Nevada- While the men watch from plushly upholstered sofas, a dozen women make their entrances into the upscale parlor. One by one, they introduce themselves in practiced, sultry voices, then line up against a strategically mirrored wall.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” says a stunning blond in revealing lingerie. “I’m J.R. Carrington.”
“Hi, guys. I’m Carmen,” whispers another woman suggestively as she glides into the room.
“And I’m Love,” a tall, confident woman says casually. Love’s professorial glasses, full-length gown and understated introduction do not reveal that, at almost 50, she has been a high-end prostitute for three decades. During her first year working at this brothel, she generated nearly $600,000 in business from men like the ones here this night, according to brothel owners.
Though scenes like this are criminal everywhere else in the nation, legal prostitution is thriving in Nevada, as shown on a recent Friday night at the Wild Horse Ranch, a high-end brothel just outside Reno, as well as at more than two dozen other brothels operating throughout the state.
But that may be changing. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has recently advocated having “magnificent brothels” to open within the city limits of the gambling capital — part of a spate of unwanted publicity that has pushed the shadowy brothel industry into a not-so-flattering spotlight.
A study this month alleges an alarming amount of human trafficking and physical and mental abuse associated with Nevada’s brothels. Even more, some former prostitutes have begun calling for an end to legalized prostitution here, and a high-profile legal challenge by others has paved the way for widespread, risque advertising of brothels, raising the ire of some Nevada citizens.
“I think we might actually be getting close to seeing Nevada go the way of every other state in the nation and prohibit legal prostitution,” said Melissa Farley, the anti-prostitution activist and researcher who released the scathing study of Nevada’s prostitution industry.
That may be the only point on which Farley and George Flint, a former minister who now heads the Nevada Brothel Association and acts as the industry’s chief lobbyist, could find some common ground.
“Too much attention is the kiss of death for us,” Flint admitted. “It creates a situation where the legislature could have to get involved and say, ‘We are or we are not in favor of legal prostitution.’ People don’t want to have to go there.”
Nevada’s brothels tend to operate well out of view. Because state law allows brothels to exist only in counties with fewer than 400,000 residents, most are in remote stretches of desert, often hours away from heavily populated Reno or Las Vegas.
Inside three such brothels the Chicago Tribune visited recently — the Wild Horse, the Shady Lady and the legendary Mustang Ranch, the first legal brothel to open in Nevada in 1971 — the full gamut of concerns and controversies surrounding the industry were on full view: whether prostitutes are treated humanely and under what conditions they work; the demographic and motivations of the women drawn to the lifestyle; the health of prostitutes and their customers; and the benefit, or lack thereof, of a legal industry compared to an illegal one.
Farley’s study of Nevada’s brothel industry arises from extensive interviews with 45 prostitutes in eight brothels. In her book, “Prostitution & Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections,” she writes that legal prostitutes in Nevada have rates of post-traumatic stress disorder about the same as combat veterans; that 81 percent are desperate to leave the lifestyle; that the women are made to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week; that brothel owners keep the bulk of their earnings; and that the women essentially are prisoners in these remote establishments.
“Have you seen these places?” asked Farley, also the head of the San Francisco-based non-profit Prostitution Research and Education. “Many of them are completely fenced in, with razor wire on top of the fences.”
“What happens in these places is sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and sometimes rape,” she said. “Despite the claims to the contrary, legal prostitution does not protect women from the violence, verbal abuse, physical injury or diseases such as HIV that occur in illegal prostitution.”
Inside the brothels, it is clear the women work constantly, often for weeks or months on end. In the women’s quarters of the Mustang Ranch, for example, a “Code 3” is announced over a speaker system anytime a new customer enters the brothel’s front bar and the prostitutes are required to be on display in the bar within a few minutes.
But many legal prostitutes said they willingly work like this in order to earn such extraordinary sums of money that they can take up to half of the year off. A number of the prostitutes interviewed said they routinely take home more than $30,000 a month — even after the brothel takes its hefty cut. Flint, the brothel industry lobbyist, estimates that the state’s brothels do about $50 million in business per year.
The prices can be staggering. At the Wild Horse, the purchase of a prostitute and one luxurious suite can cost at least $15,000. At the Mustang, rental of a sex museum, complete with bedrooms, begins at $40,000 — and can in fact be far more expensive depending on which prostitute or prostitutes are hired.
“I work Thursday through Sunday. I’ve never earned this kind of money,” said Carmen, a prostitute at the Wild Horse. Like most of the women interviewed, Carmen asked that only her stage name be used; most of the women fear that family members will find out what they do or that they will face discrimination from those who disapprove of their lifestyle.
