Nevada Brothel Association

Archives for February 2019

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The “Grab a Slice” Story Rebekah Charleston Doesn’t Want You to Know

(Chuck Muth) – An avowed anti-sex zealot and Reno lawyer recently filed a federal lawsuit to strike down Nevada’s legal prostitution law on behalf of a woman, now going by the name of Rebekah Charleston, who claims to have been “trafficked” through a pair of Lyon County’s legal brothels.

Problem is, Ms. Charleston, in the lawsuit, didn’t tell everybody her FULL story…which calls into question whether or not she told a TRUE story.

Let’s start with the fact that “Rebekah Charleston” is the name she goes by now. Her real name back in 2006 – when she was busted for money laundering and tax evasion – was “Rebekah Kay Dean, a.k.a., Nicole A. Wilson.”

And for argument’s sake, let’s take her story at face value…because as you’ll see, even if you believe her claims of victimization, her claims to having been “trafficked” in Lyon County’s legal brothels simply hold no water.

In an interview a Ft. Worth Magazine, Charleston/Dean/Wilson says by the time she was 16 she’d become a drug abuser and dropped out of school. Her parents, she claims, then institutionalized her in a private Texas Christian school where she “did manual labor in the fields, cleaned churches and ate old donated food with bugs in them.”

She eventually ran away and moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a half-dozen “low level” drug dealers and started dealing drugs herself.  Around the same time she also began stripping and “sitting on 50-year-old men’s laps accepting shots of Hennessy.”

One night, at the age of 17, “she and her friends were looking for men in a strip club parking lot” when she met the guy she now claims “beat” and “trafficked” her over the next ten years.

“He took me from a street-walking, drug-using, $50-prostitute to a high-class call girl,” Charleston/Dean/Wilson told the magazine.

And while she’s now claiming she was a brainwashed victim of sex trafficking back in Dallas, the public record related to her arrest and conviction paints a very different story; one of a willing, conniving and deceitful accomplice.

On March 9, 2006 a United States federal grand jury issued two indictments against her for bank fraud…

“On or about March 8, 2001, DEAN devised and intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud Chase Manhattan Bank to obtain money, funds, and credits owned by or under the control of Chase Manhattan Bank by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representation or promises.”

Specifically, she opened a checking account using a false Texas driver’s license and false Social Security number under the name of “Nicole A. Wilson” and made deposits and withdrawals that resulted in an overdraft of $5,513.57.

The bank then discovered she had moved, disconnected her phone and had used fake ID to open the account.

On March 10, 2006 an arrest warrant was issued for Charleston/Dean/Wilson. It was forwarded to the Las Vegas office of the IRS on March 13, 2006 and Charleston/Dean/Wilson appears to have been picked up at her reported $600,000 home in North Las Vegas two days later.

On August 29, 2006 the United States Attorney also charged Charleston/Dean/Wilson and another woman, Tina Bennett, with “Conspiracy to commit Tax Evasion.” The details…

“BENNETT and DEAN were employed in the adult entertainment business as exotic dancers and paid escorts. BENNETT and DEAN, either together or separately using their real names or alias’, opened numerous bank accounts to deposit the proceeds of their employment.

“During the calendar year of 2004, BENNETT and DEAN deposited $684,541.71 into these accounts with the intent to share the money between themselves. BENNETT and DEAN thereafter attempted to conceal this income and failed to file tax returns with the IRS.”

Also, according to a CBS11 I-Team report around that time, the Charleston/Dean/Wilson illegal prostitution ring “tried to use at least some of its money to try to go legit with a pizza restaurant” called “Grab a Slice” which used a photo of her provocatively dressed in slices of pepperoni pizza to lure customers.

Charleston/Dean/Wilson was ultimately sentenced to 13 months in the Federal Correctional Institution in Ft. Worth, Texas and appears to have been released on February 20, 2007 after being credited for time served.

After getting out of jail, Charleston/Dean/Wilson says she emailed her alleged trafficker “saying she was going to leave, and he never wrote back.”

