In the News

(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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(February 25, 2019) –This morning, Mustang Ranch announced that it will be filing to intervene in the federal lawsuit filed by anti-brothel proponent Jason Guinasso. Guinasso’s lawsuit, which has been filed against the State of Nevada, aims to criminalize prostitution throughout the state.

“Guinasso’s actions will put thousands of women back into the hands of pimps working illegally,” said Lance Gilman, real estate developer and owner of Mustang Ranch.  “Every single worker at the Mustang Ranch is required to undergo an FBI fingerprint and criminal database background check every single year.  The female entrepreneurs in the industry pay their taxes, support their family, buy their first homes, and pay their way through college or other educational courses.  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,” said Gilman.  “Yet, Guinasso is going after these people, and completely ignoring the current problem.”

“This will also hurt rural counties in Nevada by immediately removing tax and fee revenues out of their budgets,” continued Gilman.  “At the Mustang, we fund over $100,000 year in charitable contributions locally, most to local seniors and we also sponsor a backpack food program for children from families in need in our County.”

“This is a desperate act by Guinasso,” said Gilman.   “He knows this exact claim has been litigated before in this state and Nevada laws allowing licensed brothels have been repeatedly upheld.  He lost badly in the court of public opinion in the recent election.  His referendum lost by an 80% – 20% margin in Lyon County, even with the local Sheriff financing his anti-brothel effort.  And he couldn’t even get a vote in Nye County.  Every single poll taken in the state by reputable polling firms, including polling within the last 8 months, confirms widespread support for brothels and regulated prostitution.  He’s trying to do an end run on the people of Nevada,” said Gilman.

“Unfortunately, it’s just another political stunt by this man.   That’s why he sent out his complaint to the media before it was even filed.  This is all about him marketing and branding his position within his narrow political faction.  As far as I know, Guinasso hasn’t done one act to actually help the ladies working on the illegal side escape their pimps or ever taken action to stop handbilling of illegal prostitutes by pimps on the Las Vegas strip, prostitutes on the streets of Reno, and illegal sexual services in the massage parlors in the big cities in Nevada,” said Gilman.

“His entire complaint is about illegal prostitution and trafficking, which has no relationship to licensed brothels in Nevada.”

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(February 25, 2019) – Chuck Muth, spokesman for the Nevada Brothel Association, released the following statement in response to the federal lawsuit filed today by Reno attorney Jason Guinasso seeking to overturn Nevada’s legal brothel laws…

“Having lost overwhelmingly at the ballot box in his crusade to ban legal brothels last November, Mr. Guinasso is now running to the federal government, hoping the court will trample on state’s rights and Nevada’s unique live-and-let-live heritage.

“His client, an ex-con for tax evasion, claims she was ‘trafficked’ in Nevada’s legal brothels without providing any proof whatsoever, including specific dates when she allegedly worked here or what alias she worked under. 

“Her story has a very Jussie Smollet hoax-like scent to it.  I hope the media heeds all the red flags and actually digs into her allegations rather than simply accepting them at face value.”

(Jackie Valley | Nevada Independent) – A woman who says she was sex trafficked through a Nevada brothel plans to file a federal lawsuit Monday that seeks to overturn the state’s legalized prostitution in rural counties.

The lawsuit, which will be filed in federal district court in Reno, argues that legal brothels contradict two federal laws that criminalize human trafficking across state lines for the purpose of commercial sex acts. The state of Nevada, the Legislature and Gov. Steve Sisolak are named as defendants.

Plaintiff Rebekah Charleston, who was born in Texas, alleges in the lawsuit that a man she initially considered her boyfriend trafficked her for “purposes of commercial sexual exploitation,” which included a stint working at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Northern Nevada. Her trafficker eventually brought her to Las Vegas, where profit margins were higher in the city’s illegal sex industry, according to the civil complaint.

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(Sara Kruzan | Special to the Review-Journal) – When I was 17 years old, I was sentenced to die in prison for killing the man who had been trafficking me for more than five years. I was only 11 years old when the man who exploited me began to groom me for the underage selling of a child within the dark shadows of our communities.

Yet, during my trial, the abuse and complex trauma I experienced throughout my childhood was not admitted into evidence. I was not allowed to speak of it.

The “justice” system sentenced me — a child sex trafficking and rape survivor — to life in prison without parole, plus four years, for killing the man who stole my childhood and victimized me for nearly a third of my young life.

Because of the tireless work of my legal team and community advocates, my sentence was commuted and reduced. On Oct. 31, 2013, I was paroled from Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla after serving 19 years and seven months. Despite having been free for more than five years now, my heart continues to ache at the injustice of locking up child victims of sex trafficking and sexual abuse who commit crimes against those who have abused and exploited them.

What happened to me was not justice. What happened to Cyntoia Brown, despite her sentence being commuted recently by Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, was not justice. And what has happened to Alexis Martin, another child sex trafficking victim currently serving a life sentence for participating in a crime that resulted in her trafficker’s death, is not justice. None of us should have been sent to prison in the first place — a far too common response for girls of color in our country — especially for actions they take against their rapists and traffickers.

Being silenced, sexually assaulted, raped, trafficked and degraded creates deep wounds, especially for children. Every day, these wounds require courage, grace and an undefined strength to overcome. Imagine if Cyntoia, Alexis or I were your own daughter. How might you respond to the vile men who exploited and abused us? Is it so difficult to understand, then, how a 16-year-old girl who was raped and abused and exploited from the time she left elementary school would end up killing the man who harmed her so? What should we do with her?

When I was silenced, I felt invisible. I felt my voice and life experiences held no value and that I, as a person, had no value. It was only my act of violence that seemed to matter to the justice system, not what led up to it or what the person I had harmed had done to me. Instead, I was labeled a “child prostitute,” a “murderer,” a “convicted teen killer” and a “teen prostitute who killed her pimp.” I was left to die in a cage after being told by a judge that I lacked “moral scruples.”

Nelson Mandela once said, “There is no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” What does it say about our soul if we allow our children who have been abused, raped and exploited to be sentenced to decades in prison for having committed crimes against their abusers, rapists and exploiters?

I have been working alongside the survivor-led nonprofit organization Human Rights for Kids on a policy solution to make sure that what happened to Cyntoia, Alexis and I never happens again. Under our proposal, judges will be given greater flexibility in cases like ours and urged to keep us in the juvenile or child welfare system to provide us with services and care rather than keeping us in cages and silenced. Girls like us deserve to be protected by the system, not traumatized by it. Sara’s Law, as we are calling it, will make sure that happens.

Sara’s Law has been introduced in Nevada as Assembly Bill 158 by Assemblyman John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas, so that none of Nevada’s children has to suffer as I and so many other sex trafficked, exploited and abused children have had to.

Let’s not allow the justice system to take anything else away from child sex trafficking and sexual abuse victims. We’ve been forced to give away too much already. Let’s do better so that the next Cyntoia Brown, Alexis Martin or Sara Kruzan is met with empathy, compassion, understanding and love.

Sara Kruzan, a human rights advocate who fights on behalf of the victims of child sex trafficking and systemic violence, writes from California. Column originally published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on February 24, 2019.

Bella Cummins – owner of Bella’s Hacienda Ranch brothel in Wells, Nevada and founder of the Onesta Foundation – sat down with talk-show host Kevin Wall for an enlightening and entertaining half-hour to discuss Nevada’s legal brothel industry (starts at 24:00 minute mark)…