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(Ruby Rae) – In 2003, when I was approaching my teenage years, my family moved to Northern Nevada to escape the financial stresses and economic turmoil of California.

We moved to a quiet town in Lyon County, where life was slower, smaller and completely gentle. I spent my adolescent years attending middle school and high school in this charming county, which I grew to love.

When I was 20, I had made the move from Lyon County to Washoe County and was living in Reno attending college. I was working a full-time job, not getting through my classes fast enough and losing steam and passion for my future. I wanted a life that was made on my own terms — and more freedom.

I had known about the legal brothels in Nevada, but decided to research more about them to see if I thought it would be a good fit for me. I came to the conclusion as an open-minded, sexually adventurous young woman, that yes, I believe I could be a legal prostitute and succeed.

I started working in one of Dennis Hof’s brothels at the age of 20 as a result of my own well-researched and thought-out decision. Now at the age of 27, I have been working in the brothels for seven years.

Since starting my career as a legal prostitute in Nevada, I can truthfully say it was one of the best decisions I have made, even though a risky one, as I had no idea if I was going to sink or swim. I took a big leap of faith and thankfully, it worked out better than I had ever anticipated.

I am the kind of the woman who is okay with this line of work. I don’t see it as selling sex or myself, but more so, selling an experience to those who desire or need it. I have clientele that have been seeing me since I started seven years ago, and I see them as good friends. I have enriched their lives through passion, compassion and joy.

They have helped me become a more well-rounded, empathetic and successful young woman. I have come to consider myself a savvy businesswoman who manages my own marketing, brand and clientele.

Since entering this line of work, I have completed my B.A. from UNR – paid for solely on my own. I am currently a graduate student pursuing my M.A. from UNR, and I will graduate next spring. I am a published author in a top academic journal in my field. I am well-traveled and have explored nine countries, with three more this summer, all because I had the financial means and freedom in my schedule to make those trips.

I am able to help my grandmother with caring for my aging grandfather who has dementia, because I have the freedom of scheduling and support from management to go and help care for him. Everything good in my life up until this point has come from my career in sex work – from working in the Lyon County brothels.

When I heard about the petition that is being started by No Little Girl to put an end to the Lyon County brothels, I was angry, saddened and confused. Not only is this group trying to take away my livelihood, success and freedom, but also they are trying to take that away from the hundreds of women I work with and the hundreds of staff that these four brothels employ.

The women and staff I work with are like family to me, and I care deeply about their happiness and want their success just as much as my own. To see this petition being started when none of us asked for this was a maddening realization.

The women I work with are not engaging in survival sex work (street-based prostitution) and are not desperate women. They are mothers who are caring for their families and choose this line of work because it gives them flexibility when choosing their schedules so they can spend more time with their children. They are women who have worked in corporate America and wanted a job that was the complete opposite. They are young women, like myself, funding their college educations and other passions.

In the brothels, we have the choice, always, to say which clients we will say yes and no to. We have staff that would never let a man hurt us, and we have a clientele that do not come here to hurt us.

The women who are not here for right reasons do not stay long, because this is not easy money in the sense of the all the background work that goes with it, such as marketing, branding and administration. Many women succeed in this business because they learn to be good at negotiating, to be a part of a team and to learn undeniable business skills.

In addition to all the benefits for the women I work with and myself, Lyon County also heavily benefits. Not only do the brothels pay taxes and fees that fund the county’s vehicles, but we also give back to local charities and organizations regularly, either as a company or by individual lady.

A woman I worked with recently gave back to a Lyon County senior center through donations from her clients. Many girls before me, myself included, have started canned food drives that our clients contribute to. Currently, all four brothels are raising money for the Lyon County Boys and Girls Club. Last winter, three other ladies and myself delivered an SUV full of toys and gifts for the Lyon County toy drive, which we do yearly.

Charity aside, the brothels also bring a great deal of tourism dollars to the area spanning Washoe County, Carson City and Lyon County, and, like myself, many of my fellow sex workers live in Northern Nevada. Restaurants, hotels, housing and more – all in the local area – benefit from the brothels every single day, whether from individual ladies who are touring, the women who live here or from our clients.