However, according to the IRS, Charleston/Dean/Wilson still has almost a quarter-million dollars’ worth of liens against her for unpaid taxes…

Let’s face it; this is a woman with SERIOUS credibility problems!

* * * * *

No one knows if what Charleston/Dean/Wilson is claiming happened to her during her ten years working as an illegal prostitute in Dallas happened the way she’s claiming it happened now – over a decade later – or not.

All we know is that it did NOT happen in any of Nevada’s LEGAL brothels.

Indeed, all of the abuse and brainwashing she now maintains she suffered took place in Texas roughly between 1997 and 2007. And in all the time after – until 2018 – somehow the claim that her alleged trafficker sent her to work at the Bunny Ranch and Love Ranch brothels in Nevada never came up.

Indeed, I’ve yet to find any references to such a claim until after she hooked up with the “No Little Girl” zealots who were pushing to put a brothel ban on the Lyon County ballot.

In addition, no one associated with the brothels has been able to find any record of Charleston/Dean/Wilson – under her current name or any of her known aliases – ever working in Lyon County and she’s provided absolutely no proof or corroboration that she did.

The fact is, all the bad things that allegedly happened to her happened when she was working illegally as a prostitute in Dallas. It didn’t happen – and doesn’t happen – in Lyon County’s legal brothels.

In reality, Charleston/Dean/Wilson is actually making the case in favor of legalizing prostitution everywhere – not making it illegal in Nevada. It’s safer for the girls. It’s safer for the customers. It’s licensed, regulated and taxed.

And as legal workers, there’s no way to evade the IRS.

Now, I love a good “redemption” story as much as the next person. And to the extent that Ms. Charleston/Dean/Wilson has now dedicated her life to helping women and young girls who are TRULY being illegally trafficked…God bless her.

But to pervert those efforts by falsely claiming sex workers who are working in Nevada’s legal brothels, of their own free will, are also being “trafficked” in an effort to put Nevada’s legal brothels out of business and legal sex workers back on the street…well, that’s just plain dishonest.

Let’s hope the federal court isn’t conned by and take at face value the claims of this “Grab a Slice” Texas crusader who has such a deep, dark past and history of deception.

Mr. Muth is a consulting adviser to the Nevada Brothel Association

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“Honorary Sex Worker” And Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris Comes Out In Favor Of Decriminalization Of Sex Work…For Some

Sex Workers Call Foul Given Her Track Record; Demand Apology And Reparations As Evidence Of Good Faith

(Maxine Doogan | ESPLER Project)  – A sex work activist group, the Erotic Service Providers Legal Education And Research Project (ESPLERP), is not impressed today to hear presidential candidate Kamala Harris in an interview with The Root (http://tinyurl.com/yy2kgo5t) say that she is now open to the decriminalization of sex work-for some.

“Given her history, we need to know what Kamala Harris really believes,” said Maxine Doogan of ESPLERP. “At one point in the interview she sounds like an old school anti-prostitutist from the 80s – using epithets like “pimps” and “johns”. Then she says she is open to decriminalization of sex work. She needs to clarify her position – starting with an unequivocal statement that she supports the decriminalization of sex work for all consenting adults.”

Harris has a decidedly mixed history on sex work…

  • In 2007, when running for reelection San Francisco District Attorney, Harris sought the endorsement of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, and described herself in a public meeting as “an honorary sex worker”.
  • In 2008, Harris campaigned against Prop K, a city wide ballot measure to stop the criminalization of prostitution. This was despite the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee official position was in favor. During that campaign she made ludicrous claims that decriminalizing prostitution would open San Francisco to serious crimes like rape, robbery, extortion, kidnapping and murder (http://tinyurl.com/y5vw9oxs).
  • As San Francisco District Attorney Harris was found in violation of San Francisco’s open government law.  The  Sunshine Ordinance Task Force found that she had not responded to defense attorney requests for disclosure, for example about police disciplinary records, in cases prosecuted by her office against sex workers.
  • As California Attorney General, Harris used the power of her office to go after Backpage – an online advertising platform where sex workers could advertise and negotiate without police harassment. When her first lawsuit against Backpage was dismissed, she filed again, making her attack on Backpage part of her US Senate campaign.
  • Also while California Attorney General, Harris declined to investigate Bay Area police departments, despite their long history of exploiting and extorting sex workers, and despite the ongoing scandal of police interactions with an Oakland underage sex worker.
  • In the Senate, Harris voted for the FOSTA bill which shut down online platforms used by sex workers for advertising, support and sustenance, in effect stripping sex workers of our online speech rights.

