I spent a Friday night at one of Essex’s dogging hotspots

What happened when I spent Friday night at a Brentwood dogging hotspot

Background to the story:

In February 2019 I visited three dogging hotspots in Essex, and ran a story covering the interesting things I found at each. Of the three sites the Brentwood dogging hotspot was by far the busiest, so in August I returned. This time around I spent a whole Friday evening at the Brentwood Road dogging hotspot. Investing all of my time at one location enabled me to provide a more detailed account about the unusual sexual practice.

Story link: We spent Friday night at Essex’s dogging hotspot in Brentwood – and what we saw may shock you

Preparation for the story:

I arranged to meet my photographer near the location at 9pm, when I thought the site would start to become more active. Due to the dark conditions, it made more sense for both my safety and the quality of the article for me to work with a photographer.

I met my photographer at a pub, just a five minute drive from the location, and gave him a more detailed explanation about what the night might entail. I also explained the Dogging Etiquette to eliminate drawing any unwanted attention to ourselves and our vehicle. We decided to go in one car for safety reasons. When we arrived at the location we found somewhere safe to park and ventured out into nearby fields and laybys to see what we could find. When the site became more active we returned to the safety of our vehicle and locked ourselves in. Over the course of the evening I recorded what happened in a diary-like timeline of events.

The legal and ethical considerations:

Dogging is not illegal in itself, but it can be if another person sees the act. If reported to police the offence is one of public indecency, or public nuisance. Ethically, the suspected ‘doggers’ had no reasonable expectation of privacy because of the nature of the activity and because it is in a public place. However, legally, the article could have caused problems for us in terms of defamation law.

To avoid defaming anyone I censored photographs, by way of blurring vehicle registration plates and cropping out people, so that nobody could be identified. Placing a person at a dogging hotspot could cause serious harm to their reputation. We also had to be mindful that these people could have been visiting the road for a number of different legitimate reasons, such as buying food at the kebab van. So we could not refer to them as ‘doggers’ as we had no proof that they were there to engage in the practice of dogging.

How well it did for our site:

Many people are fascinated by the sexual practice of dogging, which is why it always performs well on our site. People who partake in the practice may read articles to find new hotspots, while those who don’t may just be interested in finding out what actually happens at a dogging site.

My review of the Brentwood dogging hotspot generated 15,366 page views and had an average engagement time of one minute and 55 seconds. On Facebook it reached 28,027 people and had over 7,000 engagements. It was also shared 28 times and had over 100 comments.