Couple who ran brothel face jail

10:11am Wednesday 15th October 2008

A HIGH-FLYING businessman and his Thai mistress are facing jail for setting up a brothel only months after her massage parlour was closed by police.

Wealthy management consultant Stephen Hodgkiss funded the Darlington viceden for Waraporn Dodds, who took all the money made by her girls by legitimate means and sent it back to her family.

A court heard yesterday how the prostitutes charged £25 for a 40-minute massage – all of which went to Dodds – and only made cash for themselves if they provided “extras”

for customers.

The unusual lifestyle of 44- year-old balding businessman Hodgkiss emerged at Teesside Crown Court after he and his 38-year-old lover pleaded guilty to keeping a brothel.

It was revealed that the £80,000-a-year computer expert has a wife in Thailand, but lives with Dodds in an upmarket suburb of Newcastle, effectively as man and wife.

Ian West, prosecuting, told Judge Christopher Prince that the couple also have a young child, who is looked after by relatives of Dodds thousands of miles away in her native country.

The court heard how Dodds sent the money she made from the Major Street brothel to her mother, while Hodgkiss used his earnings to maintain his wife in south-east Asia.

The couple’s activities emerged when police raided the property in February and discovered it had been used illegally since the tenancy was taken out in June 2006.

The investigation revealed that Hodgkiss had taken out the tenancy, furnished it, set up utility bills in his name and advertised services in a national newspaper.

Within three weeks of him signing a lease on the house, Hodgkiss had also made bulk orders with a company called Condom Tom, and bought more towards the end of September.

Hodgkiss claims he initially thought his partner was setting up another massage parlour, but accepts he became aware it was a brothel soon afterwards.

Mr West told the court: “We say it is absolutely plain that he was setting these premises up as a brothel from the start.

The premises was established as a brothel from day one.”

The couple, of St George’s Terrace, Jesmond, Newcastle, will be sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court next month, after probation service officials prepare background reports.

Judge Prince granted bail, but said: “That should not be taken as an indication of the sentence that will be imposed. All options remain open.”

Barristers for the couple earlier accepted that the offence crossed the custody threshold, and indicated they will attempt to persuade the judge to suspend any prison sentence.

The court heard how a massage parlour run by Dodds in Shortridge Terrace, in the Jesmond area, was closed after a raid by Northumbria Police officers in August 2005.

By May of the following year, Dodds was asking Hodgkiss to acquire a property in Darlington so she could move her services 35 miles down the A1, said Mr West.

“Northumbria Police did not prosecute as a result of the raid,”

he said. “It seems to be their policy to close the premises down and move the problem somewhere else.

“Hodgkiss admits setting these premises up in the same way he came to set up 2a Major Street, but he says he was not aware why his partner came to him asking to acquire premises for her to move her massage parlour.

“They were living together as man and wife, and it is inconceivable that he would not have known that the premises were closed down and why, and what it was Dodds was doing, asking him to set up new premises in a different town and, more pertinently, in a different police force area.

“There were no adverts for any massage in any massage magazines...

it is a veneer of respectability to say ‘I thought it was just a massage parlour’. They have set this up as a joint venture.”

Tom Moran, for Hodgkiss, said Dodds was seven months pregnant when police raided the Jesmond property and found her there with two other women.

Mr Moran accepted Hodgkiss paid for the house, but insisted that he had no financial stake in the business, and received no money from the services provided there.

“The defendant has a different Thai partner – a wife – in Thailand, and he is independently sending money back there, and at the same time he was working in a job paying £80,000-a-year.”

Mr West said Proceeds of Crime Act legislation will be implemented to examine what the couple earned from the brothel before efforts are made to claw the money back.

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