The brothels, ladies and staff deeply care about this community and do a lot for the community that the average person does not see. To know there is an organization such as No Little Girl that does not recognize these facts and experiences, will not acknowledge them and instead puts out inaccurate facts about our industry is not only offensive, it hurts deeply.

My immediate family currently lives in Lyon County, and my grandparents have lived in the county for over twenty years. My entire family knows about my occupation and they fully support my decision to work in the licensed brothels of Lyon County.

My roots and history are deep in this community, and I urge Lyon County, from one resident to another, please acknowledge that the brothels here are for the good of everyone involved — the ladies who choose to work here, the staff that is employed by them and the community that absolutely benefits from them.

We need support. Do we have yours?

Ruby Rae has lived in Nevada for 15 years with her parents, grandparents and siblings. She has worked in a brothel for seven years and is now an M.A. student at UNR. This column was originally published in the Nevada Independent on April 18, 2018.

(Suzette Cole) – Thank you all in advance for reading my post, I want to introduce myself as we have not yet met. After you are done reading this post you will know me well. 

I am not one to go out and publicly speak, I tend to concentrate on managing our business’s instead. But, I did want to come forward on this subject instead of answering a question or stating something here and there.  It took me a while to gather up the history and facts about the Lyon County brothels and have posted this letter in multiple social media platforms to better educate the public on how the brothels work and what the procedures are. No one has better knowledge on this subject than myself, after all, I am the general manager of all the Lyon County brothels and have been since Feb. 1993. I understand you are already aware of some of the items but maybe some items you are not aware of that I would like to share.

I have listed a little of the history and facts of the brothels because I am sure that the general public is unaware of where it all started. 

History of Lyon County Brothels

• 1955 Moonlight Ranch
• 1970 Starlight Ranch and is moved and renamed Miss Kitty’s Guest Ranch
• 1971 Prostitution became legal
• 1992 Dennis Hof purchases Moonlight and becomes The Moonlight BunnyRanch
• 1996 Dennis Hof purchases Miss Kitty’s Guest Ranch
• 2013 Dennis Hof purchases SageBrush Ranch
• 2016 Dennis Hof opens Kit Kat Ranch

Please refer to Lyon County Business and License regulations to be able to own and have a brothel license. 

Not everyone who applies can get one. It’s an extensive federal background check.

• 1992 Sheriff Sid Smith approves Dennis Hof to have a brothel license.
• 2011 Sheriff Allen Veil approves Suzette Cole to be on all Lyon County brothels licenses after reviewing extensive back ground check. Investigation reporting fees are $4,000 paid by submitted.

License and Business fees that are paid Annually

• Business Licenses $356,000
• Room and board tax $12,000
• Silver Springs medical Center $26,000
• Over $50,000 for licenses for employees and working girls
• Employees and Working girls who live in Lyon County pay personal taxes.

Statement from Jeff Page, Lyon County Executive

June 2010 to present

“Brothels don’t pay business taxes, but contribute nearly $500,000 in other fees to the county which goes toward paying the county fleet of vehicles. With only 52,000 residents, the county would be hard pressed to make up that revenue if the brothels were banned. From a financial perspective, it means it has to come from someplace else.” 

That place would be coming from the Lyon County citizen’s pockets. 

Some have stated that we are only 1% of the yearly budget, this is just not true.  The yearly budget is 30 million, but first all mandatory bills and expenses have to be paid out of that budget.  For instance, all county employee’s salaries and county expenses  etc;  have to come right off the top.  Then after those are paid thats when our fees  that we pay in are factored and it’s more like 30 % of the left over budget.   

Sheriff Sid Smith and Sheriff Allen Veil neither had an issue with the brothels in Lyon County. Is it to be said that Sheriff Smith, Sheriff Veil and the previous sheriffs did not know what was best for their county? Seems people are trying to force their religion upon others. I believe in freedom of speech and the freedom of religion.

