PURCHASED SEX IN THE US – BUSINESS OR SEXUAL ASSULT?

 

 

Alice: “Spending an hour here would be in the four figure range unless someone has a particular fetish or fantasy that would make it a specialty experience and push it to the five figure range.”

 

Alice Little sells sex because she has chosen to do so. Others sell sex because they are forced to do so.

 

Rebekah: “...it's hard for me to think about my 17-year-old self being in this place and seeing customer after customer, and you know, wanting a way out.”

 

SB, Kimberley: “I was raped!”

 

The United States is in the middle of an open showdown between those who want it to be legal to buy sex and those who don’t. It’s about morality, freedom and human rights.

 

SB, Kimberley: “Your pimp's name can be poverty, homelessness, domestic violence.”

 

And it’s about money – because in the US the sex industry is a billion business.

 

Christina: “In my perfect world, there would be full decriminalization.”

 

A dark and hidden world that may soon be out in the open.

 

 

CARSON CITY, NEVADA

 

 

I travelled to the state of Nevada – to go a brothel. Here, in the desert – far from the big cities – are the only legal brothels in the US.

 

And here, the front line runs into a battle for sex. A fight for and against legal prostitution.

 

The ranch’s name is The Bunny Ranch. Alice Little is the prostitute at Nevada’s brothels who earn the most. Last year, she sold sex for about seven million DKK (1,05 million USD).

 

Alice Little: “Prior to working at The Bunny Ranch, I was traveling around the country as a sex educator.”

 

Alice Little is also an unofficial spokeswoman for the brothels.

 

Alice Little: “That was three years ago and, as you can see, I haven't looked back. I absolutely love it here.”

 

Alice Little: “It was an opportunity for me to explore my own sexuality, my own interests, and how I kind of evaluated sex and connections. It kind of made me discover myself in a way and I learned to intuit what I enjoy personally, too.”

 

Here come men who want to buy sex. Men of all types.

 

Alice Little: “Widowers, divorcees, individuals that have fears and phobias regarding going out and interacting with a woman in that capacity. Why not have a legalized service where they can come and receive that enrichment?”

 

The brothels operate fully legally and are subject to strict rules – e.g. to avoid the spread sexually transmitted diseases.

 

Alice Little:” Here, at the brothels, we're required to visit the doctor every single week before we are able to work and receive our work cards from the local sheriff's office, we actually have to undergo an FBI fingerprint background investigation in order to come here and work.”

 

 

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But the legal brothels as The Bunny Ranch are under attack. Strong forces want them closed and buying sex made illegal throughout Nevada – as it is in the rest of the United States.

 

The argument is that prostitution – no matter in what disguise it occurs – is fundamental to violence against women.

 

Kimberley: “I want the end of violence against women as a whole. And I want equality for women as a whole. And part of that is recognizing that prostitution is a violence against women issue.”

 

Here, in the state of Nevada is a hearing – with a new law one wants to close the brothels; make it illegal to buy sex, while selling sex must be decriminalized according to a Swedish model: The idea is that women who prostitute themselves by definition are victims to be helped.

 

Kimberley: “I survived childhood sexual trauma, I survived child sex trafficking. And I, in some of my darkest moments of life, have turned to wanting to take control over my own body and choosing who, in those moments, has access to that. And in moments of needing money, needing finances, needing to be able to put a roof over my head and food in my stomach, there's one thing I know how to go back to. And that's prostitution.”

 

Kimberley: “That doesn't mean that that's something that I want to do, that doesn't mean that that's something that I choose my identity to be in. That means that trauma and learning how to get on my knees when I'm 11 years old and making money off of that, that that's something that I can revert to in a state of trauma and a state of survival.”

 

Alice: “I am a legal sex-worker...”

 

Not everyone agrees with that interpretation. Not at all the legal brothels which turn over millions of dollars each year.

 

Alice: “..sex-workers have not been heard......”

 

Kimberley: “Are we just supposed to turn a blind eye for the nine women that are gonna be enslaved, and raped, and assaulted, so that Alice Little can prostitute herself? We're just supposed to ignore that? That's not right. That's not how it works.”

 

 

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Rebekah: “I actually found myself forced into prostitution when I should have been a sophomore in high school. On this very street.”

 

Dallas in the south of Texas. Here, along Harry Hince’s Avenue, the city’s street prostitutes work.

