Grant’s Arrest Leaves Many Wondering ‘Why?’

Cruising down Sunset “is like a hunt,” one prostitution addict said.

“It’s like a ritual,” said Doug, 40. “It’s the hunter’s instinct.”

People have been having a hard time understanding why Hugh Grant--star and boyfriend of a stunning model--might go to a prostitute for sex, as police have charged. But Doug, a television executive (and “fairly decent-looking,” he said) thinks he knows why: “It’s about control.”

Ask the handful of prostitutes who have taken back their media-saturated haunts along Sunset Boulevard. “We can do things their wives can’t,” one said. “We’re their fantasy,” said another.

Grant, the boyish Briton from the hit film “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” was arrested near Sunset Boulevard early Tuesday and charged with engaging in lewd conduct with Divine Marie Brown, identified by police as “a known prostitute.”

The arrest had people across the country asking, “Why?” As tabloid journalist Maryanne Norbum put it in a widely quoted quip, “He could have sat at the Four Seasons bar and had action in three minutes.”

But former paid-sex addicts and experts say it is not uncommon for attractive and “comfortable” men to pay for sex, citing adventure, anonymity, ease, power, shame and compulsion as reasons.

“There’s a lot of risk involved, and that’s part of the high. You’re in public, you don’t know these people, they could rob you, they could give you a disease,” said Doug, an L.A. resident and self-confessed thrill seeker who said he has not had contact with a prostitute for two years. “I’ve gone to a room with a prostitute and someone chased her down the hall over drugs. I’ve gotten in car accidents, not paying attention to the road. I’ve stayed up till sunup doing this.”

Then there’s the issue of anonymity, particularly relevant in a star’s case. “Prostitution is much less of a pressured interaction--there are no emotional entanglements,” said UCLA psychiatrist Dr. Joshua Golden. “A prostitute is a complete and total stranger.”

That’s especially important in Los Angeles, where many young women roam bars looking for stars and tabloid fame.

“The greater his wealth and celebrity status, the more she can sell the story of his affair to a tabloid, destroying his reputation,” said sex expert Warren Farrell, author of “The Myth of Male Power” (Berkely Paperbacks, 1993). “Next to this, the prostitute has the promise of being quick, easy. The contract is clear.”

Farrell said men rationalize by saying, “I don’t hurt my wife. I don’t hurt my career.”

Retired UC Irvine criminology professor Gilbert Geis said one of the most important reasons men go to prostitutes is the ease of such an encounter. No fuss, no muss.

“Sometimes men don’t have the energy to be romantic and social--they want to be indifferent,” Geis said. “There’s a lovely line in Hemingway: ‘I was just too tired to tell them I loved them.’ ”

Geis also believes that power plays an important role. “He who pays calls the tunes. You’re buying the power to dictate, to make her do whatever you want to do. Often these are things you could not go home and command your wife to do.”

There is a historical precedent linking men of power to prostitution, Toronto sex therapist Frank Sommers said.

“Throughout history, successful men have given themselves the right to sexual gratification that is not readily available to the masses,” he said.

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Of course, Grant is not the only famous name to make sensational headlines.

Last month, Joey Buttafuoco was arrested and charged with soliciting a prostitute (who was actually an undercover cop) along the same stretch of Sunset. And in 1985, track star Edwin Moses was also arrested on charges of soliciting, but was later acquitted.

Some say soliciting prostitutes stems from shame and temptation.

“In the development of a young boy, the idea of straightforward sex often meets with disapproval, punishment and humiliation,” said Dr. John Money, a retired professor of medical psychology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.

“When he is in a relationship, he is unable to keep love and lust fitted together in the same partner, and has to go to a prostitute and pay for something that he feels is incredibly sinful.”

Then there is compulsion, Money said: “He can’t resist. . . . He tries to follow the right path, the one that society approves of, but just like an alcoholic, he falls off the wagon.”

One paid-sex addict blames loneliness for his addiction: “I’ve used them to fill up emptiness,” he said.

All this might lead some people to think that street prostitution is everywhere--that Sunset Boulevard and expressways are teeming with professionals. They’re not.

In fact, street prostitution has leveled off in Los Angeles, police records show, partly because of strong enforcement. Much of the business, police said, has gone to the yellow pages in the form of out-call services.

“If you were to take a look at Sunset Boulevard 10 years ago, any night of the week you could walk down the street and count prostitutes,” said Los Angeles Police vice Sgt. Phil Tingirides. “Today, if you saw 10, that would be a lot.”

Indeed, such prostitution hot spots as Sunset Boulevard and Sepulveda Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley are virtual ghost towns these days, save for the occasional woman-in-the-shadows causing round-the-block traffic snarls.

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The penalty for soliciting a prostitute or soliciting a “John” usually involves unsupervised probation (and an AIDS test) for the first offense, although up to six months in jail is possible. The same goes for lewd conduct in public.

For those to whom prostitution-hunting becomes an addiction, there is hope, said Patrick Carnes, director of the sexual disorders unit at Del Amo Hospital in Torrence.

With one-on-one psychological counseling and 10-step-style support groups, Carnes said the number of men who return to prostitutes is fewer than one in 10.

And, he said, there are plenty of people who could use help.

“These people whose lives look so great--they’re successful and they have money--but they also have high stress, and they have these secret lives,” Carnes said. “Then they need help. Sooner or later, it comes out. There are no secrets.”