Lyon County Brothels are the biggest donators in the County

• Animal parks
• Food banks
• Sheriff’s ARK program
• Boys and girls club
• High School
• Toys for Tots
• Personal hardships and numerous others.

We always have had a donation box in the foyers of all our ranches to give back to the community. Over the years it has added up into tens of thousands of dollars. 

Please refer to Lyon County Legal Prostitution Fees and Requirements for a legal prostitute to get her license, She first has to have a

• Hepatitis test, which is done once a year.
• HIV and Syphilis tests, which are done once a month
• Chlamydia and gonorrhea tests, which are done once a week.

All these fees are paid for by the working girl, that goes into hundreds of thousands of dollars a year which are handled through the Silver Springs Renown Medical Center on top of the $26K that we pay towards every year. That keeps the medical center open for all the Lyon County citizens to be able to visit.     

After the lab tests has come back with negative results, the working girl goes to the sheriff’s station and fills out an application.

Lyon County has the strictest rules out of all the counties in Nevada to be able to obtain a sheriff’s card. It is easier to become a Lyon County Deputy than it is to become a legal prostitute.

And more importantly, there has NEVER EVER been a case of HIV positive in the history of legalized prostitution and you cannot say that about any other profession in the United States. Lyon County has been doing it right by legalizing it and regulating it.

I have never in the 26 years of working in the brothels have never tried to recruit a lady to work here. They all have contacted us. I receive over 1,500 emails a month from ladies who want to work. The ladies are never held against their will. They can come and go as they please. They are never asked to do something that they don’t want to on any level.

Current history and facts in Las Vegas, NV on Illegal prostitution.

• More than 3,000 active pimps and over 32,000 girls come to Las Vegas to be in illegal prostitution.
• 300 girls under the age of 16 that are being trafficking all the time.
• Sexually transmitted diseases as HIV are the highest in Las Vegas than any other city.
• Unsafe for customers and girls who are in illegal prostitution. Rapes, trafficking, scams, theft, drugs and of course, murder.

IF the brothels are banned, those numbers will surely go up.

Brief Summary of Dennis Hof

Born in Arizona in 1947, he comes from a hard working lower class family. His mother worked in the school cafeterias and his father was a mail man. Dennis always had worked all his life for the better life.

He has worked and purchased many gas stations in the Arizona, Lake Tahoe and Reno areas. He became involved with the time share condo business and saved up enough money to purchase the Moonlight BunnyRanch. A legal business in which he saw could make it a better place.

You can read all about his life in his autobiography, The Art of a Pimp. A no holds bar about his life. What you see what you get. He has no secrets. He has made himself a self made millionaire by being the media genius with his unique business sense.

 

Brief Summary of Suzette Cole

Born in Oakland 1955, moved to Lake Tahoe in the late fifties. She was always in business with her family and had a business sense and worked well with others. Worked as a cocktail waitress at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe for several years in the mid eighties and was top trainer and spokes person for the new hires for the entire human resource dept.

Moved to Carson City from Lake Tahoe. In Feb 1993, answered a little ad in the newspaper stated hostess wanted. Curiously she applied and started as a hostess, bartender, cashier, asst. manager and general manger to present, opening up all of Dennis’s brothels over the years.

 

 

 

The Banning of Lyon County Brothels

Every once in a while we have a few people who want the brothels gone. But this time, it has been politically targeted personally towards Dennis Hof.

First off, the “No little girl “ committee is based out of Reno. Why are they not targeting the Mustang Ranch? Because they said themselves, they want Dennis Hof out of business. They say no local big businesses want to be in the same county. What about Telsa next to Mustang Ranch? On their website, they have faq’s.  They made up the questions, then they made up the answers. If they were to ask me the same questions, they would get different answers.  They are talking about illegal prostitution.  You can not compare the illegal and legal prostitution.  It is apples and oranges.

The ladies, employees, and all the people in Lyon County have their own religion. One religion is not better than another. But most importantly, they all come from the same core belief, Do good, be good within our hearts.

