Read more at Las Vegas Citylife…

Brothel bound
Nevada’s brothels a leading example for other states
by AMY KINGSLEY

Nevada’s relationship with its legal brothels is a lot like the one between a john and a hooker — financially rewarding for one party, vaguely shameful to the other and thoroughly unacceptable as a subject of polite conversation.

The tourism and prostitution industries feed off each other. But that doesn’t keep casino moguls from turning up their noses at brothel owners. They barely tolerate their presence in the rural counties outside Reno and Las Vegas, and balk at the prospect of bringing them to the big cities.

In her new book, State of Sex: Tourism, Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland, UNLV professor Barb Brents tackles the complicated relationship between the state and its brothels. Brents, along with co-authors Kate Hausbeck and Crystal Jackson, spent the better part of a decade researching the history, structure and working environment within legal brothels. Her research led her to some surprising conclusions.

“I used to think that women had no power in that situation,” she said. “But then, as a feminist, I started listening to the voices of the women, and more and more of them were telling me that it wasn’t exploitation.”

State of Sex is the first book that uses academic research methods to contextualize Nevada’s unusual system of legal prostitution. Readers looking for randy tales of sexual adventure might want to look elsewhere. Marketing aside, most of the women who work in brothels aren’t hypersexual, they’re just regular working women in search of a high-paying gig. For them, working in a brothel may not be much different than working in a shoe store.

“There are all different kinds of women with different levels of commitment,” Brents said. “It becomes kind of impossible to say that prostitution is any one thing. But the women all talk about the work as a job.”

I think this guy will be really hurting for cash if he doesn’t cater to male clientele. Read more at Fox News…

Nevada Brothel Hires First Legal Male Prostitute

A brothel in a Nevada desert town has hired the state’s first male prostitute, a muscular college dropout who abandoned a brief stint as a porn actor in Los Angeles to become the only legal gigolo in the United States.

The Shady Lady Ranch successfully won state and county approval to clear the way for the “prostidude,” as Nevada’s newest sex worker is already being called. After a slow first week on the job, his first appointments are scheduled for this weekend.

The male prostitute — known as “Markus” — has quickly become the center of attention in Nevada’s brothel industry.

He has been criticized by female counterparts for not being willing to have sex with men. And he created a dustup after telling Details Magazine that his pioneering role in the sex business was “just the same” as civil rights icon Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus. Not surprisingly, he has been forbidden from doing interviews after the remarks.

…

Shady Lady madam Bobbi Davis picked him from about 10 potential hires culled from hundreds of applications, many featuring crude inquiries, according to her husband and co-owner Jim. Part of Markus’ appeal was that he was not afraid to deal with heavy publicity.

“Whichever woman may walk through that door, she’s appreciated,” Markus said in his Details interview. “A surrogate lover will love that woman for a whole hour, or however much we charge here, and she’ll leave feeling much more empowered and much more confident in herself.”

Jim Davis told The Associated Press that after reading the article, he and his wife decided that Markus doing interviews was bad for business. Bobbi Davis declined an interview with the AP. The Davises declined to give Markus’ real name, which is customary for sex workers in Nevada.

Davis said the Shady Lady had received dozens of e-mails expressing interest in the gigolo. He said it took years to establish steady business from truckers, salesmen and other travelers after the brothel opened 17 years ago, and getting paying women customers could take at least a month.

“This is a business — if (Bobbi Davis) didn’t think she could make more money she wouldn’t have done it,” Davis said. “Why else would she start something like this?

“And if she knew what she was getting into, she probably wouldn’t have,” he said.

Read more at RGJ.com…

Angel in red: Reno woman helps sex workers
By Geralda Miller

Women who work in the sex industry are not invisible to Sharnel Silvey.

As founder of A Scarlet Covering, a nonprofit organization that provides counseling and resources to women in the sex industry, she continues to work with women who she feels are neglected.

“I embrace them as a human being and want them to know that they’re loved and that we’re here for them,” she said.

Silvey has been busy since the stories that ran two months ago in the Reno Gazette-Journal about her and her organization.

She served Thanksgiving dinner to 40 women who work at Diamond Dolls and Fantasy Girls strip clubs; served dinner, decorated a Christmas tree and delivered gifts to women at the Big 4 Ranch brothel in Ely with members of the Strip Church in Las Vegas. She also has been working two days a month with Judge James Van Winkel in Reno Municipal Court with women arrested for solicitation, a misdemeanor in Nevada.

“We want them to know that we’re here,” Silvey said. “This is an avenue for us to let them know that we support them, regardless of what they’re doing. Society has rejected them and considered them an outcast.”

Sandy McClelland, house mom at Fantasy Girls, said the women who work at the strip club were surprised that Silvey and her organization wanted to serve them dinner.

“I think it’s incredible, really, that there are people that want to go out and do good things for no monetary gain and they just want to do it out of the goodness of their heart,” McClelland said. “I think they like the idea of somebody giving back to them and actually caring.”

There are two kinds of academic studies: studies that tell us what we already know, and studies that are wrong. Here is one case where the smart folks in academia went to a great effort discover what is common knowledge.