“Kamala Harris will say anything popular to get an endorsement or get elected,” said Claire Alwyne of ESPLERP. “She is good with empty words about protecting women, but her actions have consistently harmed sex workers – mostly poor women, women of color, and trans women. For example, her attacks on Backpage and her vote to pass #FOSTA  forced sex workers back onto the streets, where they are vulnerable to violence and extortion. So if Harris is really sincere about decriminalization, she should start with a detailed policy position making it clear that she supports the full decriminalization of sex work for all consenting adults – and rejects the Nordic Model criminalization of our clients which has been discredited by Amnesty International (http://tinyurl.com/kvafj88).”

“Kamala Harris should apologize – and then start talking about reparations for sex workers,” said Reada Wong of ESPLERP. “Is she going to work to repeal FOSTA? How does she propose to compensate the sex workers her actions have harmed, who were pushed into poverty, who lost their housing or child custody? How does she propose to expunge the criminal records of the sex workers prosecuted on her watch?  Will she be returning campaign contributions she’s received from anti-prostitution groups? And will she find funding for pro sex work groups like ESPLERP, so we can start dismantling decades of stigma and discrimination in State and Federal legislatures that politicians like her have furthered their careers on?  Harris should put her money where her mouth is.”

The Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) is a diverse community-based coalition advancing sexual privacy rights through litigation, education, and research. Support us at www.litigatetoemancipate.com.

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AP: Nevada lawmaker set to revive brothel ban debate

(Ryan Tarinelli | Associated Press) – Nevada’s legal brothels are holdovers from the state’s Wild West past that draw customers and the curious to the rural areas where they are scattered.

Republican state Sen. Joe Hardy says brothels have no place in the state and attract women with few economic options who get stuck in an abusive industry.

“It’s not an easy exit for someone,” he said. “So I’d like to give them hope, that not only can they get out, but they can get an opportunity to get retrained.”

Hardy plans legislation that would ban brothels in the only state where they are legal — though even he acknowledges the bill might lack support among colleagues who see the brothels as an economic boon for rural counties.

Sex workers and other backers of the brothels say they’re ready to fight the measure. They argue a ban would hurt struggling rural economies and drive women working in the world’s oldest profession out of a regulated environment that requires regular STD tests and into dangerous street prostitution.

“It’s either going to happen in the streets and in Vegas and in the hotels, or it’s going to happen in a safe, legal atmosphere where women such as myself can feel safe and protected,” said Christina Parreira, a sex worker who formerly worked in multiple brothels.

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Onesta Foundation Statement on Anti-Brothel Lawsuit

(Madam Bella Cummins) – Yet again, I am reminded of Jason Guinasso’s misunderstanding of this subject matter. I understand his wanting to lash out and fix something that he thinks is wrong. However, it’s confused.

Once again, with loaded verbiage, he fails to understand the difference between the nature of legal courtesanship in Nevada and illegal prostitution. It proves again that there is a real need for education, to erase these stereotypes and misunderstandings and to guide our thinking about a new direction.

That is what the Onesta Foundation is about and that forms the basis of our advocacy for enlightened approaches to well-regulated sensual services. In the rural counties of Nevada, we have proved that it works, that it improves public health and safety and empowers communities.

The Onesta Foundation stands with the Governor, The Nevada Legislature and the State of Nevada in this case, but most stolidly with the workers, the courtesans, who are being marginalized and stigmatized by the ignorance of misplaced judgement.

