Bordellos of Nevada Try to Lure Patrons, Banish AIDS

Brothels have been a part of Nevada’s frontier heritage at least since that day in 1859 when a river of silver ore first began to flow from the legendary Comstock Mine. Since 1971, they even have operated formally within state law.

Now, however, that remnant of frontier heritage is facing a modern scourge. AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the sexually transmitted fatal disease that destroys the body’s ability to fight infection, is reshaping Americans’ attitudes toward sex, and Nevada’s legal brothels are no exception.

After encountering a sharp dip in business, apparently due to AIDS worries, bordello owners have taken several steps to keep the disease in check, such as requiring the use of condoms to reduce the chances of infection.

The state also has stepped in, adding monthly AIDS screenings to the litany of regular medical exams already required of legal prostitutes--weekly checks for gonorrhea, herpes and venereal warts and monthly tests for syphilis.

Informal Laboratory

These measures provide a unique, if unwitting, informal laboratory in which both state health officials and the federal Centers for Disease Control can affirm the efficacy of the various precautions believed to check the spread of AIDS among heterosexuals.

There are now 37 legal bordellos running in Nevada--within a few miles, or sometimes just a few yards, of about every city of any real size in the state. Together, they contract with between 275 and 375 prostitutes who in turn cater to thousands of customers each year, in settings ranging from whirlpool-outfitted bungalows to broken-down mobile homes.

Many bordellos huddle inside security fences, giving them the appearance of minimum-security prisons that is belied only by garish paint jobs and flashing signs. The Mustang Ranch near Reno, one of the state’s biggest brothels, has a structure that resembles a prison gun tower.

Brothels are considered a local option in Nevada, and 11 of its 17 counties permit them. State law forbids bordellos in Clark County and local officials have banned them from the state’s next-largest population centers, Reno and Carson City. However, legal brothels are clustered along the closest borders of adjoining counties of all three cities.

Even with the AIDS epidemic, state lawmakers are loath to consider shutting down the state’s legal bordello trade, in large measure because state-mandated tests have yet to find a legal prostitute carrying the AIDS HIV virus.

Nevada also traditionally supports local control and individual choice, and this is cited as another reason the brothels are not outlawed. Taxes are not a large part of the equation--by one count, all 37 of Nevada’s brothels in 1985 generated only $400,000 in local taxes and fees, or less than 1% of the budget of most counties that permit prostitution.

Indirect Contribution

However, brothels may help the tax base in another way, suggested one state official. By keeping down the level of prostitution in large cities, they help in the effort to make a much more profitable vice--gambling--more attractive to strait-laced, churchgoing customers.

For many years, the state simply ignored its brothels, even the ones just a few blocks from the statehouse in Carson City. Regulating them or closing them was left to the state courts, county sheriffs or sometimes even to the commanders of nearby military bases.

In 1971, the Legislature formally codified the “local option” on brothels--everywhere except Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and is specifically prevented from allowing brothels. Since then, a number of lawmakers have tried to ban all bordellos, either on moral grounds or because they are seen by some people as an unsavory inhibitor of the state’s economic growth.

The last attempt to ban brothels statewide, in 1985, was killed even before being looked at by a legislative committee, despite 17 co-sponsors. “It was the shortest-lived bill in history,” said its author, Barbara Zimmer, a former Republican assemblywoman from Las Vegas. Another bill, in 1981, tried to prohibit bordellos within 25 miles of cities with 60,000 or more residents--Las Vegas and Reno. The bill died on an 11-9 vote in committee.

This session, there is no new anti-brothel bill. Instead, Assemblyman John DuBois (R-Las Vegas) has introduced a bill aimed at illegal streetwalkers. His proposal would require post-arrest AIDS tests of illegal prostitutes who work outside registered brothels. That idea is similar to laws proposed elsewhere, from California to West Germany, but the Nevada bill has a strict bonus: If a prostitute’s test shows she is carrying the AIDS virus and she subsequently is arrested again for prostitution, she can be charged with attempted murder.

“This is a deadly disease--there is no cure,” DuBois said, “and if they continue to have sex and expose scores to the disease, they are in fact committing mass murder.”

No AIDS Found

State health officials, however, stress that they have found no evidence of AIDS among the state’s prostitutes, including 35 illegal streetwalkers tested. However, shortly before state-mandated tests started last May, voluntary tests found one brothel worker who was indeed carrying the AIDS virus. Records show that the woman had worked one weekend at an unnamed brothel before she was fired.

There is no way to tell how many customers the woman may have infected--or may infect now that she is on her own and presumably working illegally on the street. State health statistics show that none of the 84 confirmed AIDS cases in Nevada as of May 8 could be traced to heterosexual activity.

