In a state known for its emphasis on moral conduct, the world's oldest profession isn't suffering from a shortage of business.
"Salt Lake County (residents) don't realize how big (prostitution) is," Midvale detective Jason Norton said.
People here may not realize the scope of prostitution because they don't see it. But much of it is right under their noses. Police say most prostitutes today don't frequent street corners and advertise their wares with miniskirts and stiletto heels. Instead, they advertise in some classifieds under "entertainment," "private dancers" and "escort services." "Look in the entertainment section (of the classifieds). That's strictly prostitution," Norton said.
In 2002, the most recent statistics available, 249 adults were arrested on prostitution-related charges in Utah, according to the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification. Those arrests included hookers and johns.
Even so, the number of prostitution arrests in Utah has steadily declined in recent years. In 2001, 369 adults and three juveniles were arrested for prostitution. In 2000, 428 adults and no juveniles were arrested for prostitution. In 1999 it was 445 adults and one juvenile and, in 1998, 434 adults and four juveniles.
Salt Lake City accounted for 237 of Utah's 249 prostitution arrests in 2002. Ninety-five men and 116 women were arrested, some more than once, said Salt Lake City police detective Dwayne Baird.
Despite recent declines, Salt Lake City appears to have more than its share of prostitution arrests. Knoxville, Tenn., a city of similar size, arrested 111 adults and one juvenile in 2002 for investigation of prostitution.
Statewide, the number of prostitution arrests drops in proportion to distance from Salt Lake City. Provo police recorded just four prostitution arrests in 2002 and just one so far this year through June 12, Provo police spokeswoman Karen Mayne said.
Logan Police Capt. Greg Ridler said he couldn't remember a single prostitution arrest in his 20 years in his city. He said that's not because of a lack of enforcement; there simply aren't any prostitutes.
Likewise, St. George Police Lt. Kelly Larson said he can only recall one prostitution arrest in his city in the past 24 years.
Baird said it isn't that surprising that arrests for prostitution are much higher in Salt Lake City than the rest of the state. Studies have shown that prostitutes go where they expect to have the most business, he said. Not only is Salt Lake City the state's largest city, but it also has the most conventions and hotels.
"Prostitutes locate (in Salt Lake City) because that's where people expect to find them," Baird said. "Prostitutes are in it for the money. They're not going to go where they might only get hit on by accident."
But the statistics represent only those who were caught. Many law enforcement officers don't believe arrest statistics accurately reflect the number of prostitutes. The reason the number of arrests declines each year could be the result of prostitution being driven further underground, some officers say.
Moreover, many departments simply don't have the financial resources to address prostitution full time, choosing instead to put more time and effort into their gang and drug units and address prostitution with an occasional sting.
Oldest profession
Prostitution has existed in Salt Lake City almost as long as people have lived here. Jeffrey Nichols, an assistant professor of history at Westminster College who authored the book "Prostitution, Polygamy and Power," points to city records documenting a thriving downtown red-light district.
"(P)rostitution was well known, openly regulated and important to the growth of communities," Nichols writes in the introduction to the book, which was published last fall. "Most women made the dangerous choice to sell sex because of financial difficulties and limited opportunities, and they faced exploitation by customers, brothel managers and municipal authorities."
While likely not the advent of prostitution in the city, the establishment of Fort Douglas and the arrival of the railroads certainly increased the demand, Nichols said.
"It's quite understandable that as the city becomes modernized economically, sex becomes commodified as much as anything becomes commodified," said Nichols, whose interest in the subject grew out of research work for a Western history seminar at the University of Utah.
Women who sold sex then — and likely now — were not doing so for excitement or entertainment but for money. Women had fewer economic prospects than men, particularly if they lacked education or had children. Among the women documented in Nichols' book, one turned to the practice when her father died, leaving the family with nothing; others said they became prostitutes after losing other employment.
"Most women who turned to prostitution, whether full-time or occasional, did so because it seemed the best among their few alternatives," Nichols wrote.
"That's where they could make the most," Nichols said recently. "With some of the madams, there may have been a conscious choice, but with most of the inmates (the word then used for prostitutes), it was a desperate measure."
Arrests, consequences
The reasons women, and even men, get into prostitution are as numerous as the prostitutes themselves. Because of that, there is no cookie-cutter solution to the problem.
The punitive approach accomplishes nothing more than making prostitution more covert, said Stephanie Wahab, an assistant professor at the University of Utah graduate school of social work. She is currently doing a study on the Prostitution Diversion Project in Salt Lake City.
