Sex a Non-Issue in Charges Over ‘Swing Club’

The windows of the tract home were blackened or covered with foil. But nothing else about the gray house in pricey Cowan Heights hinted that dozens of stylish suburban couples were swapping sex partners inside, authorities said. Not back in the summer of 1988, anyway.

Stephen Cohen, operator of The Club, never tried to keep it a secret. In fact, he advertised in local newspapers, listing a phone number that offered callers information about the “private membership social club.”

But one day, a man pushing his grandchild in a stroller caught a glimpse of a couple having sex through a window, and people on Brier Lane began noticing a number of cars congesting the street on weekends. Well-dressed men and women, sometimes 50 or 60 couples on Saturday nights, were pouring into the one-story house.

Word spread through the neighborhood about carpeted rooms and “pool parties” and “bisexual ladies’ nights.” So residents raised a stink, calling the Sheriff’s Department and circulating flyers.

Now, after nearly a year of investigation, two men are nearing trials on misdemeanor charges that have nothing to do with sex. They are accused of running a business in a residential area and causing public nuisances that offend the “morality” of the neighborhood.

Neither Jackson C. Wang of Santa Ana, who owns the house, nor Cohen, a Trabuco Canyon resident who rents it, would spend time in jail time if convicted, authorities said. But The Club could be forced out of the neighborhood.

Neither man could be reached Monday for comment. However, Wang has told authorities that he was unaware of the club until charged in court. He told a television station that Cohen had been a good tenant but that he would evict him if Cohen didn’t have a long-term lease. Investigators say Cohen has maintained that he needs no permit because the operation is a club, not a business.

“The sex isn’t the issue,” said Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Kimberly Menninger, who filed the charges. “This is a very residential area. If you had a tennis club, you’d have to get a (business) permit.

“It’s not a First Amendment case,” she said.

“These are not your run-of-the-mill sleazy (looking) people here,” Orange County Sheriff’s investigator Gary Jones added. “We watched Rolls-Royces and Corvettes pull up, and some very good-looking people. We are talking about regular, middle- and upper middle-class people.”

Jones said the customers, dressed to kill and driving nice cars, arrive from all over Southern California and pay a $60 annual membership fee, then per-visit charges of $10 to $40. Parties, featuring pizza and take-out chicken but no alcohol, are held on Friday and Saturday nights--poolside on Sunday afternoons, Jones said.

Sometime after the grandfather said he saw the sex act from the sidewalk, neighbors met to discuss the house on Brier Lane. Then they spoke with one of the Sheriff’s Department deputies assigned to patrol their bucolic and affluent unincorporated area in the Tustin foothills.

An investigation was launched Feb. 9, 1989. Jones said investigators found that Cohen had registered in July, 1988, for a fictitious business name at the address and was advertising The Club in newspapers as “a social swing club for married and committed couples only.”

Two undercover sheriff’s deputies posing as a couple attended two weekend parties at the house and reported their findings, Jones said. Four bedrooms of the 2,600-square-foot home were divided into beige-carpeted “cubbyholes” that one source close to the case described as resembling “cat condos.”

Investigators found that some of the small partitioned areas were connected by foil-lined “mouse holes” lit with red bulbs. The dining room of the home had been turned into a disco-like dance room, and the garage had been converted into a lounge area with wet bar, authorities said.

Investigators returned with fire and county code inspectors, who cited Cohen, required that he remove the bedroom partitions and insisted that a back-yard fence around the pool and spa be raised for safety reasons. Over about a year’s time, Cohen complied with all of the citations, Menninger said.

But The Club parties continued. Menninger filed the misdemeanor charges in May.

The parties continue each weekend. Investigators say that, based on Cohen’s own figures, The Club is netting $100,000 annually.

One of the most infuriating aspects of the operation, said a resident, is Cohen’s attitude about the purpose of The Club.

“They acknowledge what they’re doing, and they’re not ashamed, they’re rather brazen in their openness,” said the resident.

Times staff writers Lily Eng and Matt Lait contributed to this report.