Researchers from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health recently studied 535 prostitutes in three legal brothels and 370 incarcerated Nevada streetwalkers and found none of the brothel prostitutes infected with the AIDS virus. However, 22 of the illegal prostitutes, or almost 6% of those tested, were infected with the AIDS virus.

The surprising absence of AIDS infections among Nevada’s legal prostitutes can be traced to several factors, doctors said. One is that prostitutes throughout the country generally seem to have a low infection rate as long as they do not have intravenous drug habits.

Social workers, health officials and brothel owners concurred that brothels carefully police their prostitutes for such intravenous drug abuse, if only to calm customers and satisfy authorities. However, they disagree about the level of other forms of substance abuse among legal prostitutes, and about how often prostitutes have sex with needle-users during their time off from brothels.

Another reason for the low incidence of AIDS among Nevada prostitutes could be that AIDS may not be easily transmitted through vaginal sex, although doctors are quick to note this is not clear.

Called Russian Roulette

“You can find data to support the position that (vaginal sex) is extremely infectious . . . or that it’s a relatively low risk,” said Dr. Constance Wofsy, an AIDS expert at San Francisco General Hospital. “The truth is, it’s Russian roulette.”

Even if a bordello prostitute were to be infected, doctors believe that she would be discovered before reaching the most infectious stages of the disease, even if some months elapsed between exposure and detection.

“For several weeks to several months, a person may be exposed to the virus but not test positive,” said Dr. William Darrow, who heads up a prostitution and AIDS research group at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. “The chances of passing it on at that stage seem to be very low.

“But,” he added, “nobody knows for sure.”

Regardless of the reason behind the results, bordello operators are eagerly employing their AIDS-free finding to try to rebuild their clienteles.

“If somebody wants to step out, this is the safest way to do it,” claimed Terry Pleasant, new owner of the Stardust brothel in Ely. “It is a controlled environment.”

The success of their marketing campaign is mixed.

“As near as I can find out, all the brothels are slow,” said Rose of the Lazy B Guest Ranch, a bordello near Fallon, east of Reno. As with most brothel employees, Rose offered only her nickname. “I think that has to be due to the AIDS thing.”

Others, however, said business is returning to normal after a serious slump as recently as one year ago. State officials estimate that business had dipped 30% to 40% at one point, although reliable statewide figures are not recorded.

“At first . . . business went ‘boom’--all the way to the bottom,” said Joe Richards, owner of the Cherry Patch Ranch in Pahrump, nearly 60 miles north of Las Vegas. “But it’s recovered. We’re back to normal.”

Women Frightened

Not quite. Brothel patrons may be reassured by the measures designed to protect them, but talks with madams, social workers and prostitutes themselves indicate that the women working in brothels remain somewhat frightened.

A full-time prostitute working at a legal brothel could encounter more than 1,300 men in just a single year, and frequent sexual encounters with strangers is believed to be an effective way to contract the disease.

Carol Luce, owner of the Big 4 bordello in Ely, in eastern Nevada, said the three women working for her are “scared to death.” Others agreed, but no one--not a social worker, parole agent, madam or prostitute--could name a single woman who quit because of AIDS.

“I don’t see it changing the behavior of many women,” said Ellen Pillard, a University of Nevada, Reno, sociologist who studies prostitution. “My basic sense is they don’t comprehend the threat of AIDS. They hear about it and know about it, but like many people they just don’t think it will happen to them.”

“It is like telling people about smoking and lung cancer,” said Linda Holland Brown, a social worker at Sparks Family Hospital east of Reno. “They know it can happen, but ‘It’s never going to happen to me.’ ”

Women in brothels agree. “They are worried about it, sure--but not to the point where any one is going to give it up,” Rose said.

Instead, working women said they are trying to be more careful--coaxing or tricking reluctant clients into using condoms, casually questioning them about their sexual histories, and scrutinizing their bodies for needle marks. Intravenous drug abusers who share hypodermic syringes are among the people at highest risk of contracting and spreading AIDS, doctors say.

Brothel owners are confident that condoms at least are being used regularly in their establishments. “I don’t think there is enough money for any of them (prostitutes) to do it without condoms,” said Pleasant.

Economic Pressures

Others, including social workers, are not as confident. They have been told that economic pressures sometimes force prostitutes in the smaller, more rural brothels to give up condoms or other safety measures if a customer objects.

“How many girls are going to turn down a $100 date just because of that?” Rose asked. “Not many. Not many professional girls, anyway.”

In any case, social workers charge that mandatory condom use was a business decision meant to calm customers and boost profits, not protect prostitutes.

“Up to a year ago, the girls in brothels were absolutely forbidden to use condoms; nobody was interested in protecting the girls,” Brown charged. “But now, condoms are mandatory in most places, but it’s only to protect customers. They’re still not interested in protecting the girls.”