Often kept in the shadows, the kink world is one that society still looks at in embarrassment, but at 75 years old, Sherry Lever is rolling her eyes to that and firmly holding the reins. Known to her clientele as Mistress Sofia, she is the UKs longest serving dominatrix and is now challenging stereotypes by rejecting the label of sex worker altogether.
From putting down the knives to picking up the whip, Sherry, known to her clientele as Mistress Sofia, is the UKs longest and oldest dominitrix and has been dominating longer than most people have been pretending to understand it.
She has outlasted taboos, stigma and quietly perfected the art of power, trust and consent with zero apology, proving that dominance isn’t about shock value it is about who is holding the reins. With a career of over 20 years in the kink world she wishes more people understood that what she does isn’t sexual for her.
Living in Swindon, ex chef Sherry fell into being a domintrix by complete accident. After she divorced her now ex-husband he left her “financially embarrassed” with her part time job barely paying the bills, and she needed to regain her control.
Long before reinventing herself as a dominitrix entered the picture, Sherry’s route into the world of paid BDSM work took an unexpected nudge from home. After working as a phone chat girl it was her daughter who suggested she formalise and took her work further.
“I was flicking through the channels one night and I came across a documentary about phone chat girls and I started watching it and to be honest, it made me laugh, I thought I could do that. So I had a chat with my children to make sure they didn’t object and they didn’t, they’ve always been very supportive,” she says, “I found a company that suited me and I started being a phone chat girl, but it wasn’t long before I found that most, I would say 90% of my callers wanted some sort of domination. But It was actually my daughter that said, mum you’re doing it for peanuts, do it for real and I never looked back”
Sessions taking place in her play pen, a room in the garden of her family home. The colour red and black drenching the walls and leather furnishings capture the power this place holds for Sherry and her clients. . A cage in the corner, shelves filled with hand cuffs, restraints, and whips. It is a room where Sherry becomes Mistress Sofia and her ritual begins.
Mistress Sofia in her play room where her sessions take place.
With this the place where it all began she looks back to one of her first sessions where she walked away feeling no longer like an underdog but a queen. “One of my first ones that came to me walked in and he presented me with a cane and I had never done anything like that before,” she says, “I walked about swishing it, hoping that would appease him and that would be it, but no such luck because he just said, mistress are you going to cane me?
“So I thought, wow, let’s get to it. To be honest, the very first thing I did, I bent him over a bench and I imagined it was my ex-husband. I started caning him. Before long, I realised I wasn’t even thinking of my ex-husband. I was just enjoying it, there was no stopping me.”
Now almost 20 years later, and now 75, has built up a long list of male only clientele who she refers to as slaves, submissives or sissies. From solicitors, doctors, lawyers to bin ben, she charges £120 per hour to satisfy their kinks or fetishes. “There is no certain set of people who come to me,” she says, “it’s actually in everybody, some just dull it for the whole of their lives, others choose to pursue it.”
Mistress Sofias services include, caning, humiliation, CBT (cock and ball torture), foot worshiping and Sissy Training where a submissive man is to embrace feminisation.
“My services, It helps them come to terms with their kinks, with who they are and accept the fact that it doesn’t matter,” she says, “Everyone has some sort of kink, if you want to cross-dress, it doesn’t make you abnormal. If you enjoy punishment, it doesn’t make you abnormal. If you enjoy being locked up, put in bondage, it doesn’t make you abnormal.”
Her clientele range from 21 years old to her oldest client being 84 and all go seeking to be dominated or humiliated by her alter ego Mistress Sofia. Sherry also has two people she refers to as “lifestyle slaves” who dedicate their life to her without any romantic involvement, this involves them cleaning her home, taking her places and giving her gifts.
“I am very fond of them all. And it just means they’re enjoying a part of life that other people don’t get and that doesn’t matter,” she says “I think the public has a strange conception that we are tying people up and punishing them without their consent. Everything that happens in my playroom is consensual.”
Men seeking dominant partners or professional dominatrixes are far from unheard of. Research taken from the UK YouGov survey about people’s sex preferences revealed 46.6% of men preferred a submissive role. Kink preferences are diverse and not monolithic, but society still believes having a kink is niche.
Sherry offers a service built on trust and consent allowing those to embrace what society would deem a darker side but within her worklife she believes that if people were more open about their kinks, society wouldn’t hold shame. “The trouble is, a lot of it is embarrassment. I have an awful lot of people that come to me with a foot fetish. They love to worship my feet.
“But, if you get a group of guys in a pub and they’re chatting and one might say, oh, I’m a bum man and another will say I’m a boob man. You’ll never hear somebody saying, I’m a footman because they immediately think, oh, God, that’s kinky. Why is it kinky? It’s part of the body. But they just keep it to themselves because it’s embarrassing but it shouldn’t be.” she said
Throughout her career it’s not just society’s embarrassments she has had to overcome, Sherry has been put in a box she doesn’t want to be a part of confiding to a label that doesn’t represent her lived realities.
Sherry says that those who are in her working field are labelled as “sex workers”, as a result of society still holding a stigma to those working in the kink world. This led to Sherry questioning her profession. “At one point, I almost gave up because I just felt it was just humiliating but it’s a myth, I don’t do anything intimate because it’s not sexual for me, I won’t be touched, apart from my feet,” she says, “I have always really put forward the point that this is not about sex. We do not have sex but because we’re in a grey area, we are called sex workers and because of the vanilla population, they assume we have sex.”
Often those in the kink communities are labelled as over sexual, or immoral without a true understanding of the reality of their work and experiences. In a 2025 study from the Kings college, involving hundreds of UK based kink practitioners, found they would avoid disclosure of their profession due to social and professional stigma often experiencing online abuse, something Sherry has related too.
“When I have had videos or documentaries come out on YouTube people will be saying, oh, she’s an old prostitute or an old cosy,” she says “they’re really insulting but it really doesn’t bother me anymore. It did in the beginning but now I just think it’s just ridiculous, you know, they can say what they like, I don’t care.”
Sherry knows she built a reputation that speaks for itself – grounded in respect, authority and unmistakable power. She has written a book all about her career that has sold over 6,000 copies, and now she’s passing on the whip, training women who want to step confidently into the lifestyle dom world themselves.
Sherry Leavers book on her life
Looking back she called her work nothing short of life-changing “It was and still is empowering”, she says, “I felt respected and that’s why I felt empowered, it’s worth remembering us females are superior.”
These days Sherry and her alter ego Mistress Sofia live side by side and confidence comes naturally for both. “My life has changed, all three of my children say the same,” she says, “I’ve changed for the better. I’m not that shrinking violet I used to be. I’m in control of my life.”
Sherry, shows no signs of slowing down and with no apologies of loving every minute of it. For her, the ritual of power is part of the craft and those who step through her door know exactly what to expect and they give into that freely.
“What’s not to enjoy? I am worshipped. Anybody comes through my door, they get on their knees, they bow to me, kiss my feet. How could I not enjoy that? Anything I want, they’ll do for me. Nothing is too much trouble,” she says, “I have the perfect life. I’d just like to be a bit richer, but then wouldn’t we all?”
