On 3 Sep 99, at 18:03, Magenta Raine wrote: > what is the legal age in holland for mature sex help? That would be 18. The problem is that prostitution or other professions in this field aren't legalised. Eventhough nobody would enforce these regulations, they do have effects on living-centers, hospitals, old age homes, etc. Unfortuantely lots of such institutions in The Netherlands believe they have a right to make this part of their house rules, as they find it might attract (hard) drugs and crime. For what my understanding is from my education, pretty much all have regulations in place that do not allow personel to help you as this might interfere with the professional help relation you have with these people. Sometimes there are contacts with external volunteers or professionals. Unfortunately I couldn't find any sources for you that you might want to follow up on (they're still in a box in NL). All I could say is to ask someone you feel comfortable with of the staff, that offers you the privacy you need. It is very likely you weren't the first one. If you get stuck on that track, drop me a line and I will put some effort in tracking down some sources through my old univ proff and perhaps some online searches (that's really what i'm limited to from here). > i thought holland was very much more open to sex than here in the US. That's what tourist think. It might be true that Amsterdam has a red light district (where you see more people from Japan than from The Netherlands self) and where you can smell tourists smoking soft drugs. But in reality Dutch people smoke 4 times less of the stuff than North Americans and really don't talk any more freely about sex than people on this side of the pool. The latter would be my personal opinion from living in Canada for the last 1.5 years now. Niels, I admire you for being able to speak up about a difficult topic like this. I know I wouldn't have been able to. Jasper