A sex worker gave my autistic son the gift of confidence – and I organised the encounter

‘I left them alone and did what any other mother would do after dropping her child off at a sex worker’s: I cooled my heels in a coffee shop, read magazines and avoided using my imagination.’ Photograph: Frank and Helena/Getty Images/Image Source

Parenting takes you on some interesting twists and turns, but as I lay in the maternity ward gazing into my newborn’s eyes, never in my wildest dreams could I ever have imagined that 21 years later I’d be trawling the websites of sex workers looking for a suitable young lady to take his virginity. Yet that’s exactly where I found myself earlier this year.

We’d not long left the hospital when I noticed my baby’s gaze had a distant quality. A few days after his third birthday, he was diagnosed with autism.