AIDS Classes Urged for Prostitutes and Patrons

Standing at a street corner on Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys, a popular soliciting ground for prostitutes, a group of city officials on Thursday proposed a mandatory AIDS-education program for convicted prostitutes and their customers.

People convicted of a variety of drug offenses also would be placed in the program, which would send them to a 2 1/2-hour class on how to avoid getting and transmitting AIDS. Certain offenders also would be funneled into substance-abuse and sexual-addiction programs under the proposal, which Councilman Joel Wachs said he will introduce today to City Council.

Wachs, City Atty. James K. Hahn, police Capt. Tim McBride and other community officials, who also endorsed the program, blamed prostitutes and drug users for the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome into the heterosexual community. Wachs cited tests administered at Sybil Brand Institute, the Los Angeles County women’s jail, which found that 10% of women arrested for prostitution had been exposed to the AIDS virus.

“We’re here today to try to stop this directly at its source,” the councilman, whose district includes Van Nuys, said at a press conference at the corner of Vanowen Street.

Neighbors Approve

A cluster of area residents--some carrying placards saying “Prostitution spreads AIDS” and wearing “Whorebusters” T-shirts--applauded the proposal. Business owners along a several-mile stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard for years have bemoaned the prostitution problem along the street.

Caroline Kovarik, co-owner of a nearby flower shop, wore a sandwich board bearing lyrics of the “fight song” she wrote for a group called Citizens Against Prostitution. She acknowledged that a police crackdown on prostitutes has helped clean up the streets in the past month but said it has hardly made them an endangered species.

“They’re out there at 5:30 in the morning for the construction workers,” she said. “They’re out all night, and they’re out there all day. Female customers coming into my store get asked if they want to party. You can’t even go mail a letter on Sepulveda.

“The johns have got to be told they’re taking a big chance.”

Wachs contended that many of the customers don’t know about AIDS, despite extensive publicity about the epidemic.

Not Thinking About Dying

“I know when a trick comes around that corner and sees a prostitute, he’s not thinking, ‘I’m going to die,’ ” he said.

“Most of the people we want to reach can’t be reached by conventional means. They’re not in school, they’re not reading newspapers or watching TV news programs.”

They do, however, appear in court.

The pilot program would be run out of Van Nuys Municipal Court, whose officials have approved of the plan, Wachs said. As a condition of probation, judges there would send to an AIDS-education class people convicted of solicitation, lewd conduct, possession of a controlled substance, being under the influence of an opiate or PCP, or possession or misuse of a hypodermic needle or syringe without a prescription.

About 300 people a month are convicted of those charges in Van Nuys courts. Start-up costs would be $50,000 to $60,000, which Wachs said would be available either from Los Angeles County or the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The program would be maintained by boosting fines for the affected offenses by $50.

Unlike traffic schools, in which graduates have violations cleared from their records, the AIDS-education class would not change the record of the convictions.

Participants would not be tested for AIDS because that would be illegal, Hahn said.

Even an architect of the program acknowledged that it might not reduce prostitution.

“That’s not my goal in any way,” said Bob Timmons of the Foundation for Research in Education and Drug Abuse, which is helping to design the AIDS class.

“My intention is to provide some education about safe-sex practices. My intention is to keep people out of harm’s way. The groups most at risk are prostitutes and drug users, and I want to tell them about doing things in a safe manner.”

Timmons said he won’t be preaching to the converted.

“Many of them--particularly young male prostitutes, the runaways from Imperial, Neb., who wind up in wonderful Hollywood--have reached a point of despair. They’re doing it to eat, to survive. I ask what kind of (safe-sex) things they’re practicing, and they say, ‘Well, I ask my customer.’ ”