There’s a reason why The County Commissioners are in position. They get all the facts then they vote to make the right decision. The public does not have all the facts and are not educated enough to be able to make that decision. What happens when the public wants to out law guns? Liquor, gaming, whats next, the color that you wear? Are they going to vote that people can’t wear black after 8pm? What about religion and race? Is that next that it has to be a certain religion or race to be able to live in Lyon County? That appears to be the route that this is going.

People make statements that just are not true about legal prostitution and others automatically believe what they hear.

For instance there is a girl named Rebekah Charleston who is working with No little Girl, and I have no idea who she is. I personally not ever seen her before and do not recall her working with us. I have had our accounting department run her name and nothing comes up. If she did come out here it was not long enough to receive a tax form.

Another is a person named Deanne Holliday.  She is a disgruntled former employee who has been spreading lies about us and the brothels for years. People say something and people automatically believe that it is gospel.

If it goes on the ballot, and if the brothels are shut down, they take it out of the commissioner’s hands, they have to wait until the next vote goes back on the ballot on the following year. And the Commissioner’s hands are tied even to vote on the smallest issue.  Which doesn’t make too much sense.  Especially, when it might be an urgent situation that has to be resolved quickly.   

We employ over 550 independent contractors every year and over 125 employees. They are dependent on their jobs to take care of themselves and their families. We have employees that have been with us over 15 years and longer. We do business with the local businesses in Lyon County because we want to keep it in the community.

“No little Girl” states, the prostitutes will just go home. No, they won’t, the ladies will go out on the streets and get caught up in the illegal side of prostitution. That’s why the girls come here to the brothels in the first place, to try and do the right thing and be legal. Prostitution is the oldest profession and it will not go away, this is why Lyon County legalized it so that way it can be regulated and keep it under control.

The Working Girls are here to make a better life for themselves, their children and their families. They are going to school, getting Masters Degrees, buying homes, putting their children through school, taking care of their families. How and Why do I know this? Because it has been my life, my whole life for the last 26 years. I do not have a husband or a boyfriend. I have no children, these girls are my children and family. I work hard and I keep a tight ship. I do not have a record or issues with the Law, not even a parking ticket. I respect the law and live a clean life. I do not drink, smoke and have a zero tolerance on all drugs. The ladies respect me as their Mother, because in a way I am their mother and do not pass any judgment upon them. I do not allow excess drinking and any drug of any kind is intolerable, even marijuana. I do not allow on the property among the girls and clients. They are not even allowed to cuss in the parlor, this includes the clients as well. I do not let things get out of control because I am always in control of it in the first place.

I have never let a girl work that did not have a sheriff’s card or was not cleared from the doctor first. I would never put our brothel licenses in jeopardy. And yes, we have to coordinate the doctor visits with the lab results and with the sheriffs station. And if one doesn’t come through, they will have to wait. The ladies come from all over the country, sometimes they fly in and have to wait until they are cleared. This can sometimes up to a week if something falls thru the cracks. These are good girls, they have all passed the federal background check and have no diseases.

We check ID’s of all our customers to ensure they are of legal age to walk inside and also to drink, this is true for the ladies as well.

Sadly, people tend to be hypocrites. They go on dates, they have dinner, give flowers and then have sex after their date. That seems to be ok in people’s eyes but when the almighty dollar is exchanged, all of a sudden its bad. Lyon County has been doing it right since 1971 when they took it out of the criminal’s hands and put it into a highly regulated industry.

I have meetings called Tea Parties every week with the Ladies, where we bring in business people to help them succeed; bankers, insurance, accounting executives, and more to help them with their every day lives.

We celebrate birthdays every week and some of the girls say this is the first time that they have ever had a birthday cake or a party.

We have craft days where the girls get to just have fun and we even have karaoke so the girls and the clients can sing their little hearts out.  We have clients come in here just to celebrate their birthdates, the clients are also considered family. We treat people with respect and never judge anyone by race, gender, religion, or anything else.

