Our street is being ruined by brothel next door… I’ve taken drastic action after men turned up at my home for ‘bookings’
WHEN Sultan Rauf fitted a pricey security camera to the front of his house in February, he hoped it would stop the steady stream of strange men banging on his door.
The “punters”, who turned up at all hours of the day, claimed they had “appointments” – with one even trying to force his way in.
But Sultan says they’d mistaken his home on the quiet residential street in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, for next door – which he claims has been operating as a brothel for several months.
Putting up a camera, he tells The Sun, is the only way he feels he can protect his anxious family.
“No one wants to live next door to a brothel – it wasn’t safe for anyone living round here,” he says.
“My wife and my daughters who are 13 and 11 were too frightened
to open our front door after a man tried to force his way into the hallway saying he had an appointment.
“I told him we had reported the house next door to us to the police and to go away, but the next day there was someone else coming up our path wanting the same thing. It has been a nightmare.”
For residents living on the same leafy avenue, the only hope they had of ending the nightmare was to keep reporting incidents to the police.
When some, including members of the local Islah-Ul-Muslimeen Mosque, tried to confront the tenants, no one answered the door and despite intermittent police visits, nothing seemed to be done.
For nearly a year before the sex workers allegedly moved in last summer, the red brick mid-terraced property had remained unoccupied.
“The police had raided it and discovered some of the rooms were being used to grow cannabis,” says Sultan, who works as a security officer and has lived in his house for 17 years.
“Foil stuck on all the windows hid what was going on. Once the police had raided the place, it was peaceful.
“But then an elderly man and woman moved in with about three young women and things got bad.
“We had a flyer put through our door advertising sexual and massage services.
We had a flyer put through our door advertising sexual and massage services
Sultan Rauf
“When I went next door and asked one of the young women what she was doing, she just looked at me.
“She said she was from Hong Kong. After that men of all ages were turning up during the day and night and waiting outside to go into the house.
“When no one answered the door, they knock on the other houses on either side, saying they had appointments.
“One evening a man ran out through the back garden after his wife or girlfriend turned up at the house shouting his name and looking for him.”
‘Familiar faces’
One of several leaflets pushed through other residents’ letterboxes introduced one of the available girls by name, offering “amazing sexual and massage services”.
“Don’t be shy, come along to feel like a king,” the flyer read. “I will be here for a short stay. However, I will often come back again and also my girlfriends.”
One was even handed to a member of staff at a nearby school.
Regular users of the Waendel Leisure Centre adjacent to the property said they frequently saw cars parked on the road outside or men waiting outside looking at their phones.
One, who did not want to be named, said she had seen two men arguing outside the house in June this year and a woman yelling at them from an upstairs window.
Another elderly resident living in flats on the same side of the road said she stopped waiting at the bus stop near the house because of the men lurking outside.
“The police should have done something about it a long time ago,” she said. “School children walk past here, and young mums.”
Last month red paint was used to daub the word BROTHEL on the wall next door to the house, and the householder took to the community Facebook page to berate the culprit.
Her post read: “Please if you’re going to protest, at least do it at the right house and spare a thought for us as we were cleaning our wall up on our child’s 18th birthday.
“Ladies, know where your men are. We’ve seen some familiar faces over the past 12 months!”
This week the female resident said her actions had appeared to coincide with the tenants moving out after a further police visit to the property.
She said: “The landlord of the house didn’t know what it was being used for, nor that it had been used to grow weed before that.
“We haven’t seen anyone at the house in the last three weeks so we’re keeping everything crossed.”
Northamptonshire Police says they know about the complaints regarding the property and are working to solve them.
Its Neighbourhood Policing Inspector Miriam Kiernan said: “We are aware of some of the issues at this address and are currently working with the owner of the property in order to tackle them.
“At the moment what we lack is formal reports and I would encourage people not just to talk about the issues on social media but to report incidents to us directly.
“This will allow us to build up a larger case of evidence in order to find a long-term solution.”
While the exchange of sex for money is legal in the UK, it is illegal to own or manage a brothel or pimp anyone out, under the Sexual Offences Acts of 1956 and 2003.