Read more at The Las Vegas Review Journal…

‘ADULT SERVICES’: Craigslist helps sell sex online
Prostitutes lure customers using Internet site
By LAWRENCE MOWER

The advertising Web site craigslist has been a boon to prostitution locally and nationally, allowing the world’s oldest profession to flourish virtually unchecked, a new university study contends.

“It’s this whole world of online brothels, but nobody is monitoring it anymore,” said Alexis Kennedy, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Craigslist allows people to post classified ads for everything from cars for sale to help wanted to “adult services.” And just as the site has revolutionized the way people sell their trinkets and bookends, it has changed the way men and women sell sex, according to Kennedy.

The site has been under fire by law enforcement officials across the nation almost since its inception because of the ease by which it connects prostitutes to johns. The site’s founders have bowed to some of the pressure. Last year craigslist removed its “erotic services” section, where prostitutes could post ads for free, and replaced it with “adult services,” where posting an ad costs $10.

But Kennedy’s study provides a glimpse of just how rampant — and brazen — prostitution is on the site.

She enlisted eight graduate students to target the Las Vegas “erotic services” section and randomly pulled ads over two months in 2007. They sampled and analyzed 12,444 ads, roughly 12 percent of the total “erotic services” ads posted in Las Vegas over the time.

The results revealed that prostitutes operate on the Web with little fear of law enforcement. For example:

• Nearly all of the ads included photos of what appeared to be escorts or escort agencies.

• More than 80 percent of the ads included phone numbers, most with a 702 area code.

• More than a third of the ads specified prices for services.

Craigslist isn’t alone in what has become the newest way to facilitate paying for sex. Many more sites exist, and some, like craigslist, also cater to individual cities. One such site that focuses on Las Vegas allows people to post graphic reviews of escorts, including how much the reviewer paid for the “session,” whether it was in-call or out-call and whether the escort tried to sell additional services to the reviewer.

Some of the reviews are for local massage parlors, and the reviewers state the name of the “masseuse” and the name and address of the business.

Read more at The Las Vegas Sun…

Henderson postpones vote on toughening law on massage parlors
Number of licenses would increase because more would need them
By Sam Skolnik

The Henderson City Council on Tuesday postponed action on a proposed ordinance clamping down on massage parlors. Without comment, the vote was moved to early next year, probably in January or February.

The ordinance is an effort to combat illegal activities in massage parlors and “reflexology” establishments, which are supposed to offer a type of “pressure point” massage to the hands and feet.

Both types of establishments throughout the valley have often served as fronts for prostitution. Henderson would like to at least try to put a stop to that.

The ordinance — aiming to be “responsive to community concerns” — would restrict the hours the parlors may operate to 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. It also would forbid the use of tinted glass on the establishments’ exterior windows, and mandate that the front and back doors remain unlocked during business hours. The ordinance would also prohibit “false or deceptive advertising” about the businesses.

The changes would mean massage businesses in Henderson would be more tightly regulated than those in Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County.

A businessman in town for a convention decides to make his night a little more memorable, and winds up on the business end of a mickey and short his money & valuables.  We at Insider Escort Secrets tend to think this kind of stuff is overstated, but there’s no doubt that the legendary ‘trick roll’ is real.

Read more at The Las Vegas Sun…

Their valuables gone, like their ladies of the night
More than $2 million is likely be stolen in ’09 in ‘trick rolls’ in which a prostitute robs a client
By Abigail Goldman

People in the company of Clark County prostitutes collectively reported having $1.4 million in cash and goods stolen from them during the first nine months of this year — dupes of a larceny genre better known to police as the “trick roll.”

By year’s end, it’s estimated the total reported losses will exceed $2 million — almost double last year’s total, and probably a fraction of the real amount.

How many people file police reports, after all, when their prostitutes disappoint?

Enough, at least, for Metro vice detectives to determine the problem is getting worse, and assign two detectives to trick roll investigations exclusively. They’ve gotten roughly one case every day this year. In 2007 it was more like one a week.

That increase could have something to do with the economy. Fewer tourists with less money means supply exceeds demand. Prices drop and competition ratchets up for prostitutes, many of whom police say must meet nightly quotas set by pimps. Metro Sgt. Donald Hoier, though, says the problem picked up before the economy fell, simply because Clark County was saturated with sex workers and outlets for illicit entertainment.

When everybody scrambles for the same pool of money, bad seeds take short cuts.

Consider the reported losses Hoier reads from a list of cases: $10,000 in cash, casino chips and a laptop; $30,000 in cash and chips; $20,000 Rolex; $6,000 Rolex; $5,000 cash; and — perhaps the most interesting, a case Hoier can only hint at — $175,000 in casino chips.

These are preposterous amounts, which is probably why they were reported in the first place.

Sometimes these are crimes of opportunity. A watch is left out, a laptop is folded in the corner.

But there are prostitutes for whom sex is only a pretext to theft, and others who have no intention of sleeping with their clients, Hoier said. They know how to exploit angles and mirrors to see safe codes being punched, while others, Hoier says, actually become good at identifying the tones assigned to each number on the key pads.