The plaintiff in this case tells of her experience of being forced into prostitution, a crime by any standard, in the state of Texas, and of being brought to Nevada to work illegally in Las Vegas, also a crime with heavy penalties. Then she tells of being forced, by her pimp, to seek work in a licensed brothel as a punishment for some undisclosed infraction. This is a very telling statement, entirely misinterpreted by the Guinasso team.

I liken it to someone who gets behind the wheel of a car having had too much to drink. Their decisions are impaired and there are consequences in their misdirected actions. In this case, the strong drink is judgement.

What is obviously needing to be addressed here are the illegal activities in areas where brothels are prohibited. I think about these ladies, who are out working one convention to the next. There is no reason to believe that their clients and those ladies are safe. They are unregulated, beyond the reach of public safety, and therein lies the problem.

In Jason Guinasso’s fervor, he has brought to everyone’s attention that change is required, so I thank him for that. I still want to help him to understand that his efforts are misdirected. Having been shown the door by the people of Lyon County in the last election, his twisting of the relationship between local, state and federal governments smells of desperation perfume. He’s got it backwards.

There is another way to look at all of this, through the lens of the Onesta tradition of fairness, honesty and virtue in all human relations. People get to make their own choices, absolutely. These women, who work in sensual services in the safe places designed by the state, deserve empowerment in our culture without judgment and without repercussions, should they make that choice.

The powerful, independent and entrepreneurial women who provide fun, safe and healthy sensual services look askance at those who claim to be saving them from something or saving them from themselves. It makes them angry and fires them up when they get the feeling their freedom of choice is being disrespected and taken away from them. They are their own personal power.

As Executive Director of the Onesta Foundation, a Nevada 501c3 non-profit entity, I urge the courts to reject this suit on the grounds that state’s rights should prevail and that this suit is frivolous.

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Hawkins: We’re All Becoming Robert Kraft, But We Just Don’t Realize It

(John Hawkins | PJ Media) – You’ve heard about Robert Kraft, right? The 77-year-old widowed billionaire who owns the New England Patriots and has apparently been accused (all the details aren’t out) of going to a massage parlor to get a happy ending.

Now, I haven’t watched a football game in years and I don’t care about Robert Kraft or the Patriots at all. Furthermore, I’ve always been opposed to prostitution, but it’s still hard to condemn the guy, because prostitution has become a run-of-the-mill act in America. We just use legalisms and play the definition game (what I do is good and fine, while what you do is bad and over the line) to condemn people doing something no morally different than what we’re doing.

Obviously, prostitution is legal in parts of Nevada. If you drive across the state, you’ll see it advertised incessantly and you’ll even pass grimy-looking, garishly advertised brothels. In fact, the owner of many of the brothels in Nevada, self-described pimp Dennis Hof, ran for the state legislature there and won, even after his untimely death.

But, let’s go a little further down the rabbit hole. What is prostitution, really, other than a man paying a woman for sexual gratification?

Remember Donald Sterling losing the Los Angeles Clippers over racist comments recorded by his “girlfriend,” V. Stiviano? What struck me about it was that Donald Sterling bought her a Ferrari, a Range Rover, and two Bentleys to go along with a $1.8 million duplex. We may not think of that as prostitution, but she was a 30-year-old woman servicing an 80-year-old married man and she wasn’t doing it for free.

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Why Can’t Bad Examples Like Jason Guinasso Just Leave Us Alone?

(Chuck Muth) – My friend Grover Norquist – president of Americans for Tax Reform and libertarian-conservative author of a book titled “Leave Us Alone” – is fond of saying that “no one’s life is a complete waste; some simply serve as bad examples.”

He wasn’t talking specifically about Reno lawyer and anti-brothel zealot Jason Guinasso – but he could’ve been.

Guinasso, as you may have read, filed a federal lawsuit against the State of Nevada on Monday asking the court to overturn Nevada’s unique law allowing legal prostitution in the state’s rural counties as long as it occurs in licensed and highly-regulated brothels.

At the heart of Guinasso’s lawsuit is a wafer-thin argument that Nevada’s legal brothels violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution and, thus, Washington, DC should come into Nevada and tell Nevada what it can and can’t do.