Thank you again for taking the time to read this. I know all of you are very busy and it means a lot to be able to voice not only my opinions but the Facts.

Suzette Cole is General Manager for the Bunny Ranch, Love Ranch, Kit Kat Ranch & Sagebrush Ranch brothels in Lyon County, Nevada

(Paris Envy) – Legal prostitution was always in my life.

I grew up in northern Nevada, just down the road from several of the state’s best known bordellos. My aunt worked at The Sagebrush Ranch, and some of my earliest memories are of riding with my grandmother to go pick her up from work.

She would call ahead from the car when we were about 10 minutes away, and the back gate would be opened up so we could pull up to the rear of the building. We would go in through the kitchen, and all of the “working girls” would be covered up in their robes, always excited to see me.

While we were waiting for my aunt to gather her things, I would sit on a stool at the kitchen counter and drink a Shirley Temple while I dangled my legs that had not yet grown long enough to touch the ground from a chair.
The ladies would put cartoons on the television for me, and just like that, I would be a happy kid having a normal childhood experience in the back room of a brothel (paging Richard Pryor).

The girls would give me dollar bills and I felt rich. That is the first time that I remember having a sense of the value of money, and that sense would serve me well once I returned to the brothels as an adult.

As I grew into my teens, I was seduced by HBO’s slate of late night adult programming. Too young to watch by most parents’ standards (including my own), I had to wait until my parents had gone to sleep and sneak back in to the living room to tune in to the forbidden land of late night cable television.

Back in those days, HBO aired entire blocks of adult oriented shows, including “Real Sex”, “Taxi Cab Confessions”, and “Cathouse” (the reality show based around the business at Dennis Hof’s Bunny Ranch legal brothel).

While the other two shows were set in different parts of the country and seemed to a girl from Yerington, Nevada as though they might as well have taken place in other countries or on other planets, “Cathouse” was filmed just down the road from me, and I was fascinated with the idea that television magic was being created right in my own back yard.

I liked the girls on the show, and I especially liked Dennis, who was the central figure that the whole business seemed to revolve around.

Lots of people follow relatives into family businesses, and I guess you could say that I’m no different. Where the difference lies, however, is that my family’s history of prostitution has been a legal one. It’s always been safe, clean, and profitable. Most importantly, it’s been fun.

I actually enjoy my job, and one thing that interacting with a variety of clients has taught me is that that is rarely the case for most other professionals. The overwhelming majority of people work at their jobs so that they can enjoy life once they get off work. I go to work so that I can enjoy getting off while I’m earning that living at the same time.

Do the math, and you’ll see that I’m living twice the life I would be otherwise, were I in a job that I hated, or at best tolerated. Life is too short to spend time doing things you don’t like.

Paris is a legal sex worker at the Love Ranch-Vegas brothel in southern Nevada

(Isabel Youngs) – Over the last week, several opinion pieces have been published regarding Nevada’s laws around legal (and illegal) sex work. Every single one was reductive and borderline cruel, invalidating the autonomy of sex workers by stating they either all love or all hate their jobs; that brothels are safe or brothels are inhumane.

Like any profession, there are hundreds of factors that go into why one either enjoys or despises what they do. Each piece did nothing to address the many nuances of why some sex workers are happy and others are not. There are problems in our legal brothel system; however, much of that stems from society’s cultural lack of respect for women and sex workers.

There is absolutely no peer-reviewed study corroborating that legalized prostitution expands illegal prostitution or that brothels are rife with trafficking, rape, abuse, drugs, suicide and imprisonment. There is no factual or philosophical basis for criminalizing prostitution.

Additionally, there is no research comparing legal sex work and the safety of other professions, like domestic work. The problem of abuse, drugs and misogyny is engrained, and encompasses several industries, not just the sex industry.

Sexual and physical violence is tied to power imbalances, discrimination and the devaluation/stigma of certain people. Targeting sex workers does not help to solve systemic abuse and violence across many communities and in many professions. In fact, stigmatizing sex work could increase violence against workers.