 

Name tag: Rebekah Charleston, leader, The Help organization, Valiant Hearts

 

Rebekah: “... I'd been raped at the age of 14, my brother committed suicide when I was 5 years old and I was walking around with all this unresolved trauma and I wasn't talking to anyone about it. I felt like I had no one”

 

The women on the street make up the lowest class among US sex workers.

 

Rebekah: “And I wound up starting to use drugs to cope with that pain at the age of 15 and then at the age of 17 I wound up running away from home."

 

Here, the cheapest form of sex costs DKK 30 (4,49 USD) – a sexual intercourse DKK 200 (30 USD). Like all places outside of Nevada, all that is going on here is legal.

 

Rebekah: "After the first day, really after the first act, the amount of shame that I felt as a child, I thought, I felt gross, I wanted to kill myself, I thought if I ran that I would get raped and murdered and chopped up in little pieces down here and no one would ever find my body.”

 

Rebekah Charleston plays an important role in the battle of the Nevada brothels – but her story begins right here.

 

Rebekah: “This is a nasty, disgusting place.”

 

At Anchors Motel, where you can rent a room on an hourly basis …

 

Rebekah: “When I think about the little kid I was out here and what I was forced to do and shame and trauma kept me trapped”

 

… and where you get a condom handed out along with the key to the room.

 

Rebekah: “But it's hard for me to think about my 17-year-old self being in this place and seeing customer after customer, and you know, wanting a way out. But I was so ashamed that I stayed, because what else was I gonna do. There's no way I can go back to high school after this.”

 

Rebekah Charleston’s life was run by a pimp – a man she first thought would save her.

 

Rebekah: “it wasn't long before I met my first trafficker, who seemed like a really nice guy, and I thought he was going to be my boyfriend, it wasn’t until the second day I realized what his dreams was going to cost me in terms of my dignity and my body”

 

Here, at the Anchours Motel in Dallas, a ten-year nightmare of drugs, violence and prostitution began - and as Rebekah Charleston says – it ended in the most famous legal brothel in Nevada: The Bunny Ranch.

 

Rebekah: “What happened to me was wrong and I never woke up one day and said I want to be a prostitute, I never woke up one day and said I want to take my clothes off for money. Those are things I was forced to do, I mean, and manipulated and abused and, and, all the other dynamics that go into it.”

 

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At the Bunny Ranch in Nevada, Alice Little has become the best-earning prostitute in the legal brothels – because of her sales techniques, she says.

 

The law forbids the brothels to advertise with prices. Therefore, the prostitutes must negotiate with each costumer.

 

The sales ploys are the same here as in any other industry, only the item – sex – is different.

 

Alice: “I am the CEO of what is now a seven-figure business and brand, which I'm incredibly proud of. I grew it from the ground up about three years ago based off of my passion for communication, education, and the openness and availability of a legalized sex market for all.”

 

This big legal money gives good tax revenue in the small country municipalities where the brothels are registered. The Bunny Ranch delivers e.g. half a million dollars in taxes every year.

 

Alice: “That $500,000 represents the entirety of the sheriff's department budget for vehicles. Essentially, without the legal brothels, the cops would be on mustangs (horses) and bicycles.”

 

 

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Las Vegas City at the other end of the state of Nevada has a motto: “What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas”. An open invention to dive into the city’s booming sex industry. Prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas – brothels are only legal in Nevada’s rural districts. But here are strip bars, call girls, escort girls and street prostitutes everywhere.

 

And here, I also find an unusual expert in brothels.

 

Christina: “My name is Christina Parreira, I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and also a former brothel worker and brothel researcher."

 

Christina Parreira has been in the sex industry for many years …

 

Christina: “I was a webcam girl, I had done a little bit of stripping, it really wasn't for me...”

 

… alongside her academic studies.

 

Christina: “... I did a bit of more professional adult film, really wasn't for me. I had never planned on doing full service sex work, you know prostitution, escorting. I had always been very fascinated by it though”

 

While researching the lawful brothels, she lived at the Bunny Ranch among other places. Here, she interviewed 53 women for a PHD dissertation – while at the same time she herself chose to work as a prostitute.

 

Name tag: CHRISTINA PARREIRA, PHD STUDENT, LAS VEGAS UNIVERSITY

 

Christina: “The vast majority of women said they felt safe. When I asked why they explained, because of the panic buttons. Because it's legal. Because if a client assaults me, I can call the cops. I can go to the house mom. There's protection. I do have my critiques and I think there's reform needed, but it was a place that I was happy to work. I went from being terrified, like I can't believe I'm becoming a prostitute for data, to I really like this job. I might stay.”