“While he’s in the shower,” Hoier says, “she’s taking everything.”

Drugs are slipped into drinks. Clients are escorted to ATMs for payment, only to find their cards have been stolen by someone who surreptitiously saw the pin number. Two women come to one room and run lewd tactical diversion.

But sometimes it’s just a matter of violence.

Prostitutes have pulled guns. Pimps, waiting nearby, Hoier says, have beaten people just shy of death.

All of this is easier to accomplish when the target fits a preferred profile: intoxicated and alone.

Read more at The Las Vegas Sun.

An interesting article about the online pay-for-sex scene. Read more at redOrbit.com…

Internet Fuels Virtual Subculture For Sex Trade

The Internet has spawned a virtual subculture of “johns” who share information electronically about prostitution, potentially making them harder to catch, according to a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University criminologist.

The research by MSU’s Thomas Holt and Kristie Blevins of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte challenges the common perception that sex customers act alone and do not interact for fear of reprisal or scorn. The study appears in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Holt, assistant professor of criminal justice, said today’s Web-savvy johns use the Internet to solicit prostitutes and to provide each other with warnings of prostitution hot zones and stings, which can hamper the efforts of law enforcement officials.

But the more police become familiar the johns’ Web activities, the more it can help them zero in on the perpetrators, Holt added.

“The growth of these deviant subcultures has made it more difficult for law enforcement,” said Holt, who has helped police devise prostitution stings. “On the other hand, it gives us a new opportunity to use the way the offenders communicate to better target their activities.”

The study analyzed prostitution Web forums in 10 U.S. cities with the highest rates of prostitution arrests: Atlanta; Baltimore; Chicago; Dayton, Ohio; Elizabeth, N.J.; Forth Worth, Texas; Hartford, Conn.; Inglewood, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Memphis, Tenn.

In the Web forums, the johns provide detailed information on the location of sexual services on the streets and indoors, as well as ways to identify specific providers, information on costs and personal experiences with providers.

The open nature of the forums led the johns to carefully disguise their discussions with a unique language, or argot, based largely on code and acronyms. This argot may help johns and sex workers to avoid legal sanctions and any social stigma associated with participating in the sex trade, the researchers said.

The LVPD asks Clark County to tighten its enforcement of prostitution laws. Read more at The San Francisco Examiner…

Clark County asked to tighten prostitution laws

Las Vegas police are asking Clark County to tighten its prostitution enforcement by bringing it more in line with the city’s ordinances.

Las Vegas vice officers on Tuesday presented county commissioners with two proposed ordinance amendments aimed at closing the gap between city and county laws.

Las Vegas police say prostitution workers know it’s better to be arrested for solicitation in unincorporated county areas than in the city.

One proposed change would make it easier for police to arrest prostitutes who try to entrap undercover officers.

The other would let police arrest prostitutes who loiter in areas of resorts such as hallways that aren’t open to the general public without a key.

This poor client made so many mistakes. It’s dangerous out there, guys. Read more at The Las Vegas Review-Journal…

Woman guilty of murder, robbery
Prostitute agrees to testify against pimp

A 20-year-old prostitute pleaded guilty Thursday to murder and robbery in connection with the slaying of one of her frequent customers two years ago, according to District Court records.

As part of the agreement, the woman will cooperate with investigators and testify against her boyfriend and pimp and his friend in connection with the March 2008 shooting death of the woman’s 62-year-old client.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the pimp in connection with the shooting, court records said.

The client’s body was found bound and gagged in his Cadillac Escalade on March 19 in the Southern Highlands neighborhood. He had bullet holes in his leg and his head.

The man was attracted to young black female prostitutes and had taken the woman out to dinner and to his house on several occasions, investigators said.

Authorities said that on March 16, 2008, the woman lured the man to her apartment, where her two co-conspirators were waiting to rob him.

They beat him up, bound and gagged him and left him in a closet, bleeding heavily, the woman told Las Vegas police.

She then went to the client’s east Las Vegas house and took a handgun from his safe. He had given her the safe combination, police said.

The crew carried the client to his Escalade and drove to Southern Highlands. Once there, the pimp shot the client multiple times, police said.

This has been building all summer, as the LVPD has busted some racy resort hotels and a night club or two. It looks like a renewed effort for my beloved Sin City to clean up its act. Read more at UPI…

Vegas getting tough on nightclub antics

Las Vegas police are cracking down on “mega-nightclubs” at casino-hotels that allegedly allow prostitution, lewd behavior and drug use, observers say.

The Labor Day weekend brought eight arrests at the Hard Rock Hotel’s pool club, called Rehab, on suspicion of prostitution and drug crimes, while in July the Rio closed a topless pool managed by a local strip club after 10 were arrested there, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

That same month, gaming regulators slapped the Planet Hollywood casino with a $500,000 penalty for allowing patrons at its Prive nightclub to engage in “topless and lewd activity,” the newspaper said.

Vegas observers say the lucrative, glitzy nightclubs and their booze-drenched pool parties first appeared in the 1990s, replacing its traditional smoke-filled lounges, after the city’s attempts to market itself as a family-friendly destination failed to generate sufficient revenue.