However, there are inherent problems with the way we have established our prostitution laws, and many workers do end up in horrifying conditions with few opportunities for recourse. Nevada law limits legal sex work to specific locations in specific counties, operated largely by affluent businessmen with no incentive to provide benefits for their employees. In our current climate, workers have less choice, less autonomy and less negotiating power under contracts at brothels than they would as either unionized employees or private independent contractors who decide when, where, how and with whom they do business.

However, these problems are not solved through the criminalization/outlawing of prostitution, which paints women as victims who are disempowered and lacking autonomy. Many of the problems rampant in sex work are a result of a sweeping lack of choice for marginalized communities across the board. By improving access to high-paying alternative employment and educational opportunities, as well as legislating protections for marginalized workers, we can begin to transition people out of sex work who do not want to be there, and end the stigma against those who willfully choose that employment.

The creation of better laws protecting the interests of workers and offering legitimate paths out of the profession for those who want to leave it is much better public policy than throwing sex workers in jail or attempting to pass laws that would make trafficking victims less safe.

Many of the people and organizations doing work in the sex trafficking prevention arena are not asking underground sex workers and trafficking victims what they need, but relying on research that is rarely peer-reviewed or procedurally vetted. Recent peer-reviewed articles about sex work tend to find positive outcomes to decriminalization. The prominence of bad research makes it difficult to speculate or theorize the harms of sex work in other contexts, and when problems in prostitution do materialize, we rarely see suggestions of solutions to specific issues – we see a call-to-arms for criminalization.

UN Women reports, “The conflation of consensual sex work and sex trafficking leads to inappropriate responses that fail to assist sex workers and victims of trafficking in realizing their rights. Furthermore, failing to distinguish between these groups infringes on sex workers’ right to health and self-determination and can impede efforts to prevent and prosecute trafficking.” While there are claims that “pimps bring their victims to Nevada” because of prostitution, trafficking is tied far more to immigration, population and globalization than legal prostitution.

Traffickers also often use the danger of police intervention and criminality to control their victims, accusing them of breaking the law or threatening them with deportation. Despite “safe harbor” laws in some states, which have been implemented to protect victims from criminal punishment, the State Department reports that many victims, including minors, are routinely prosecuted by state or local officials on charges related to their trafficking.

At the end of the day, legal prostitution has its demons, but to unfairly target sex work and delegitimize the self-determination of many sex workers who do want to be in that profession by claiming that “no little girl wants to grow up to be a prostitute,” we do irreparable harm to ending the stigma of sex work. Enacting thoughtful, respectful and well-researched labor and education laws that give sex workers power and autonomy will do far more to make our state better than trying to outlaw prostitution.

Isabel Youngs is a Reno local and advocates in the issue areas of sex work, disability rights, health care and child welfare. She studied political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, with an emphasis on social policy. She currently works at a legal aid nonprofit. The opinions here are her own and not necessarily reflective of any organization or employer she is affiliated with. This column was originally published by the Nevada Independent.

(Ronald Weitzer) – Prostitution is legal and regulated by the government in several countries, including Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, New Zealand and some Mexican states. In most of these places, street prostitution remains either illegal or officially discouraged, while indoor prostitution is legally permitted under certain conditions and monitored by local authorities – much as it is in Nevada’s rural counties. The logic of legalization is similar to that for marijuana and casino gambling: the principle that tolerating consensual vice is far superior to criminalizing it, forcing participants underground and perpetuating the risks and harms inherent in any black-market enterprise.

The potential advantages of legalization are recognized by some prominent organizations and agencies. In 2013, Canada’s Supreme Court unanimously declared the country’s prostitution laws unconstitutional. According to the court, these laws violated Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms because they endangered sex workers safety. Amnesty International embraced the same logic when it officially endorsed decriminalization in May 2016, following earlier decisions by Human Rights Watch and the World Health Organization. And, although long forgotten, the National Organization for Women voted in 1973 to support decriminalization in the United States. The resolution declared that NOW “opposes continued prohibitive laws regarding prostitution, believing them to be punitive” and “therefore favors removal of all laws relating to the act of prostitution.”

