'I turned to loan shark for help'

"Rebecca" borrowed cash from a loan shark after her husband lost his job

Women in the North East are being forced into prostitution to pay back loan sharks, a financial watchdog has claimed.

"Rebecca", in her 30s from the Tees Valley, was threatened by an illegal lender after borrowing £1,000.

The mother-of-three's real identity has been concealed for her protection.

After my husband lost his job we got into financial difficulty and I borrowed £1,000 from a man introduced to me by friends.

We knew we had to make weekly payments back to him but we never dreamed that he would double interest and double payments like that - it didn't seem realistic.

And we had no payment books or anything like that.

He would get quite aggressive and he would send other people round to be aggressive with us thinking that we'd be scared into paying.

It completely and utterly took over my life, it was all I thought about day in day out "Rebecca"

Then he would put more interest on the loan and follow us around if we weren't in the house for any reason when he came to collect.

He would make comments to other people, neighbours, that we owned him money.

It completely and utterly took over my life, it was all I thought about day in day out, the worry of making sure I had the money to pay him.

But then in the back of my mind I had the worry about who was going to look after my kids, who was going to feed them?

[The loan shark] seemed like such a nice person and you think at the time, he's done us such a big favour.

'Absolutely skint'

We were in a situation we were not going to get out of unless someone gave us that little bit of financial help.

Everybody in the community seemed to be trying to [borrow] money off each other - we were all absolutely skint all the time because of having to pay him.

But nobody had anything to lend each other so that was causing friction.

I got in touch with the Illegal Money Lending Team, they were absolutely fantastic.

They sorted me out seeing someone from a credit union who helped me get my finances sorted.

I used to see other people in this situation and I used to think I'll never, ever be like that.

But then life throws you these things and you don't know what's going to happen.

I was in a position where I had to [ask the loan shark for money], I didn't feel I had any other choice.

So I do understand why people do it now. But I would just say, 'don't do it' because you never, ever escape from them.