Sex Priestess Begins Serving 1-Year Term

Mary Ellen Tracy, the Canyon Country woman who claimed to be the high priestess of an ancient religion that preached absolution of sins through sex, surrendered in court Monday to begin serving a one-year jail term for prostitution.

Her husband, Will Tracy, 53, began serving a six-month jail term Monday after Los Angeles Municipal Court Commissioner Barry Kohn last week denied the Tracys’ request to stay their sentences while they appealed their convictions to the U.S. Supreme Court. The pair were found guilty in September, 1989, of running a house of prostitution. Mary Ellen Tracy, 48, was also convicted of one count of prostitution.

The Tracys unsuccessfully argued in Municipal Court and on appeal that they were modern practitioners of an ancient Egyptian religion that required male adherents to have sex with the high priestess for their sins to be forgiven. The men were then required to donate money as a “religious sacrifice.”