The popular Swiss winner of this year’s Secret Story, the French reality TV competition on TF1, previously worked in Geneva’s sex trade, according to a new report.

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Nadège Jones, who won the sixth edition of the reality TV show to collect a €150,000 prize on September 7th, hid her past as a call girl, Le Matin said in an article published on the weekend.

The newspaper said that based on information from collaborating sources the 26-year-old blonde worked under the professional name Samantha Jones for a Genevan escort girl agency, earning up to 500 francs ($530) an hour.

The sources said she also worked as an independent sex trade worker, based professionally in a massage parlour in the city.

Little was known about Jones, born Nadège Lacroix, when she signed up for the French version of Big Brother earlier in the year.

Among other things, she claimed to be a dominatrix, which proved to be false, Le Matin said.

Meanwhile, Jones kept quiet about her real background.

The product of a broken home — her parents divorced when she was eight — she was brought up by her single mother in an apartment in suburban Geneva, Le Matin said.

She left home at 16 and entered into a relationship with a man, apparently Muslim, who made her wear a veil and follow Islamic practices, according to the report.

In 2009 she left this partner and agreed to pose nude for Blick.ch, the German-language Swiss tabloid, with the support of her mother.

She also posed in skimpy outfits for Le Matin a short time afterwards, telling the newspaper at the time she had “come alive” after recently ending a six-year relationship.

“I am discovering that I have a body and that I can be proud of it”.
 
Subsequently she began consorting with the Geneva jet-set, a crowd that consumed booze and cocaine, living with acquaintances before entering the sex trade, Le Matin said.

Its report adds that she met a wealthy French businessman who was considerably older than Jones and who “looked after” her.

She won Secret Story after 14 weeks of competition, outlasting 19 other contestants and winning the support of 73 percent of viewers calling in to vote.

Jones declined to respond to an interview request by Le Matin.