The project is sponsored by the city and the Harm Reduction Project, a private group dedicated to drug-policy reform and improving services for at-risk populations. The goal of the Prostitution Diversion Project is to look at how prostitutes can receive assistance rather than punishment.
As part of the project, prostitutes who are arrested for the first time and meet certain requirements are allowed to make a plea in abeyance so their prostitution charge is wiped off their record after they complete a Harm Reduction Project course.
Harm Reduction executive director Luciano Colonna said the courses give prostitutes the chance to examine their lifestyle in a nonjudgmental atmosphere. Rather than telling them not to do drugs, the program tries to make prostitutes aware of needle exchange programs, the dangers of sharing needles and how to avoid having unprotected sex.
Wahab said her studies have shown that streetwalkers make up 10 to 20 percent of the women in the sex industry but account for 75 to 85 percent of all prostitution arrests. They are typically the ones who have the fewest resources in life and face the greatest challenges.
If there is to be real change, said former prostitute Carmen Fridal, the public first needs to open its eyes to the problem. The second step is for the community to help with change, she said. The public needs to give more support to fund programs to fight drug addiction, she said.
While Salt Lake City boasts several excellent drug rehabilitation programs, many of them are full and have long waiting lists. Colonna stressed the need for more substance abuse treatment programs and programs geared toward women.
The prostitutes who are trying to get back on their feet also need a way to get affordable housing, health care and learn legitimate job skills so they can enter the workforce.
The Salt Lake County Jail offers a number of programs for incarcerated prostitutes. They learn about nutrition, life-planning skills and how to put together a rsum and build self-esteem. Other programs focus on sexually transmitted diseases and how to prevent them.
Some law enforcers say that education isn't the cure-all for prostitution, noting that some prostitutes are college graduates. But education may help women who don't have any other way to make money. Other women need help getting Social Security cards or copies of their birth certificates, items typically needed for legitimate employment.
Colonna does not believe Salt Lake City's prostitution problem is worse than any other city's. But what makes Salt Lake City different, he said, is that the problem is being addressed rather than ignored.
Sting operations
It's Saturday night in Ogden. The manager of a local apartment complex has allowed members of the Metro Gang Unit, who double as vice cops, to use one of the vacant apartments for a prostitution sting.
Detectives go to the apartment several hours early to set up shop. Small microphones are hidden throughout the living room where an undercover officer will attempt to be propositioned by the escorts he calls. A small camera is hidden inside a box of cereal positioned on top of a microwave oven.
In a back bedroom a monitor and headphones are set up so other detectives can watch and record the events. The door is locked so escorts don't walk in on them.
Detective Jon Thomas, the decoy for the evening, calls escort services in Salt Lake City. Investigators know nearly all of them don't have a license for Ogden and could be ticketed for that violation, even if they don't proposition Thomas.
"I'm calling to see if I could get a girl for tonight," Thomas said as he began calling escort services.
"I like blondes. They really get me going," he tells one business.
Some escorts refuse to drive to Ogden. One woman says she'll spend the entire night with him for $1,200, but he has to come to her hotel room near 7200 South off I-15. Another tells Thomas that for tips she'll "do anything."
The first escort arrives a little after 9 p.m. Although the business who sent her is listed as a topless maid service, "Mandy" tells the officer that she carries a duster just as a prop.
Mandy is a hard-looking woman who appears to be in her mid 30s. She enters the apartment and immediately checks all the rooms. She turns the doorknob where the other officers are hiding. The door is locked, and she moves on without asking why.
She then asks Thomas how much money he has, telling him he could "buy" her if he turned her on.
Moments later, after being propositioned, Thomas gives the cue for the arrest to be made. Tonight's cue is "What do you think about the war with Iraq?" At that point, five police officers emerge from the back room and place the woman under arrest for investigation of prostitution and having no sexually oriented business license for Ogden.
Mandy is arrested and taken to the department's substation, issued a citation and released.
"Cassandra," a pretty 19-year-old with a girl-next-door face, is the second escort of the evening. She arrives at the apartment, collects $165 from Thomas and begins her work.
While talking to Thomas, she takes off her boots. Then she unbuttons her black shirt and unzips her black skirt. Wearing nothing but a bra and thong, she asks him what they should do. She eventually offers to perform a sex act for $200.
"Cassandra," the name she uses while working for her escort service, puts on her clothes, sits on the couch, buries her face in her hands and cries as the officer explains the charges against her. She says she has been in the escort business for a little more than a year, but this is her first arrest.