These are just a few examples showing that legal prostitution is not a crazy, fringe idea. In fact, the American public is much more sympathetic to the idea of it than is commonly believed. Recent national polls show growing tolerance: Support for legalizing prostitution increased from 38 percent in 2012 to 44 percent in 2015 and 49 percent in 2016. And legalization bills have been recently introduced in Hawaii, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.

Anti-prostitution activists claim that legalizing prostitution will increase sex trafficking. This notion defies all logic. Organized crime thrives where an activity is criminalized and clandestine, not where goods and services are lawfully exchanged. The history of alcohol and drug prohibition offers overwhelming proof of this maxim.

One fatally flawed “study” in Europe purported to find a link between legalization and increased trafficking, but this paper was roundly criticized by other scholars, including me. In the Netherlands, where prostitution has been legal since 2000, a report by the Ministry of Justice in 2007 stated that “it is likely trafficking in human beings has become more difficult, because the enforcement of the regulations has increased.”

Evidence from Germany seems to confirm this argument. Government figures show a consistent decline since 2002 (when legalization took effect) in three trafficking measures: From 2000 to 2014, the number of officially certified victims decreased from 1,197 to 524; the number of suspects prosecuted dropped from 927 to 485; and the number of convictions of traffickers fell from 148 to 77.

While these figures do not necessarily prove that trafficking is decreasing in Germany, we would expect to see a consistent increase in these three metrics if trafficking has increased since legalization. The trend lines clearly show the opposite pattern.

What about Nevada? The best research on the state’s legal brothels comes out of UNLV. This research shows that brothel workers are generally satisfied with their working conditions, do not consider themselves victims, rarely experience altercations with customers, have freedom to choose the kinds of services they provide and are working in healthy conditions.

Since the state mandated monthly testing for HIV and sexually-transmitted infections in 1986, not one legal brothel worker has tested HIV-positive (condom use is required by state law). Moreover, the brothels have little if any adverse effect on the surrounding community.

Unlike illegal street prostitution in many other places, Nevada’s legal brothels do not disturb public order, create nuisances or negatively impact local communities in other ways. Instead, they provide needed tax revenue for cash-strapped rural towns. The brothels also have a long pedigree, having been legally permitted since 1971, almost half a century!

None of this is intended to romanticize sex work, but it is clear that it is not going to disappear. Outlawing legal brothels in Lyon and Nye counties will only be counterproductive – disrupting a well-regulated system that protects sex workers’ health and safety, imposes a set of regulations on business owners and is not considered problematic by most Nevadans.

Ronald Weitzer is a Professor of Sociology at George Washington University and the author of Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business. He has spent nearly three decades researching sex work in various countries and is considered one of the leading international experts on the topic.  This column was originally published in the Nevada Independent.

(David Colborne) – On April 10, Jason Guinasso’s op-ed advocating the prohibition of prostitution in Nevada was published by The Nevada Independent. In that op-ed, he made several claims, each more spurious than the last:

When I was in high school I recall peers reporting that their dads would take them to the Mustang Ranch as a sort of rite of passage from youth to adult.

When I was in high school, I recall peers “reporting” on “Rainbow Parties” and vodka-infused tampons. Today’s high school students will recall their peers “reporting” on Tide Pods and condom-sniffing. The truth is, high school students enjoy telling tall tales to impress their peers, most of which are apocryphal at best. If you talk to actual fathers — like me — you will find that the vast majority of Nevada’s fathers do not, in fact, take their children to brothels as some sort of rite of passage, and the legality of prostitution plays no part in our decision either way.

The truth is that no little girl dreams of being a prostitute.

