The murder trial of Andre Hypolite has opened the lid off the Island?s underworld of drugs and prostitution. Prosecution witness Stacey Pike admitted performing oral sex on Hypolite on Boxing Day, 2004 in exchange for $50 of crack cocaine, which came before the offer of homosexual sex between Hypolite and Nicholas Dill.

A local drug counsellor at one of the Island?s major rehabilitation centres confirmed that prostitution for drugs does occur in Bermuda, including male addicts who are ?easy prey? for unscrupulous individuals.

?They are easy prey,? he said. ?They can be easily exploited. Someone can go to a guy going through withdrawals and has no money and that is a very easy person to take advantage of. They are at risk for sexually transmitted diseases as well.

?There is prostitution for drugs, but there is nothing ? no studies ? to see how bad the problem is,? he said. ?It does happen here. It is difficult to quantify the problem. The best person to ask would be the person doing it on the street. It is something that is done. It happens and it exists.?

The drug counsellor also said male prostitutes ? or ?rent boys? were once otherwise normal people before becoming addicted to drugs. ?I am not sure if there are rent boys but in the world of drugs that exists, it is possible,? he said. ?Anything goes. When you have a person who is an addict today, and they are craving a drug so intensely that they behave in a state of doing things they would not normally do.?

Drug addicts looking for a fix ? jonesing ? would not normally associate with and do things they would not normally do, he said.