A third woman who shows up after midnight engages in a long conversation with Thomas. She is well aware of the rules of licensing and what escorts can and cannot do. She tells the undercover officer she wants to be a teacher and was not going to do any acts of prostitution because it would look bad on her record.
"That's when you get busted, when you get too comfortable, when you get caught up in the money," she told Thomas.
While the woman seems to be aware that prostitution stings exist, even admitting that police "do busts all the time," she tells Thomas that she's good at spotting undercover cops, unaware that she has been talking to one for the past 20 minutes.
Moments later, the cue is given and the other officers come out from the back room and issue the woman a citation for no sexually oriented business license in Ogden. She is not arrested for prostitution.
Ogden Police Lt. Marcy Korgenski said the department's aggressive attitude toward prostitution is paying off as fewer escorts are willing to drive to Ogden from Salt Lake City and risk arrest.
Stings like this are typical for most police departments. During a sting operation last winter, Midvale police arrested four alleged prostitutes in one night. One had a federal warrant out for her arrest on unrelated charges.
The busts aren't limited to arresting women who proposition men. Past stings along the Wasatch Front include male police decoys arresting male prostitutes and female decoys arresting female prostitutes.
Salt Lake City's efforts to stop male prostitution gained attention in February when then-Rep. Brent Parker, R-Wellsville, was arrested and accused of offering an undercover male officer money to perform a sex act. He pleaded guilty April 8 to sex solicitation, a class B misdemeanor, and was ordered to undergo a 10-week counseling program.
Investigators said the area where Parker was arrested, near Exchange Place downtown, is known for male prostitution. State Street is known for another type of prostitute: transvestites, said an undercover Salt Lake vice officer.
Prostitution stings don't always go after prostitutes. Sometimes police go after those looking to pay for sex — johns — by placing their own classified ads.
When Midvale police placed their own ad for a private dancer, Norton recalls, the phone calls rolled in almost immediately and lasted from dusk to dawn. All were from men interested in hiring the "dancer." Appointments were made with several of them, who later offered to pay an undercover officer money for sex and were arrested.
Escort services
Maryland Heights, Mo., police Sgt. Joe Delia is an expert on child prostitution and was responsible for bringing down the largest federally prosecuted juvenile prostitution ring in the country. He believes escort services are "universally" fronts for prostitution.
Carmen Fridal is an ex-prostitute and ex-drug addict who became a prostitute while working for a Salt Lake City escort service. She said while escort services do not advertise themselves as brothels, the women who work there are told, "The more you give, the more you get. Use what you have as a weapon to get gratuity," she said.
"Escort services are high-class prostitution. You're selling yourself. You don't have to be having sex," Fridal said.
Escort services are not illegal. Escort services and the women who work for them must all obtain sexually oriented business licenses.
Getting a license to operate a sexually oriented business is an expensive venture. The rates, just as individual city ordinances regulating the businesses, vary around the valley.
In Salt Lake City, a would-be operator of a sexually oriented business must post a cash bond of $2,000 with the city and pay an annual license fee of $800. If there are co-owners in the business, each additional owner must pay $140, according to a clerk from the city office that issues business licenses.
If the business provides escorts for clients, each escort pays an annual license fee of $600. Private dancers pay an annual $290 license fee. Office workers and others at the business also pay annual fees of $140 each.
The city also requires that the business owner present a letter of agreement between themselves and their landlord stating that the landlord knows the type of business operating on the property.
Additionally, each owner of a business and each "performer," the legal term used in licensing escorts or dancers, is required to have a criminal background check.
The licensing process usually takes at least 30 days, the city clerk said.
Licensing fees for escorts and strippers are similar all along the Wasatch Front.
Murray City ordinances require a $200 licensing fee for an escort service business, a $150 licensing fee for each individual escort and a $100 investigation for each applicant.
For strip clubs, the business licensing fee ranges between $100 and $150 in Murray plus an additional $150 licensing fee for each stripper.
Midvale charges $150 for a background check for escorts applying for a sexually oriented business license plus $50 for sexually oriented business ID cards. In addition, each applicant is required to receive certification from the board of health that she is free of communicable diseases.
But unless someone such as a hotel manager reports prostitution activity, it goes largely undetected. That's why police agencies across the Wasatch Front routinely set up sting operations.
Advertisements for escort services have commonly appeared in or near the classified advertising sections of many newspapers. The Newspaper Agency Corporation, which handles all advertising, printing and circulation for both the Deseret Morning News and the Salt Lake Tribune, does sell ads for escort, dating and private adult entertainment services, but those ads appear only in the Tribune.
