In the News

(Michelle Rindels | Nevada Independent) – Nevada lawmakers have introduced a measure that calls for a study on the workplace conditions of Nevada’s legal brothels.

The resolution, ACR 6, was introduced on Wednesday. Democratic sponsor Assemblywoman Lesley Cohen said she brought the measure forth after hearing stories during the interim about restrictive practices in brothels.

She said it’s difficult to get straight information about practices in the brothels because authority is pushed down to the counties and sometimes the sheriff’s office. Her measure is not pro- or anti-brothel, she said, and she hasn’t personally decided where she stands on the overall idea of a brothel ban — a concept that’s expected to come out of a Senate bill.

ACR 6 says it’s calling for the study because…

Click here to continue reading

(Michelle Rindels | Nevada Independent) – Sometimes it’s the sophisticated kitchen setup. Or containers full of condoms. Or ledgers keeping track of lavish tips for masseuses and the taxi drivers who bring customers.

Even when police and city officials see telltale signs that women are living full-time in massage parlors and working illegally as prostitutes, it can be a near-impossible task to get victims to testify against the people who are profiting from them and shut the business down once and for all, officials told lawmakers on Tuesday. . . .

An amendment — aimed at ensuring the law doesn’t rope in legitimate businesses where prostitution happened without the operators’ knowledge — specifies that the law applies to places where business operators know or should know that prostitution was taking place, but do not take action within 30 days to abate that activity. Those actions could include reporting prostitution activity to police or educating employees about how to detect prostitution.

Tolles was explicit that the bill is not targeting Nevada’s legal brothels, although…

Click here to read full article

(Jessica Garcia | Nevada Appeal) – The lawsuit filed by Texas resident Rebekah Charleston and her Reno-based lawyer Jason Guinasso seeking to ban legal prostitution in Nevada undermines voters and could have broader repercussions for states’ and industry workers’ rights, according to Onesta Foundation Executive Director Bella Cummins, but she’s hopeful her organization can open communications and shed a different light on the complex situation.

Guinasso’s lawsuit filed in federal court in February names the state of Nevada, the Legislature and Gov. Steve Sisolak, asserting brothels are in direct violation of two laws that make it illegal to bring others outside state borders for human trafficking.

But the effort has stirred up negative reaction. The Mustang Ranch, the state’s first legal brothel owned by Lance Gilman in Storey County, recently announced its intentions to join in against the lawsuit.

And Cummins said while she acknowledges a hard look is necessary from all sides politically, legally and concerning the workers’ and public’s safety, she said she’d hoped to show where the potential impacts might come.

“In Jason Guinasso’s fervor, he has brought to everyone’s attention that change is required, so I thank him for that,” Cummins writes in her statement. “I still want to help him to understand that his efforts are misdirected.”

Cummins says she takes issue with the loss of anonymity for the workers if their records were to be revealed, which would occur under subpoena with the lawsuit, but, moreover, it appears to be a solo effort, she said.

“He is really working to invalidate what the voters said and made completely clear what their preference is,” said Steve Funk, spokesman for Cummins who has assisted with her advocacy efforts and in the development of Onesta. “People have a right to choose, and they made a choice.”

Since Onesta’s inception, Cummins and Funk said they have held dozens of meetings with state legislators to discuss questions of enforcement, whether it’s possible to update the Nevada Revised Statutes and how to better protect the rights of sex workers.

“There is no bill or activity that we feel we should be concerned about at this point, but we feel we’re doing a good job for them to consider (our perspective) and we’ve made great progress with the leadership on down, and we feel we will move forward,” Funk said. “We’re not lawyers, we’re not policymakers, so we’ve done the work on the side to take the NRS statutes … and it’s a process.”

Cummins said just having the opportunity to be heard has been enlightening.

“We have an opportunity to work it out through education, through an understanding,” Cummins said. “Otherwise it looks like a legal fight no one ever wins. … It’s about doing it safely, free choice, free will, where there’s harm to none and we allow people to be people without manipulating one another.

“Men chase women, that’s just what happens,” she said.

Click here to access original article

(Ray Hagar | Nevada Newsmakers) – A proposal to ban legal brothels in rural Nevada by a state senator from Clark County was met with opposition on Nevada Newsmakers last week by two legal sex workers from Lyon County.

“All of us who worked at the ranches are doing it by choice and it is what we want to do doing,” said Ruby Rae, a courtesan from the Bunny Ranch brothel. “We should be able to make that choice by ourselves.”

Yet Sen. Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City, sponsor of the proposal to ban brothels, said Nevada should offer women better choices of employment than prostitution. He said the pleasant picture painted by brothel supporters omits the harsher reality of Nevada’s legal prostitution.

“So the exploitation that happens with prostitution, it is not just a rosy thing,” Hardy said. “There are things happening to women that should not be happening to women. So even though the (legal) prostitution is going on, that woman is many times raped. And we think that it is OK.”

Chuck Muth, president of Citizen Outreach and former campaign manger for deceased brothel kingpin Dennis Hof, said the proposal is another example of urban politicians dictating laws for rural Nevada.

