Meet the dominatrix who makes more than £3,000 a month but only punishes her men between the hours of 8am and 3pm – while her two children are at school. Emme Witt, 48, has been seeing willing clients for the past seven years while Oliver, 13, and Gabriel, 12, were learning their times tables.
She cashes in juggling messages, calls and webcam sessions with up to 20 men at a time before she has to help her boys with their homework.
Emme said: “As soon as I drop them off, I turn on my phone. I have to parcel out that time as I can't do it when they’re around.
"I have to make sure they’re out of the house. It’s a job that works really well with being a mum, especially a single mum, because if my children are sick I can stay home with them.”
She keeps her parent and punisher roles strictly separate, but has admitted that what she has learned as a single mother she uses to discipline her clients.
She said: “The way I treat men has no bearing on the way I treat my children, but what I've learned psychologically from my children helps me in this world. There is a lot of male immaturity – when men try to manipulate me, the tactics are very similar!
“People try to get controlling but I'm able to stand above that because I see the childish behaviour.”
The dominatrix wants to help dispel the stereotypes that working in the adult industry makes you “immoral” or “perverted”, particularly now sites like OnlyFans are bringing it to the mainstream.
She said: “I’m a taxpayer, I'm a mother, I have been in your child's classroom and I'm also an adult worker.”
Emme first discovered the world of domination when she was about 27 years old and found herself struggling with £25,000 worth of debt.
She said: “I was doing documentaries about Latin rock bands, and I met this woman at a concert and she told me she was a dominatrix. My curiosity was piqued because I knew it was a very lucrative job and yet I didn’t think that somebody like me could do it.
“I was very shy and a ‘nice girl’ with a university education, and I didn’t think I had the strength to embody this dominatrix persona. I asked her if she thought that I could do it and she said yes, and she invited me to this slave party and that was the beginning.
“I was introduced into the world - I whipped a man that night and I really saw that I could do it. It really challenged my concept of my identity.”
She did this for three years and found she had the money to move to Spain for a while.
The writer said: “I quit and had a very, very suburban vanilla life for about 10 years. Then, when I got a divorce, I was very, very financially in need because I had been a stay-at-home-mum.
“I needed to make money and the first time I worked as a dominatrix it was the same thing, I very much needed money. It got me out of debt once and so when I left my husband I already knew that this was the way that I was going to save myself financially.”
She researched and found websites to advertise her services on and used a friend’s home to do her sessions. It didn’t take her long to build up a client base who wanted to be whipped, tortured and spanked and would pay per hour for a session with Emme.
However, it didn’t come as easily for her as she thought it would. “I was nervous, I kind of lost my mojo,” she said.
“I had thought that being a dominatrix was like riding a bike, something you never forgot, but I actually had forgotten because I had been in this different mindset for so long that it was hard to get back into it. Now as a mother I had more difficulty being sadistic to people, so I rebranded myself as more of a compassionate dominatrix.
“I was insecure because I was coming out of divorce as well so there was a kind of desperation.”
While many men were looking to meet her in person, some were happy to just chat to her on the phone or over a video call. This could last anywhere between three minutes to seven hours long.
When the pandemic hit she could no longer do face-to-face sessions, so her work was completely moved online to OnlyFans, dedicated sites and social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
The income from her adult work makes up about 50% of her income alongside writing for online publications. Emme, from Los Angeles, California, loves the flexibility her job gives her, as she limits her work to between the hours of 8am and 3pm when her two children are at school.
She said: “I’ve been able to be the art teacher at my kids' school, where I volunteer to learn a lesson and then teach it. I have had corporate jobs and I've been very unhappy at them, I have a Master's degree and I have been a teacher’s aid on the college level, and I don’t like the commitment.
"I like the creativity, I like that I'm able to be very imaginative. The way that I keep people on the phone or texting, I'm improvising- they’ll give me information and I'll give something back. I’m creating a world - you can't be just like ‘yes, no’, it’s showbiz!”
While she never lets any of her work creep into her parenting, raising two young boys has changed how she deals with her clients.
She said: “Last night at 10.30pm, somebody wanted to do a cam session but I'm not available, but he was like ‘please, please, please, I need to see you!’ I see that he’s having a tantrum almost, it's like my child who wants a chocolate bar, you just have to say no!
"I might have put up with that when I was younger but now it's like, sorry, I'm not going to give into your tantrum because I see it for the childish immature behaviour that it is. I have to really safeguard my energy from that because I'm a mother.”
Being a mother has also had an impact on how far she goes with clients, as she feels she is more of a “nurturing” person. While she plans to be totally transparent with Gabriel and Oliver one day, the boys are not old enough to understand yet.
For the meantime she tells them she works as a “consultant”.
She said: “I do feel when the time is right I can explain it to them, I feel it is very important I let my children know that I don’t feel shame about this type of work that I do. A lot of people expect I should feel ashamed or guilty and yet this line of work has been very lucrative for me, it has helped me in many ways.
“It has allowed me to explore myself, my own sexuality, and grow in confidence. To feel ashamed because this job is socially taboo, I'm just done with that.
“Also it’s a good way to start the conversation about what is healthy, to not be ashamed of their sexual urges, and if they do that it is consensual. Honestly I think some of my clients' interests do come out of the shame they’ve felt about sex growing up, and so it's very important that I don’t instil that deep sense of shame in my children.
“A lot of people will think I'm perverted or I'm a bad person or whatever and that just isn't the case. Instead all this investigation and exploration into my sexuality is something I can use to help my children.”
Emme, who has a degree in history and masters in fine arts and creative writing, wants to help dispel the negative stereotypes of sex workers, especially now that is becoming more mainstream.
She said: “The worlds of BDSM and adult labour are so criticised and I think it's very important to just get the word out that there are normal people like myself involved who are able to have healthy, productive lives. Especially now in our post-pandemic world and prices are rising all over the globe, more and more women and men are turning to adult labour, especially in terms of OnlyFans.
“You can do this work and be a normal person, but not only that, you can be a good mum it has no bearing on your ability to bring up your children.”
