MIAMI — Strip clubs have been striving to clean up their image. The uproar over a 13-year-old dancer won't help with that.
It's
early evening, and the dancers are beginning to trickle in to an Art
Deco theater in the heart of South Beach, a place with a neon-lit facade
that serves a mixed-gender clientele, from local businessmen and
high-rollers to tourists, celebrities and swingers.
For more than
two decades, Club Madonna, billed as Miami Beach's only all-nude strip
joint, at 15th and Washington, has been known not for what it has, but
mostly for what it doesn't have — a shred of clothing on its dancers or
an ounce of booze behind its bar.
A dry club on South Beach is a
little like a having a Miami Beach vacation without the beach, a detail
that the club's owner and the city's political overseers have been at
war over since the turn of the century.
But now, the club — long
vilified by some as a sleazy blight on the city's otherwise glittery,
iconic image — is getting attention for something entirely new and
especially unwholesome, not to mention illegal.
On Friday, the
city pulled the club's license in the wake of allegations that it
allowed a 13-year-old girl, allegedly caught up in a human sex
trafficking scheme, to dance naked on stage.
Related: Strip club settlement to pay for women's shelter
The
girl, a runaway, told police that she agreed to dance at the club, but
was later forced to turn over her earnings to her pimps, two Miami men
who on Monday were arrested, along with a female dancer at the club, on
charges that they forced her strip and prostitute herself.
When
she told investigators how she was allegedly able to easily slip into a
South Beach strip club and dance her way onto stage naked — without
anyone seeming to take notice of her age — it brought renewed attention
to Club Madonna, as well as to an adult entertainment industry, that has
spent decades trying to overcome its negative image.
The uproar over the 13-year-old dancer is not likely to boost that image makeover.
Joe
Rodriguez, owner of Cheetah Gentlemen's Clubs, who has been in the
business for 45 years, said the art of concocting a phony ID has made
tremendous advances in recent years.
"Some of these girls come and
in and they really look older than they are," he said. "They bring in
IDs, you have to almost be in the FBI sometimes to tell if they are
fake.''
GIRL CALLED 'PEACHES'
LeRoy
Griffith, who has owned Madonna from the time, 40 years ago, when it was
a regular movie house that showed spaghetti westerns, said he still
doesn't know for sure whether the teen, who used the stage name
"Peaches," actually danced at the club. He was on a New Year's cruise at
the time of the affair, and his head manager, on the job only two
months, was also on holiday.
What he does know is that all his
dancers sign contracts and provide identification, showing they are at
least 18 years old — and he has neither for the 13-year-old, identified
in police reports as "D.J."
"If she danced, then the club made a
mistake,'' Griffith said. "And if we did, it's the first time in 20
years. It won't happen again, I can tell you that.''
The girl,
Griffith said, told one of his dancers, Marlene San Vicente, 22, that
she had her baby taken away from her and was trying to figure out a way
to get her back. The Miami Herald could not confirm whether the girl in
fact had had a baby.
"She was babysitting my dancer's children and
she was turning tricks,'' Griffith said. "My dancer felt sorry for her
and told her that she could earn some money by dancing instead, so she
called one of my managers one night and told him that she was bringing
in a friend.''
Griffith said the 13-year-old showed the manager a false license showing that she was 18.
According
to police, however, the girl claimed the club's managers never asked
her for anything to verify her age. San Vicente bought her sexy clothes,
tutored her on how to dance and paid to have her nails and hair done,
according to the police reports.
The girl told police she worked
the club on Dec. 27 and 28 and Jan. 2, 3 and 4. Each night she was
forced to turn over her earnings, ranging from $120 to $500 a night, to
her pimps, identified by police as Dwayne Ward, 18, Vilbert Jean, 37,
and a third man, only identified as "AP."
At the time she was
living in Miami, in a multi-unit house near Miami's Morningside Park,
after having run away from home with two 15-year-old girls in early
December, police said.
They all wound up at the White House Inn, a
two-story motel on the water in North Miami. There, they met AP, who
allegedly offered to take the girls to the 55th Terrace house where he
said they could stay while on the run.
Jean, who also lived on the
premises, "immediately noticed" that the girls seemed to be under age,
and asked them to leave, according to the police report. The
15-year-olds did. But the 13-year-old told them she was 18 and stayed,
police said.
D.J. agreed to have sex in exchange for money, but
when the men kept the money and began demanding she pay rent, she became
frustrated with the arrangement. Ward suggested she prostitute herself
on a website used by escort services, but she refused. That's when San
Vicente offered to help her out by introducing her to exotic dancing.
Griffith
said San Vicente, whose stage name is "Ayaya,'' has danced for him off
and on for years. When she bonded out of jail on Tuesday, San Vicente
came into the club to work, Griffith said. She told him she was sorry
for all the trouble she caused.
"She said she just was trying to help out the girl and didn't know she was 13,'' Griffith said.
She
was returned to jail Thursday after authorities realized she was
released in error. The offense she is charged with is not bondable.
'DID NOT LOOK 13'
Police
executed search warrants and collected the club's video tapes and other
evidence to determine whether the girl actually did take the stage and
whether she performed lap dances.
"She did not look 13,'' said
Mike Kalbach, the club's manager. Kalbach said his employees told him
her physical attributes made her look much older.
