Larry was completely naked and blindfolded next to a piano when the younger woman he was with had a breakthrough. She was 35 years old but gave off the nervous pent-up sexual energy of a wallflower at prom, and with good reason: She had never kissed a man, let alone seen one nude in her Long Beach home. 
 
 She had been carefree and pretty as a teenager—until a car accident sent her flying through a windshield, slicing her face open and blinding her in one eye, according to Larry. Afterwards, she thought, How could anyone ever love me? So she shut herself off to the world, to romantic love and sex. Until now. 
 
 It was summer 1994 and Larry, who was a decade her senior, had instructions. "I want you to stare at me," he ordered softly. "Be scared. Be curious. Be excited. If you're bored, that's good. We'll move on." Soon they did, and—terrifying as it was—she stripped down, too. Then came kissing, caressing, and, eventually, sex. 
 
 Read More: Learning How to Orgasm Without Any Touching 
 
 
 
 Larry Villarin, a 62-year-old Californian, is not her boyfriend. Nor is he a sex worker, although technically he gets paid $150 per hour to have sex, hang out naked, and teach his clients the joys of the erotic. Larry is America's oldest male sexual surrogate, a job in which he risks being arrested in order to help others work through sexual dysfunction during one-on-one "sessions." In the past 35 years, the gig has matched him with dozens of women (and an occasional man) to achieve therapeutic goals. In the past, he says, he has worked with disabled clients, abuse survivors, and people from strict religions backgrounds, as well as with millionaires, geniuses, 40-year-old virgins, and powerful judges. Most of clients pair his hands-on therapy with trips to a psychologist in order to prepare for real-life intimacy. 
 
 She needed to believe I wouldn't laugh at her or run away. It was beautiful to see her open up. 
 
 Only ten men are certified to do this work in the U.S., according to the International Professional Surrogates Association (IPSA). Larry and other rare men in the field must undergo 100 hours of human sexuality studies before becoming certified by the IPSA, which connects patients with surrogates through psychiatrists. As a sexual surrogate, Larry must navigate tricky emotional turf, like what happens when a client falls in love with you, or how to gently bust through body hang-ups or deeply internalized anxieties. In the case of the 35-year-old woman who had survived a car accident, it turned out that she was mostly scared of ridicule. "She needed to believe I wouldn't laugh at her or run away. It was beautiful to see her open up," he says. 
 
 Most of Larry's job is far less sexy than it might seem. During their first hour-long session with him, clients unload their emotional baggage —ranging from social anxiety to PTSD — and set therapy goals. No sexual touching is allowed. If all goes well, they'll move to hand stroking and a face caressing. Later, he'll try a blindfolded "trust walk" to get them "out of their heads." 
 
 His clients, who range in age from 22 to 75, usually invite Larry to their L.A. homes or come to his. Many are referred to him by a psychologist after reaching a frustrating impasse in expressing their sexuality: they can't become "normal" without a partner, and they can't find partner if they don't become "normal." The steamy stuff comes slowly— if at all. "You set ground rules," Larry says, "It's baby steps." He works with some clients for weeks, others for years. Some are never ready to have full-blown sex. 
 
 One of the tools Larry uses in order to help his clients open up is playing naked games. In one, he and the client stand back-to-back with their eyes closed. She opens her eyes first, then it's his turn. Eventually they go to a mirror and talk honestly about their reflections. It helps that Larry, a slow-talking old hippie type, is not at all physically threatening. "I go first and stand in front of full-length mirror. I do an oral meditation, describing my body, tip to toe—how it feels and functions—totally honestly," he says. "It really gets down to image. I say, 'I don't like my saggy buttocks,' or 'I broke my toe when I was 20.' I can do 30 minutes of that, just modeling openness. Then she goes." 
 
 She had her first orgasm. She didn't believe she could ever have one. I'm getting misty about it. 
 
 In addition, Larry says, physical exercises can lead to epiphanies. In one case, a 70-year-old woman had lived her whole life thinking sex was a chore; religious guilt kept her from masturbating. "She was numb — her hips were frozen," Larry recalls. So he told her to stand with her legs apart. "I said, 'Imagine a pencil coming down between your genitals and your anus. Now write your name on the floor. It required movements in her hips." 
 
 Later that night, she took a shower and lay naked on her sheets. A breeze from an open window rolled over her body, and something shifted in her pelvis. "That's all it took. She had her first orgasm. She didn't believe she could ever have one. I'm getting misty about it," Larry says. "It's just: growth — what humans are capable of. Gosh, it's intimate stuff." 
 