That’s probably true. Of course, few also dream of being cashiers, sanitation workers,  bookkeepers or middle management. Sex work is work and is every bit as necessary as any other work. Just as blue collar workers sell their labor to mine and manufacture, and just as athletes sell their labor to entertain and amaze, sex workers sell their labor for the fulfillment of others. In some cases, sex work is even a vital part of therapy; Touching Base, for example, is a non-profit in Australia that seeks to “assist people with disability and sex workers to connect with each other, focusing on access, discrimination, human rights and legal issues and the attitudinal barriers that these two marginalised communities can face.”

No, daddy, really . . . I could start my career now because the average age of a new prostitute in the US prostitution industry is 14!

Sure — in the illegal prostitution industry. In the legal prostitution industry in Nevada, the minimum legal age for sex work ranges from 18 to 21, depending on the county, and this is strictly enforced through the use of mandated work cards and regular health screenings. (This was one of several instances of Mr. Guinasso conflating legal and illegal prostitution, as he did when he talked about physical assault and drug use rates.)

Maybe that is why, in 2016, it was reported that Nevada is one of the 10 worst states for human trafficking, with hundreds of calls to the national hotline each year. Maybe protecting this so-called “Nevada institution” is why Nevada has the seventh highest incidence of rape reported to law enforcement and ranks second across the nation in the rate of women murdered by men, with a rate of 2.29 per 100,000.

It’s true — Nevada has high crime rates, statistically speaking. Nevada’s rate of violent crime in 2016 was 678.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, higher than every state except Alaska, New Mexico and the District of Columbia. This isn’t because of legalized prostitution in rural counties, however — it’s because crime statistics are calculated as occurrences per state population, and Nevada has a high visitor population that isn’t included in these statistics. Consequently, when a tourist commits a crime in Nevada, that counts against Nevada’s statistical crime rate even though the crime wasn’t committed by a Nevada resident.

This doesn’t mean we should shun tourism, but it does mean we should look at Nevada’s crime statistics with a critical eye. Yes, Nevada’s human trafficking numbers are far too high — any instance is one instance too many — but it’s almost certainly more of a function of the more than 50 million visitors that visit Nevada each year than the less than two dozen legal brothels currently doing business in Nevada.

In Lyon County, as reported by the FBI, a woman is 1,660 percent more likely to be raped in Lyon County (a county with legal brothels) than in Carson City (a county with no legal brothels), even though the populations of both are almost identical.

According to the most recent numbers published by the FBI, there were 15 reported rapes in Lyon County, versus Carson City’s three. There were also no reported rapes in Elko County, despite the presence of brothels in downtown Elko, and there were 11 reported rapes in Douglas County despite the prohibition of brothels there. Guinasso’s attempts to point to these numbers as proof of a correlation between legalized prostitution and county rape statistics isn’t an argument for prohibiting brothels — it’s an argument for requiring better teaching of statistics in Nevada’s schools.

The truth surrounding sex work is crystal clear:  When prostitution is illegal, sex workers don’t benefit — but corrupt police officers do. Police abuse of sex workers is well-documented across the world, from South Africa to New York to, more recently, Oakland. In many states, like Hawaii, police officers fiercely defend their privilege to have sex with illegal sex workers during investigations.

Sexual abuse of people in police custody isn’t unique to sex workers, unfortunately — in 35 states, including Nevada, it’s legal for police officers to have sex with people in their custody. It is an especially common occurrence with illegal sex workers. Even those who aren’t abused by the police face the possibility of suffering a career-limiting felony conviction, one which can show up on post-conviction background checks for the rest of their lives. This is why organizations like Sex Workers Outreach Project are fighting to legalize sex work. Criminalizing sex work endangers and traps women in a cycle of abuse, ostracization and poverty, frequently at the hands of the very people supposedly charged with “protecting” them.

Nevada is the one state that gets it right, and even we don’t get it right enough. The best way to protect all Nevadans is to leave the sex workers in Lyon County alone, and legalize sex work statewide.

David Colborne is the Vice-Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Nevada and chairman of the Washoe County Libertarian Party. He can be reached at david.colborne@lpnevada.org or on Twitter at @ElectDavidC.  This column was originally published in the Nevada Independent.