to do is say the condom broke by accident.
During a booking quite a while ago, a condom “broke” during a booking I had. The client went on to complain about how condoms don’t work well for him anyway and rambled about having had a vasectomy, asking me to agree to sex without a condom. I made him put on another and eventually he complained about not being able to finish with a condom on so I finished him with my hand. I had no suspicions that he broke the condom on purpose.
A few days ago, that client booked me again. This time, while I was facing away from him, I heard some rustling with the condom and a quiet “snapping” sound which I assumed was him pulling it up and letting go of the end. It was enough to make me glance back just before he put it in to check, but the condom looked intact and then we started having sex again. After a couple of seconds, it was obvious the condom was broken, and when he pulled back it was visibly so and I stopped him to get another condom. I was in shock and panic, knew we were near the end of the appointment and I wanted to get through it fast so I could go and blast my insides with water.
The client started rambling about his vasectomy again, this time saying we should just not use a condom because one had already broken so we might as well. He assured me he was clean. I said no, and recalled at this point that the exact same had happened last time. He got the new condom on, we started again, and I was still in shock now realizing he’d purposefully broken the condom both times. From the moment the condom broke, I didn’t say a word other than “no” in response to his repeated asking not to use a condom again. After him groggily thrusting for another minute or so and then going limp at how obviously panicked and unresponsive I was, he got dressed. I awkwardly got dressed to, with him still rambling and me mostly silent, until he left. I was so dissociated that I didn’t even have the energy to be angry until after he left.
Legally speaking, the UK considers that to be sexual assault. It certainly felt like a form of sexual assault to me, though not as severe as some of the other assaults I’ve experienced. I think a part of the issue with people recognizing these violations for what they are is the assumption that all sexual assault must be equally traumatic, or that the sex itself must be unwanted from the very beginning for it to qualify.
Outside of sex work, men do attempt this with civilians. Those who have not sold sex may be even less likely to realize that the condom breaking as intentional, and often their partner can get away with it for much longer. For example, if a young woman has never had sex before, and when she has sex with her first boyfriend he regularly breaks the condom… she may just assume that’s a common amount for condoms to break, or that her boyfriend’s dick is big enough that it breaks them more often. She’s more likely to buy whatever excuse he uses. A sex worker, on the other hand, is likely to be a better judge of how likely it is for a condom to break. If the same client regularly breaks the condom with us, we’re more likely to realize that they did it on purpose.
Since those who commit this type of sexual assault will almost never admit to it, unless we see it happen, the police are likely to try and convince us that we imagined it or that it was an accident if we report it. Even discussing it with others, it’s common to hear them suggest it may have been a coincidence or to downplay the severity.
In my time doing sex work, discounting clients who I am sure intentionally broke the condom, I have had two condoms break out of hundreds. Definitely a rate of less than one in every hundred breaking. If condoms are breaking frequently with one person and there’s not an obvious issue (like using an extra small condom on a thick 8-inch dick), it’s highly likely that the person is breaking them.
I know some sex workers refuse to have sex in certain positions to avoid this, or take lots of additional precautions like a daily dose of PrEP and a contraceptive, but those options aren’t available to everyone and they don’t protect from all STDs.
Besides warning others, when a client breaks a condom during a session we have very little recourse. There’s very little I can do to stop him from repeating the behaviour, or to protect myself from clients doing it to me again in the future. Any time I work, there’s a risk of exposure, which increases further depending on the volume of clients I’m taking and how selective I can afford to me. For many, they can’t afford to have a policy of refusing to see clients again if a condom breaks during a session, because they don’t get enough clients to pay their bills otherwise. Sometimes even if they know a client will do such a thing, they will just try to watch them closely and refuse to turn their back so they don’t get an opportunity. That’s the best a lot of us can do.
I don’t have solutions, just anger.
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