 Larry claims that birthdays are the number-one reason women come to see him. Late-in-life virgins, turning 30 or 40, see the date looming and want to take the plunge. "Milestones are a big one. It's anxiety provoking. Women will say, 'This my final hope,'" Larry says. 
 
 Usually, those clients have control problems sparked by something early in life. If they don't address their issues with control, they tend to get worse, and their virginity becomes a symbol of everything wrong with them. "They're embarrassed. Sometimes they can't talk to anyone about it," Larry notes. "They try to fake it with girlfriends. But every new man has to be Mr. Right—perfect—so they run away at the first relationship glitch. The longer they wait, the more the anxiety builds." 
 
 [Birthdays] are a big one. It's anxiety provoking. Women will say, 'This my final hope.' 
 
 Emotional blocks can turn physical for some women. One client suffered from a condition called vaginismus, which caused her vaginal canal to tighten involuntarily, preventing sex. It was painful and embarrassing, so Larry recommended she use vaginal dilators for six months. Unlike a gynecologist, however, he paired that treatment with intimacy therapy and physical touch. It worked, he claims. 
 
 Larry is a sort of a gateway guy, he says: He's low risk because he's not a real lover. "The women are not there to please me; I'm there for them. Somewhere along the line, they stopped trusting men. I have to undo that." 
 
 Although trust is deeply important to Larry's work, it's also important to keep an emotional distance. Larry says that some of his clients have fallen in love with him, which can push him into a tricky emotional and ethical gray area. 
 
 One woman came to him, fresh out of an abusive marriage, on the heels of her son's death. She was sick of being alone and wanted to enjoy sex. "We worked for two years. We had so many firsts together—she didn't want to let go," Larry recalls. When her sessions came to an end, Larry says, the client began sending him expensive gifts and kept trying to see him. "I kind of knew she was in love with me. But I had to be ethical." 
 
 Not long after that, he set up new boundaries: He stopped allowing sessions in his own bedroom and built a "therapy room" instead. After one of his own romantic relationships "fell apart because of the job," he took a break from it. Now, he sometimes holds back sharing with clients because, "by telling [a client] too much about myself, I realized, I am burdening her." 
 
 The job is full of ethical landmines, according to Paula Hall, a British sex therapist. "In the UK, the practice is mostly frowned upon," she says. The surrogate-client relationship is often seen as just too complicated, she adds. To Larry, however, the lines are clear enough. "In a sense, we already know the relationship has to end. It's better that they learn how to be hurt with me, rather than a less sensitive man." 
 
 Romantic feelings aren't the only issue complicating Larry's profession: Paying for sex — any sex —is illegal in the U.S., and there's no law offering surrogates special protection. If a cop were to bust in on Larry during a session, he could be arrested, which is exactly what happened to one of his female surrogate friends. "She was seeing a client and he turned out to be a cop," Larry says. "He said, 'I have to confess: In 10 minutes you're going to hear a knock on the door, and you're going to be busted for prostitution, but I can see that's not what this is." 
 
 IPSA skirts prostitution law in certifying its members because it doesn't acknowledge intercourse is part of the practice, according to Larry and other current and former surrogates. Today, he's baffled that people don't understand the difference between his work, which he sees as primarily therapeutic or socially instructive. 
 
 For instance, Larry once worked with a woman from a strict religious background. Because of her upbringing, she had learned to see kissing as strictly a sexual act, never used for casual affection. She enlisted Larry to teach her the basics of kissing in all different contexts. In their sessions, Larry says, she made the rules. "We tried all of them: A quick kiss goodbye, a hello kiss, a marathon make out. I was never allowed to kiss back," he recounts. After a few weeks, she left feeling "reborn," ready for lovers and friends. "It did increase her confidence, oh my," Larry says. 
 
 But most of the time, Larry never gets to see the positive affects of his work. "The empowerment part comes when they leave me. It's like karate: Once you get your black belt, your training has just begun. With me, they've opened their hearts — and now they can go have a life." ||||| Police are examining whether three women who were held in a south London house under what detectives described as extreme emotional control for 30 years were part of a cult which operated through beatings and brainwashing to bind them to their captors. 
 
 The complex relationship between the women and the couple who are suspected of exerting such influence over them that in three decades they never tried to leave, is at the centre of what senior officers indicated on Friday was going to be a lengthy inquiry. 
 
 Officers are also investigating whether the youngest woman, who is aged 30 and thought to have been born inside the house, was the daughter of the 57-year-old Irish woman who eventually reached out for help last month in a phone call to a charity she had seen on the news. 
 
 The Guardian understands the 30-year-old's father is allegedly the 67-year-old man who was arrested with his partner, also 67, on suspicion of domestic servitude, false imprisonment and offences against the person. On Friday, both were released on police bail after questioning. 
 
