Nina de Vries (born 1961) is a Dutch prostitute who offers erotic massages to mentally disabled men in Berlin. She also trains others to do the same.
Ms. de Vries is nude when she massages her clients; these massages include embracing and caressing and sometimes culminate in her masturbating her clients to orgasm. She does not offer vaginal or oral sex. Her clients are normally accompanied by a caregiver or relative; these chaperons wait next door and afterwards discuss the session with de Vries. Some of her typical clients have Down's syndrome or suffered brain damage after an accident. Some of them are so severely limited that they cannot do much more than smile or frown.
These services are not covered by German health insurers, but the welfare agency has occasionally paid for destitute clients. The price (in 2003) was 80 Euros per hour.
Nina de Vries does not reject the label "prostitute"; she herself uses the term "sexual caregiver" (German: Sexualbetreuerin).
Prostitution is legal in Germany, and sexual services for physically disabled persons are accepted and readily available; since 1995 the agency Sensis in Wiesbaden connects clients and providers. Sexual services for the severely mentally disabled are controversial however: some think that these people should be treated as equivalent to children, without the permission (or need) to engage in sexual behavior; others fear that Ms. de Vries might misinterpret the often very subtle communication attempts of her clients.
Ms. de Vries has worked as a caregiver and educator in therapeutic institutions in the Netherlands and (since 1992) in Berlin. In 1994 she started to offer erotic massages to regular clients, beginning in 1997 also to the disabled. Since 1999 she has worked exclusively with mentally disabled men; she appears to be the first prostitute in Germany to do so. In 2001 she began to train other sexual caregivers, together with the physically disabled psychologist Lothar Sandfort.
German newspapers have repeatedly covered her work and a documentation was broadcast on German TV in 2000.
In April 2003, she joined an effort to build a more formalized network of sexual caregivers for the disabled in Zürich. These attempts faltered when the sponsoring organization Pro Infirmis encountered resistance and suffered a considerable drop in donations. In November 2003, a separate organization was founded to pursue the project.
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