Farley, however, disputes such figures, saying that it is common practice for brothel owners to not only take up to half of a woman’s earnings, but to charge the prostitutes outrageous “rents” for the bedrooms they use. Farley said she suspects very few women pocket anywhere near $30,000 per month, and several prostitutes interviewed at smaller brothels said they often averaged closer to $3,000 to $5,000 per month.
Susan Austin, the house madam and a former prostitute, led a tour of the Mustang and Wild Horse ranches, neighboring brothels owned by her boyfriend, Nevada millionaire Lance Gilman. Austin and Gilman have been together — personally and in business — since he purchased her services at a brothel a number of years ago.
Because she knows the life of prostitution, Austin says she goes to great pains to “take care of the ladies.” All beds have 1,000-thread-count sheets; there is a beauty salon on the premises; traveling salesmen visit every few days with crates of dresses and platform heels for the women to buy; each bedroom has a panic button that the prostitute can hit to instantly summon security in the event of abuse; the brothel has its own doctor, fine chefs and an expert who arrives every few weeks to train the women in the art of sales.
“Everything they could need is right here,” Austin, 57, boasts.
But that is a major source of contention for Farley and some former Nevada prostitutes who have banded together to protest the industry as well as to offer social services to prostitutes who have left the lifestyle or want to do so.
“Essentially these women are controlled in the same way battered women are controlled,” said Farley, who claims to have seen women locked into their rooms in brothels and fed through slots in the door. “They live in an environment of physical and emotional isolation.”
Legal prostitutes and brothel owners say there is a far less nefarious reason that most prostitutes do not leave the premises during their stretches of work. By state law, legal prostitutes in Nevada must be tested for sexually transmitted diseases once a week. (Proponents of legalized prostitution say that not a single case of HIV has ever been found to have been contracted inside a Nevada brothel. Such claims are backed by Nevada Department of Public Health records as well as a 2002 study by a Harvard University medical school student.)
“In addition to the weekly test, any time any of the ladies leave the property, they have to be retested,” said Austin, who explained the tests take about 24 hours to process and the women can’t work while their results are pending.
The testing costs between $70 and $120 per week — charged to the women. Those interviewed said they did not want the additional expense or lost work time that would be associated with leaving the brothel routinely.
Nevada law mandates condom use in all brothels. At the Shady Lady Ranch, a brothel some 2 ½ hours north of Las Vegas that owner Bobbi Davis describes as “a working man’s brothel,” signs are posted at the entrance alerting customers that condoms must be worn for all services.
Davis scoffed at Farley’s assertions that sexually transmitted diseases are rampant in Nevada brothels and that prostitutes interviewed for her study said about 50 percent of their customers do not wear condoms. Davis argued that no brothel owner would condone that and run the risk that his or her establishment could be linked to an STD outbreak. Even more, said Davis, also a former prostitute, the fact that brothels are legal gives owners and prostitutes the freedom to call law enforcement at any time.
But Farley says that numerous prostitutes said they knew women who had tested positive for HIV who were quietly fired and their status never reported to state health authorities.
At the Mustang recently, prostitutes appeared to take matters of health seriously. All talk between prostitutes and potential customers regarding prices and services must take place in one of several small negotiating rooms. Before a customer pays for services, he is required to reveal himself to the prostitute. She shines a special lamp on his genitals that is supposed to illuminate any sores associated with certain STDs. Condoms are available in candy dishes on the table where credit-card receipts are signed.
Perhaps the most explosive part of Farley’s study — as well as assertions increasingly being made by former Nevada prostitutes — is the allegation that many of the women working in brothels are illegal immigrants brought to Nevada through human trafficking rings. Farley contends she spent time in a brothel she refuses to name where the majority of the prostitutes spoke only Chinese. She said she reported her findings to the FBI. An FBI spokesman said the bureau does not comment on pending cases, but no brothel has been shut down for employing illegal Chinese immigrants in recent months.
The problem of human trafficking in Nevada has been documented for years. The Department of Justice has recognized Las Vegas as one of 17 cities where human trafficking is a problem and recently begun funding its police department’s anti-trafficking efforts. In recent years, local and federal authorities have broken up multiple sex-trafficking groups in which women were illegally brought into the country to work as prostitutes.
Brothel owners argue that rules of the legal industry make trafficking nearly impossible and that the phenomenon is rampant only in the illegal industry. For example, in Nye County, home to many of Nevada’s brothels, women applying for licenses to work as prostitutes are given FBI background checks, are fingerprinted to confirm their identities and to check for past crimes, and they must provide proof that they are U.S. citizens, according to Davis and county statute.
For now, the brothel industry gets most of its business from men visiting from Las Vegas or Reno. On a recent Friday evening, dozens of these men sipped drinks and watched intently as the Wild Horse prostitutes finished their introductions.
“Would anyone like to pick a lady?” Austin, the madam, asked her customers.
One man raised his hand. He wanted to spend the night with the woman who called herself Love.