Bye-bye, Tenth Amendment.

But it’s even worse than that.

It’s also an attack on the First Amendment; as the core of Guinasso’s claim is that websites and social media accounts of legal courtesans working in legal brothels in Nevada are transmitted across state lines where prostitution is illegal and, therefore, should be shut down.

Bye-bye, free speech.

Guinasso claims that if a woman working in a legal Nevada brothel encourages folks who read their websites, blogs or social media posts to come and visit them, that violates the federal Mann Act which makes it illegal for anyone to persuade, induce or entice someone to travel across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.

Of course, that law was established for people who are actually forcing women to engage in prostitution against their will.  Real trafficking.  But that’s simply not the case in Nevada’s legal brothels because all of the women who work there are there of their own free will.

Consenting adults.

Why can’t this guy just leave them alone?  Live and let live.

Meanwhile, prostitution – including the actual trafficking of underage girls, which does not occur in legal brothels – is going on in Las Vegas and Reno, where it remains illegal, every day.  It’s rampant.  Just try walking down the Strip at night without being accosted by a “flipper” handing out “girls to your room” cards.

You’d think Guinasso and his merry band of busy-body, nanny-state, self-righteous moralists would focus on THAT problem; the REAL problem.  But no.

This guy is obsessed with shutting down licensed, regulated and taxed legal brothels where the women who work there are safe and have no fear of being arrested.  Where the clients are safe from getting a sexually transmitted disease – thanks to mandatory condom use and weekly testing – and have no fear of being arrested.

And make no mistake.  Should Guinasso succeed in shutting down Nevada’s legal brothel industry, that won’t make prostitution go away.

All it’ll do is push it back underground and into the shadows, as we were reminded just this week when Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, was charged for allegedly soliciting the services of an illegal sex worker in a Florida massage parlor.

An otherwise law-abiding, upstanding 77-year-old man who lost his wife of 48 years to ovarian cancer in 2011.

Robert & Myrna Kraft

“Myra and I had something that was unusual, I think,” Kraft told Forbes in a 2012 interview. “For 10 months after Myra died, I cried every night. I would go out at nights to the events and parties, things I would have normally done with her, then come home to an empty house.”

And that gets to the heart of this business that most people don’t realize.  Many of the men who visit Nevada’s legal brothels are elderly widowers who aren’t gonna be tripping the light fantastic in a Las Vegas nightclub hoping to “get lucky.”

For many men who visit Nevada’s legal brothels it’s not so much about the sex as it is enjoying the companionship of a consenting adult woman which they can no longer enjoy with their spouse or significant other.

And Jason Guinasso wants to criminalize that?  Why can’t he just leave everyone else alone?

Or, at the very least, try to be a little intellectually honest.

When you read Guinasso’s lawsuit you’ll find it littered with statistics, figures and opinions related to prostitution in Nevada without making a distinction between prostitution that goes on illegally in motel rooms, massage parlors, strip clubs and back alleys and that which occurs legally in licensed, regulated and taxed brothels.

It’s hard to have an open, honest debate with people like Guinasso who intentionally try to mislead the public.

Women who voluntarily of their own free will choose – “a woman’s right to choose” – to work in a legal Nevada brothel simply aren’t being “trafficked.”

“Every single worker at the Mustang Ranch is required to undergo an FBI fingerprint and criminal database background check every single year,” Storey County Commissioner Lance Gilman, who also owns the Mustang Ranch, said in a statement on Monday.

“In over 4,000 work card applications filed over the last 20 years by working professionals and employees at the Mustang, not one has turned up to be a victim of trafficking.  Not one.”

For people like Guinasso to compare these two totally different circumstances as if they were the same borders on libelous.

“This is a desperate act by Guinasso,” Mr. Gilman continued.   “He’s trying to do an end run on the people of Nevada.  Unfortunately, it’s just another political stunt by this man.”

Indeed.  But let it not be said his life is a complete waste.  Jason Guinasso expertly fills the role of bad example.  Why can’t he just leave the rest of us alone?

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and government affairs counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association