Paid for: My Journey Through Prostitution

"The best work by anyone on prostitution ever, Rachel Moran's Paid For fuses the memoirist's lived poignancy with the philosopher's conceptual sophistication. The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. This book provides all anyone needs to know about the reality of prostitution in moving, insightful prose that engages and disposes of every argument ever raised in its favor." --Catharine A. MacKinnon, law professor, University of Michigan and Harvard University

Born into a troubled family, Rachel Moran left home at the age of fourteen. Being homeless, she was driven into prostitution to survive. With intelligence and empathy, she describes the exploitation she and others endured on the streets and in the brothels. Moran also speaks to the psychological damage inherent to prostitution and the inevitable estrangement from one's body. At twenty-two, Moran escaped the sex trade. She has since become a writer and an abolitionist activist.

Rachel Moran grew up in North Dublin city. From a troubled family background, she was fourteen when she was taken into state care. She became homeless and got involved in prostitution at aged fifteen, working in Dublin and other Irish cities for the following seven years.

In 1998 at the age of 22, she liberated herself from that life. At 24 she got on the path to further education, gaining a degree in journalism from Dublin City University, where she won the Hybrid Award for excellence in journalism.

She speaks internationally on prostitution and sex-trafficking and volunteers to talk to young girls in residential care about the harms and dangers of prostitution. She lives in North Dublin.