"Sugar Babies": Meet the Australian women paid a weekly allowance to date older men.

“Sugar Babies”: Meet the Australian women paid a weekly allowance to date older men. They’re young, good-looking girls who are happy to date men decades their senior — in exchange for lavish gifts and a weekly pay packet.

They are the country’s “sugar babies” — women turning to websites to find a wealthy older man, or “sugar daddy”, to meet their needs, as Tineka Everaardt for A Current Affair reported last night.

Websites like sugardaddymeet.com and seekingarrangement.com persuade wealthy older men to join their matchmaking site with the message: “Doctors, lawyers, busy professionals, benefactors… Looking to support and pamper women who will treat you like a king? Interested in a discreet and mutually beneficial relationship? Time to be a Sugar Daddy!’

Sugar babies are persuaded to join the service with this message: “Struggling in the early part of your career? Want good living and finer things in life? Looking for a mature partner to pamper, mentor and take care of you – perhaps financially? You will make the perfect Sugar Baby!”

More than 140,000 Australian men and women are now seeking an arrangement through the website, according A Current Affair — and one such sugar baby, 25-year-old Vanessa Marie, told the show she earns $500 a week just for hanging out with her older companion.

In exchange for spending time with the man, a 51-year-old hotel owner, Vanessa Marie said she enjoys regular gifts and an allowance.

“We basically would meet up once a week for diner with drinks and for exchange I would get a weekly allowance,” she told the show.

“You get spoiled and pampered, you get to basically get what you want – it’s easy money I guess.”

But it’s not all glamour and pampering.

“I had a guy message me and he wanted to pay me for stepping on snails,” she said.

Shirley Moore, 21, told the show she used to be Geoffrey Edelsten’s sugar baby.

She said the 71-year-old businessman, whom she alleges she met on a sugar daddy site, was like her “personal ATM”.

‘He’s like “OK well, set up a bank account, I’ll send you $2000 a week,” she said. “I’m 21, I’m making more than people made in years.”

But Edelsten himself, who’s currently engaged to 25-year-old Gabi Grecko, told A Current Affair money was only “a minor attraction” for the younger women he sees.

“They’re very attractive, I enjoy their company, I enjoy teaching them, and I enjoy going out with them,” he said.

Psychologist Sandy Rae warns of the “power imbalance” inherent in the sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship.

“There is a very big power imbalance in this relationship. It’s — he has the money, he has prestige, he has access to a lifestyle,” she said.

“At any moment he could pull the pin and leave the woman flailing.”

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