"Any publisher has the right to deny any advertisement under the (joint operating agreement), and there are reviews," NAC president Joseph Zerbey said. "We have revised other kinds of ads that are blatantly pornographic or distasteful and we've even doctored some clothing on some ads, so it's looked at pretty closely."
Zerbey said adult entertainment advertising generates about $725,000 in annual revenue, money that is kept by the Tribune.
Prostitute profile
The type of women who work for escort services, strip clubs or engage in prostitution stretch across nearly every age group. Some do it to support their drug habits. Some are attracted to the big money that can be made.
Melissa, 18, is what police refer to as a streetwalker. She does not work for an escort service. Rather, she walks the streets of Ogden waiting for men to pick her up.
Melissa said she became a prostitute at 11 years old to support her crack cocaine habit. She dropped out of school when she was in the sixth grade and continually ran away from her foster parents.
She found out that picking up tricks is more than just a life of sex, drugs and money. Engaging in prostitution is risky for both hookers and johns. Melissa said she would sometimes rob her clients after getting them alone. Once she was raped and beaten unconscious by a man near Pineview Reservoir.
But that encounter didn't deter Melissa. Neither did the fear of sexually transmitted diseases.
"I didn't know nothing about that," she said.
When Melissa talks to the Deseret Morning News, she is six months pregnant and recently married. She is looking for a legitimate job and is trying to be admitted to a rehabilitation center. Her advice for young girls who are considering prostitution: "It's not worth it. You could end up with AIDS or in a hospital," she said.
But old habits are hard to break. She admitted having a relapse and smoking crack the day before the Deseret News talked to her.
Nationally, an estimated 325,000 U.S. children age 17 or younger are prostitutes, according to a University of Pennsylvania study released more than a year ago. Most are children who ran away from home or were abandoned, the study said.
Earlier this year, Missouri's Delia hosted a Las Vegas conference for more than 115 police officers from across the United States and Canada. The topic: the problem of young girls trapped in the world of prostitution. Many are forced into prostitution at a young age for survival; later their pimps threaten them with physical harm if they try to leave, he said.
"People say prostitution is a victimless crime. That's not true. It's an insidious crime," he said.
Prostitutes usually go on to have children who become victims of their environment and become hookers themselves, he said.
"Most of these girls come from disadvantaged backgrounds and are sexually abused as children," Delia said.
But not all prostitutes are the same. And not all consider themselves victims.
"You can't assume there's a universal prostitution experience," said the U.'s Wahab. For the past 10 years she has researched the sex industry in Salt Lake City and Seattle.
Streetwalkers and escorts are two different types of prostitutes, she said. Many streetwalkers resort to prostitution to support a drug habit. Some are coerced into that lifestyle by either a boyfriend or husband who acts as a pimp.
Some prostitutes are runaways and get into the trade to feed themselves.
"They make a choice to survive by selling sex," Wahab said.
Many in the escort business, however, could make money legitimately. Some already have enough money that they could leave anytime. Wahab talked to one woman who held two master's degrees and worked for a Fortune 500 company.
And she has talked to some strippers who say they got into the business as a form of self-expression. Others said they wanted to explore their sexuality, while others considered themselves exhibitionists. Another woman, a victim of abuse, said the first time she was paid for sex was the first time in her life that she felt empowered.
Other women who are lured into the world of stripping and prostitution do it for the money. The potential to make large amounts of money quickly is the common lure for all prostitutes, Wahab said.
"Most, if not all, view it as legitimate work. It's not a hobby. It's the way they support their families," she said.
Two of the women arrested in Ogden claimed they were drug free. One woman said the most she made in one night was $1,600. She said she had recently taken a trip to Jamaica with the money she earned.
In another sting operation in Salt Lake City, police arrested a single mother of three who was pursuing a master's degree at the University of Utah. Police said the woman had no criminal background and was "obviously very new" to prostitution but desperately needed money.
An arrest for solicitation of sex is only a class B misdemeanor. Rarely does a person go to jail solely on a prostitution conviction.
Some of the officers interviewed by the Deseret Morning News said they felt bad for many of the women they arrested. They noted that prostitution stings sometimes accomplish nothing more than pushing prostitution further underground. Some law enforcers don't believe that arresting and re-arresting the same people over and over is doing anything to fix the problem.
And many prostitutes don't get the help they need because they don't trust law enforcement. Wahab said she once talked to nine local prostitutes and six or seven said they had been raped by johns. Only one woman, however, reported the rape to police.
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