“As we saw with the gun background initiative,16 out of 17 counties voted it down,” Muth said. “But Clark County had enough votes to overrule the rest of the state. So that’s why I think there is a danger here — that the Legislature is so overwhelmingly represented by Washoe County and Clark County — that they could force their will on the rural counties, even if the rural Nevada community doesn’t want it.”

Voters of Lyon County apparently like their brothels. Last November, they overwhelmingly voted down a ballot advisory question that could have ended the county’s brothel ordinances.

“In our county, Lyon County, 80 percent of them (voters) wanted to keep us around,” Rae said. “So I think he (Sen. Hardy) should take note from what the people want and what we women want, too.”

Hardy’s proposal is not the only piece of brothel legislation that could be considered this legislative session. Assemblywoman Leslie Cohen, D-Henderson, has submitted a bill-draft request that would change state laws governing brothels.

In 2011, then U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urged state lawmakers to ban brothels in a speech before joint houses of the Legislature. The proposal went nowhere. State lawmakers feared a ban would end a lucrative tax source for the counties that allowed brothels.

Hardy’s proposal to ban Nevada’s brothels, although not yet a written bill, would include help or training to transition into other jobs by Nevada’s Department of Economic Training and Rehabilitation. The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Spearman, D-North Las Vegas.

“One of the things we want to do is allow DETR, the Department of Economic Training and Rehabilitation, to have a role in allowing people to come out of that vocation,” Hardy said.

When asked about women who choose to work in a legal brothel, Hardy said:

“So it is the choice for the women to make a lot of money,” he said. “But in order to do that, they have to, for (lack of) another word, prostitute themselves. And therefore, what is it that I can do personally that I can say, ‘There is hope and you don’t have to do that. You can be free.’

“But that vocation (prostitution), there are a lot of things that go on in that vocation that even the woman who is comfortable in making her choice, is uncomfortable with some things that are happening to her.”

Alice Little, also a Bunny Ranch courtesan, said Hardy’s brothel ban is misdirected.

“I am really shocked and surprised,” Little said. “It is a misdirection of energy and effort. They are trying to say they are here to save and protect us from the brothel industry. But we are not asking for such. You cannot be an advocate for someone without their consent.

“We certainly have not asked them to come forward and take our jobs away from us. Instead, their energy and effort would be much more worthwhile if it was invested in the illegal services and sexual exploitation that is very real and does happen in Vegas.”

There’s no comparison between the legal brothels and the sex trafficking and illegal prostitution found in Las Vegas, Little said. Nevada’s rural sex workers undergo weekly medical testing, FBI background checks and registration with county law enforcement.

“The conflation between sex work — which is a consensual industry — and sex trafficking — in which somebody is forced and coerced to work — are simply two different things and we cannot cross-compare the two,” Little said. “When you talk about the situation happening in Vegas, women walking the streets, I agree wholeheartedly that that is absolutely problematic and something that needs to be addressed.

“In my opinion, the legal brothels prevent trafficking and illegal prostitution from entering Lyon County,” Little added. “We don’t have people walking the streets of Lyon County. There’s no one going up and down Highway 50 trying to offer illegal services. That is not something we experience here in Lyon County and that is because of the brothels.”

Yet Hardy said legal and illegal prostitution overlap each other.

“I think it is a pretty blurred line between legal and illegal (prostitution), quite frankly,” Hardy said. “I still think it takes advantage of women. It puts them in a difficult position.”

Hardy mentioned the long-standing brothel practice of “out dates,” where a customer can take a sex worker out of the brothel for a night on the town, sex included.

“So when you have a place that’s legal, the legal spills over into the illegal,” he said. “I firmly believe that the countenance we give for the legality for the bordello increases the amount of illegal prostitution that happens in the state of Nevada.

“I think Nevada deserves more,” Hardy said. “I think women in Nevada deserve more and that is why I am doing what I am doing.”

Mr. Hagar’s column was originally published in the Reno Gazette-Journal on March 13, 2019

(Aurora Snow | Daily Beast) – The 77-year-old billionaire was one of 25 men swept up in a prostitution sting on a South Florida massage parlor. Kraft has been charged with two counts of soliciting at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida, and authorities claim to have video footage of the NFL bigwig being serviced by a masseuse.

Jupiter Police Detective Andrew Sharp addressed the tape during a recent press conference. “The video that we obtained, it shows the act that took place. On every gentleman that you have a list of, the act that took place is recorded on that video,” he stated. “Does the video contain Mr. Kraft inside receiving the alleged acts? The answer is yes.”

(Jupiter Police have also suggested that multiple women involved were victims of sex trafficking, although this is thus far unsubstantiated.) . . .

Courtesan Alice Little stresses the positive impact of legalized brothels and suggests if they were more widely adopted, they could bring clarity and enforce distinctions between sex trafficking and prostitution.

Click here to read the full article…

Nevada State Sen. Joe Hardy (R-Clark County) was interviewed by Nevada Newsmakers host Sam Shad on March 6, 2019 and discussed his proposed bill to outlaw all legal brothels in Nevada…

Two days later, Ruby Rae and Alice Little – courtesans at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch and Nevada Brothel Association ambassadors – responded…