 According to those close to the case, the 30-year-old's birth was registered with the authorities and as such should have sparked visits from health visitors and midwives, but it is not known whether that happened. She never went to school, but is able to read and write, and has been described as intelligent. 
 
 Two sources close to the case indicated that the three women were held in the house through a relationship of control which was akin to a semi-religious cult. The third woman freed was a 69-year-old from Malaysia. 
 
 The police revealed on Friday that the details emerging were unlike any domestic servitude or forced labour case they had investigated before. The women were able to leave at certain times, but always in a controlled and chaperoned situation. 
 
 Commander Steve Rodhouse, of the Metropolitan police, said: "We do not believe that this case falls into the category of sexual exploitation, or what we all understand as human trafficking. 
 
 "It is not as brutally obvious as women being physically restrained inside an address and not allowed to leave. We are trying to understand what were the invisible handcuffs that were used to exert such a degree of control over these women … What we have uncovered so far is a complicated and disturbing picture of emotional control over many years, brainwashing would be the simplest term." 
 
 His colleague DI Kevin Hyland said the women suffered beatings in the house. 
 
 Aneeta Prem, founder of the Freedom Charity, which helped rescue the women, said they lived in basic conditions. "Their movements were controlled while they were in the house. They had to perform various duties within the house and they weren't given options not to do those things." 
 
 Rodhouse also revealed that the suspects – who are being investigated by the UK Border Agency over their immigration status – were arrested by the Metropolitan police four decades ago and may have been in touch with other public services over the years. He said: "To the outside world, they may have appeared to be a normal family. This does mean that over the course of many decades the people at the heart of this investigation and their victims will probably have come into contact with public services, including our own." He added that the two suspects "were arrested by the Metropolitan police in the 1970s". The women were being looked after by the Freedom Charity – which helped to rescue them after the Irish woman made a call for help on 18 October after seeing the founder on the television news. On 25 October, they walked to freedom at a pre-arranged time. 
 
 Prem said the organisation had received calls from other people saying they were being held. "This has to be a story of hope. A number of calls are coming through from people who have seen the media coverage and want to tell us they are in the same situation," she said. One report suggested that it was the failure to call for medical help when the oldest woman suffered a stroke that led to the call to the charity. 
 
 Hyland, who is leading the investigation, said the very process of the women explaining what had happened over such a long period of time was traumatising in itself. He added that the whole of his team of 37 officers were working on the case and removed 55 bags of evidence amounting to more than 2,500 exhibits from the property in south London. Prem, who has met the women several times, said that the couple suspected of holding them were like any other couple and were not extraordinary. As such she believes the neighbours didn't know. "If you'd been in a village maybe this wouldn't have happened because people would have noticed something, but I think in the centre of London you don't notice." 
 
 The women are understood to be concerned that the suspects have been released without charge on police bail. But Rodhouse said the investigation would take "some considerable time". He said: "We are unpicking a story that spans at least 30 years of these women's lives, and all of this requires police activity to turn that into evidence. While that process continues we have released the suspects on bail, but they have not returned to the property." 
 
 A CPS spokesperson said: "We have provided the Metropolitan Police Service with some very early investigative advice on this matter. We have not been asked to consider any evidence or to give charging advice at this stage."
– It is one of the most unusual, and rarest, jobs in the country: Larry Villarin is a certified male sex surrogate, one of only 10 in the US sanctioned by the International Professional Surrogates Association. But as a profile at Broadly makes clear, the 62-year-old Villarin is not to be confused with a male gigolo. His role is to help clients "cope with their fears and anxieties about physical intimacy," writes Natalie O'Neill, and sex is just one component of that. The story uses the example of a 35-year-old woman who had shied away from intimacy her entire adult life because a car accident as a teenager left her blind in one eye. She'd never even been kissed until her sessions with Villarin. "She needed to believe I wouldn't laugh at her or run away," he says. "It was beautiful to see her open up." On its website, IPSA says "it is committed to promoting healthy attitudes toward sexuality and intimacy in our clients and in the community," and the story explains that it gets around prostitution laws "because it doesn't acknowledge intercourse is part of the practice." Villarin says his clients range in age from 22 to 75, with milestone birthdays seemingly one of the big triggers. Most are referred to him from a psychologist, with survivors of abuse and women with disabilities among those reaching out. One of the tricky parts is setting boundaries so the clients don't confuse the physical intimacy with romantic feelings for Villarin. "It's just growth—what humans are capable of," he says. "Gosh, it's intimate stuff." Click for the full story. (This study has concluded how often happy couples have sex.)