Kalbach worked
the Las Vegas strip club circuit for 25 years before coming to South
Beach. Underage dancers are very rare in Las Vegas, he said, because
dancers are required to have identification provided by the county's
sheriff's department in order to work in the clubs. The sheriff's
department conducts background checks and verifies their ages before
issuing the cards, he said.
Angelina Spencer, executive director
of the Florida Chapter of the Association of Club Executives (ACE) and
the Florida Sunshine Entertainment Association, said the industry has
recognized that fake identification and human trafficking are serious
issues. To that end they have instituted training programs and
guidelines to help club owners navigate the laws and new technology.
She said clubs should require two forms of identification from dancers, and proof of those IDs should be kept on file.
"They should have been checking IDs. There can't be a 'whoops!' " Spencer said.
Rodriguez
said Palm Beach County has a program similar to Las Vegas, where clubs
can only hire dancers who have licenses issued by the county.
"They do a background check, and if they don't have an entertainer's license, that means they can't dance,'' he said.
A CHANGING INDUSTRY
The adult entertainment business has changed a lot in the past four decades, or so the industry likes to say.
Rodriguez
remembers a time when the dancers would be foulmouthed, high on drugs
and alcohol, and fight and throw bottles. Today, he insists, they are
college students, housewives and other professionals who work eight-hour
shifts.
"They are hard-working girls,'' he said. "Just people
trying to make a living. I got to tell you, the business has evolved in
such a good way.''
A University of Leeds survey of exotic dancers
in the United Kingdom found that 25 percent of respondents said they had
an undergraduate degree and 29 percent were "engaged in in some form of
education while dancing."
The university, in West Yorkshire,
reported that dancers made up to $79,000 a year. According to
information released by the Florida Bar, the median starting salary for a
lawyer with experience is $55,000.
Luke Lirot, a lawyer who has
represented the adult entertainment industry since the late 1980s and is
counsel for the Florida chapter of Association of Club Executives, said
many clubs classify exotic dancers as contractors.
Rather than
being on the payroll, dancers today pay the club for the privilege of
performing on stage, coughing up money — normally called a house fee —
to the owners, ranging from $10 to $100, depending on the club.
Dancers
at Club Madonna pay the club $45 to $100 depending on the shift they
work, with women working the busier shifts paying the most money. For
lap dances, which cost $25, the house keeps $10, and the dancer keeps
$15, Griffith said.
As in most clubs, the women get to keep their
tips, but have to tip the deejay and the bartender, although since Club
Madonna doesn't serve alcohol, there is no bartender in the classic
sense. The booze ban is something Griffith has been agitated over for
years. He has sued the city multiple times to try to overturn its
prohibition on alcohol sales at fully nude clubs such as his. The latest
scandal is the last thing he wanted to happen.
Miami criminal
defense attorney David Weinstein, a former state and federal prosecutor,
said it is a second-degree felony to allow a person under the age of 18
to engage in a sexual performance, defined by law as a performance
exhibiting genitals or performing a dance, such a lap dance, where the
dancer is touching someone to create sexual arousal.
Human trafficking, or commercial sexual exploitation, is a life felony, punishable by a life sentence.
"He
owns and operates a nightclub. Therefore he is responsible for what
happens there,'' Weinstein said. "If he has an employee who hasn't
conducted proper background checks, he is as guilty as they are of what
takes place."
Griffith's feud with the city dates back to 2004,
when, after winning a preliminary vote for a liquor license, he lost a
final vote after two elected officials — including then-Commissioner
Jose Smith (now the city attorney) reversed their support. Jane Gross,
wife of then-Commissioner Saul Gross, then waged an opposition campaign,
and students and parents at a nearby elementary school showed up at
City Hall to protest Griffith's effort to get a liquor license.
Griffith
filed a slander and libel suit against Gross, saying she had wrongly
called him a tax-evader — when he had merely disputed an IRS debt — and
alleged she smeared him by comparing his website to a pornographic
website that wasn't his.
Then, he accused city officials of trying
to extort him into paying $30,000 of Gross' legal fees in order to
settle and reconsider his bid to sell alcohol. City officials denied it,
but the Miami-Dade ethics commission concluded that they pushed "their
collegial bonds over the ethical line.''
In recent weeks, he
seemed better positioned to get his liquor license, since most of his
adversaries had failed to get re-elected.
One of his most ardent adversaries, however, remains well entrenched in city politics — Jose Smith.
"This
is, without a doubt, a vendetta by Jose Smith,'' said Griffith's
attorney, Richard Wolfe, who added that the city overstepped its
authority in pulling the club's license without evidence.
Smith's
response? "I would say that this case is not about me. It's about the
exploitation of a 13-year old child," he said, adding that any further
comments "would be made in court."
The decision to pull Madonna's permit was made by City Manager Jimmy Morales, not Smith.
"It's
obvious he is not a loved person in Miami Beach,'' Weinstein said of
Griffith. "They would like nothing more than to close him down and send
him on his way.
![Teen strip club dancer: Club Madonna strippers walk around the club's lounge in Miami Beach, Fla. The club, billed as Miami Beach's only all-nude strip joint, had its license recently pulled in the wake of allegations that it allowed a 13-year-old girl to dance naked on stage.: Club Madonna strippers walk around the club's lounge in Miami Beach, Fla. The nude club had its license pulled in the wake of allegations that it had allowed a 13-year-old girl to dance naked on stage.]({"default":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/3a/ea1a1a99618fe16758ca0eb73394f/_h353_w628_m6_otrue_lfalse.jpg"})
