# 'Paid for: My Journey Through Prostitution' by Rachel Moran - Some question her veracity **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 19, 2015, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107 "2015-10-19T06:00:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/1 "2015-10-19T06:00:48Z")
I suppose the question is how can you prove you were a prostitute? [I saw a Salon article about this book](http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/the_sex_was_never_ever_fun_my_lessons_in_prostitution/)and intrigued I looked it up on Amazon. [On Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393351971/?tag=saloncom08-20)there were a few one star reviews which was odd to me because who could she be offending by exposing the abuses of prostitution. In looking at these one star reviews they are not actually book reviews as such, but allegations of fabrication and fraud against the author. There is a person (with some supporters) who claims to have been a prostitute who worked for several years at the exact same times and in the same places as Moran specified she did in the book, and says she never saw hide nor hair of anyone like Moran. Which would be odd because Moran claims (in the Salon Article) to have been an extremely active, borderline aggressive, take no shit prostitute who everyone would have been aware of. The person alleging fraud says it was actually a fairly small group of prostitutes who worked the area and they all knew each other fairly intimately. No one in this group has ever heard of Moran. The person alleging fraud says Moran is fronting for an anti-prostitution group with an agenda and the whole book is fabrication. Basically she claims that Moran’s character is a concocted ghost who was not where she said she was, and was not doing what she claimed she was doing. How could Moran prove she was there doing what she said? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/2 "2015-10-19T06:04:33Z")
I have no idea of the truth, but just because the two stories don’t agree, it doesn’t have to be Moran that’s lying. It’s easy to believe the journalism is fake. It “makes sense” that people lie. But why believe prostitutes? It’s not like they are the world’s most honorable profession, after all. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/3 "2015-10-19T06:18:02Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I have no idea of the truth, but just because the two stories don’t agree, it doesn’t have to be Moran that’s lying. It’s easy to believe the journalism is fake. It “makes sense” that people lie. But why believe prostitutes? It’s not like they are the world’s most honorable profession, after all. I have no opinion about this topic overall either way. You could however, substitute “journalist” for “prostitute” in your last two sentences and they would be equally as plausible. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/4 "2015-10-19T06:21:12Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I have no idea of the truth, but just because the two stories don’t agree, it doesn’t have to be Moran that’s lying. It’s easy to believe the journalism is fake. It “makes sense” that people lie. But why believe prostitutes? It’s not like they are the world’s most honorable profession, after all. True, but it’s more than story details not agreeing perfectly. They say she wasn’t even present period, during the time she was supposed to be a very active prostitute. Plus Moran is representing this as a 100% honest, raw slice of life truth with specific details not some general 'omage to sex worker tribulations. This is supposed to be her true story. And therein lies another point that her detractors claim which is that none of the claims she makes about the gritty details and real world specifics of sex work in that area hold any water. It’s like she never really was a prostitute. And honestly, re the Salon portion, it “reads” like a grad student’s thesis not a real life hooker’s bio of hard living and life on the street. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/5 "2015-10-19T06:27:07Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > I have no opinion about this topic overall either way. You could however, substitute “journalist” for “prostitute” in your last two sentences and they would be equally as plausible. Tis true, sadly. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/6 "2015-10-19T09:17:01Z")
I read an excerpt of the book, and it pinged my “fabricated story” meter. Too much protesting that she was the one special snowflake who’d worked in all different varieties of prostitution in her locality. ---
**Author:** ![polar\_bear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ec9cab/32.png) [@polar\_bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/polar_bear)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/7 "2015-10-19T10:29:32Z")
Not long ago there was a similar book published (under the name Patricia Perquin) in the Netherlands and it later turned out to be 100% fabricated. As many in the business had been saying. The municipality of Amsterdam even used its insights to adjust their policy. Amazingly enough, her book still gets cited as proof of what is “going on” in the red light district. It remains a very polarized subject matter and it seems none of the information that’s out there can be trusted. From both sides of the argument it seems the story they want to tell is more important than the truth. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/8 "2015-10-19T14:06:42Z")
I don’t think there’s any reason to as that either journalists or sex workers are likely to be less trustworthy than a person from another profession. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/9 "2015-10-19T16:03:23Z")
[I found this website](https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/played-out/) and it kind of summarizes the issues others have with the reliability of her story basically accusing Rachel Moran of blatant literary fraud re the truth of her memoir ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/10 "2015-10-19T16:20:58Z")
I assume she has no arrest record? Is that unlikely? I have no idea how common it is to get picked up by the police in that line of work. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/11 "2015-10-19T16:44:55Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > I assume she has no arrest record? Is that unlikely? I have no idea how common it is to get picked up by the police in that line of work. Her accusers claim she has no arrest record whatsoever for the specific time and area she claimed to be providing sex worker services despite claiming to have aggressively worked the entire gamut of prostitution services, including street walking for several years in that location. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paid-for-my-journey-through-prostitution-by-rachel-moran-some-question-her-veracity/735107/12 "2015-10-19T17:13:37Z")
[More here](http://leighalanna.tumblr.com/post/115667936862/hi-ive-been-looking-into-the-legitimacy-of)about her being a complete ghost. > [@](#): > > I’ll tell you why I believe Gaye Dalton any day. > > One thing in which civilians tend to fundamentally misunderstand sex workers is the depth of our communities. If you’ve worked in a parlour, if you’ve worked a stroll, you’re going to have met or at least seen other workers. Even if you’ve ever advertised in my niche, in my state, in the time I’ve been a worker, I am probably going to be able to match you to your description. > > Not only this, but we read people well, and if your story doesn’t add up to doing what sex work is like in a particular place at that point in time, we’re going to have a pretty good idea. There’s a book-published Australian sex worker memoirist who is, to put it bluntly, a massive bullshit artist. We know this because it’s a small world and even though she bullshitted the details quite significantly, it didn’t take long for people to identify her working identity even though she last worked years ago. She hasn’t been outed because a) she’s not advocating anything terrible that affects us, b) she did actually work, and c) no one wants the drama of having it out with a vaguely public figure, but the truth is no secret within our community. > > So, when Rachel Moran can’t produce one woman she worked with, any witness from that time who could verify her story, or any details that definitively could be fact-checked in her favour, despite claiming to work in specific places at specific times, when workers who worked those places are saying “no one matching that description ever worked here”, and workers who didn’t specifically work with her are saying “the details of how you talk about things are off, actual workers of that time didn’t use that language, and other details you include don’t add up”, that makes me dubious as shit. > > I will also say that I personally know of an identical case as the story that went around about Moran, where a civilian abolitionist ripped off a story of an actual sex worker who initially went to them seeking support, and used it as their own without that worker’s consent. I don’t have the permission of said worker to out that abolitionist but if I did I’d be a hell of a lot less kind about it than Dalton was. > > Laura Lee, another concurrent Dublin sex worker, also calls bullshit on Rachel Moran and her story. > > the ridiculousness of Moran’s invisibility is especially ludicrously obvious given that she was in Dublin, which is so, so tiny – even in the relatively brief period that I worked there, quite a few years later when the population was actually considerably larger (and the internet was the marketplace norm, which way ups the ability to stay invisible), the idea that I could go public and have nobody come forward and recognize me is pretty unbelievable. the client pool is miniscule – it’s like being in Grover’s Corners, everybody knows (and has seen) everybody. > > obviously, my experience is wildly different to what Lee’s was or Moran’s would have been – but in the direction of more anonymity, and less fact-checking abilities. so if it doesn’t look credible from here, it’s hard to see how it could be credible from there.