 

According to Parreira, the legal system provides a safe framework and a good secure income for the women who work at the brothels – even if they have to hand over half their earnings to the house.

 

Christina: “Some of the things that surprised me were most of the top earners are in their later 30s, mostly 40s and even 50s. A lot of them are married. I just sort of assumed, I guess I had the misconception that they're all young, in their 20s, partying single, a lot of these women are in their 40s buying real estate (UD) leveraging this money to other businesses.”

 

 

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But there’s another dark and dirty side of the brothels, Rebekah Charleston says. For ten years, her life was controlled by a pimp, who took her to Las Vegas so that she could sell herself on the street.

 

Rebekah: “Our trafficker would actually send us to the legal brothels in Nevada as a form of punishment. If we weren't making enough money, or if we got arrested too much in the city, he would send us there so that they would control us and be- we would be out of his hair.”

 

Rebekah Charleston has now brought charges against the state of Nevada for human trafficking. If she wins, it can possibly close the brothels.

 

Rebekah: “It was horrific. I mean I wasn't allowed to turn customers down. They actually had listening devices inside the room, which they say are for your own protection, but in reality if you blow a certain number of calls meaning you don't solicit and make a deal, you're gonna get kicked out of the house. So basically you're gonna lose your job, if you're not saying yes to the customers.”

 

From her perspective, Alice Little, who voluntarily chooses to prostitute herself, is the exception – not the rule.

 

Rebekah: “I think that it's a very slim minority and it's usually white women that come from good backgrounds, that have options and that truly are choosing that. For the vast majority what prostitution and dancing and sex trafficking looks like, it's marginalized people that have been abused. They come from the foster care system, they come from very broken backgrounds, so where they feel like that is their only option, or they're forced into it.”

 

 

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Alice Little – the star of the Bunny Ranch – has her own channel on YouTube. Here, she tests sex toys. She has a program where she gives advices on sex – and a podcast on the same topic. She sees herself as a front figure in a cultural struggle.

 

Alice Little: “Like so many things in American culture where we are a country that is very much so divided between conservatism and liberalism, in the sense where we have this progressive ability and right to sell this legalized service in Nevada. And some individuals who have religious or moralistic apprehensions to it are trying to use those feelings to legislate against my actions.”

 

Alice Little: “... sex trafficking does happen, but it happens in the illegal, independent, reregulated market. It's not happening in the legal brothels. We all have to undergo FBI fingerprinting and background checks. It's ridiculous to say that anyone is here forced, held against their will.”

 

In the legitimate brothels, it is the women who have the power and the financial gain – says Alice Little.

 

Alice Little: “We say yes and no. We set the prices. We set the standards. We take the typical American system and flip it on its head. I think what we have here is incredibly feminist and incredibly positive.”

 

 

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The United States in in the middle of an open showdown about purchased sex. It’s about morality, freedom, human rights – and it’s about money.

 

Right now, the front line is running here – in a mountainous desert area in the small state of Nevada. But in short time – when the next presidential election campaign is in full swing – the fight will flare from coast to coast.

 

And the voices here from Nevada will be heard – because only here are the legal brothels.  

 

Christina: “In my perfect world, there would be full decriminalization. (UD….) We would have a model where women could work from home if they want. They could work from anywhere they want. They do not have to go to the sheriff's office like they do here in Nevada to register with the police and now be on record forever as a prostitute.”

 

The great populous states of California and New York are now working to completely decriminalize prostitution – as we know it from Denmark. And that idea is supported by a couple of presidential candidates from the democratic party.

 

Rebekah: “I think that's the wrong model, I think that does not remove human trafficking. It does not make it any safer. In fact, it makes more people do it, because now it's legal. So what I believe in is the Nordic model, or the Swedish model, which you decriminalize the selling of sex meaning that women that- these women are no longer gonna get a criminal record, that they're gonna be offered services and a way out, if they want to.”

 

But no matter which side you agree with – most agree on one thing: America’s view of prostitution is changing. Like the resistance to cannabis has evaporated in many states where the drug is now legal – the resistance to buying sex will disappear.

 

Alice: “I want to be the person that legalizes sex work across America. I want to take what we have here in Nevada and not just have it at a county level, but I want to make this happen at a state level. There's no reason that every single county in Nevada does not have a legal brothel. When I'm done doing it at the state level, we're going nationwide. I want to be the person that brings sex work, legal brothels, from coast to coast of America.”

 

Alice: “It could literally be a billion, capital B, billion dollar industry if not tens of billions of dollars.”