Abstracts: September 2002

September 1, 2002 
Lap-dancing clubs hit by permit ban  
Irish Independent
Jimmy Guerin
According to this article:

After an article published in the Sunday Independent, three weeks prior, permits to lap-dancing clubs were temporarily suspended by Mary Harney until the Dept. of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) completes an investigation and review.  DETE and the gardai are working together on the investigation.  A new policy is expected.

The Sunday Independent article highlighted dancer's complaints regarding criminal gangs in Ireland and their countries of origin.  A dancer had written to the gardai and another was fired for not providing sex to customers.  Another dancer said girls were provided with free drugs so that they would do "extras".  The girls were held at Dublin Airport until collected by club representatives and their passports were held until they were returned to the airport.  In some instances 40 girls shared a house with up to 9 girls sharing a room.  One house was less than 100 yards from the Justice Minister's home. Dancers were required to hand over 90% of their earnings upon return to their countries.

Due to the fact that it is difficult for lap-dancing clubs to recruit EU nationals, the owners are worried that they will be unable to get professional dancers.  Chris Kelly (Lapello's owner), said he would be contacting other lapdancing club owners with a proposed code of conduct.

• http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca
  =9&si=818733&issue_id=7971&printer=1

September 2, 2002
Lap dance boom boosts demand for foreign workers 
Irish Times
Eamon Quinn 
According to this article:

More staff was hired from outside Ireland and the rest of the European Economic Area in 2002 despite a dramatic slowdown in the Irish economy.  Those jobs were primarily in the agriculture, catering, service and entertainment industries.  Employers must advertise for 4 weeks through Fás employment offices and demonstrate that no Irish national or other worker from the EEA could be found prior to receiving work permits.

The `entertainment' category includes permits issued for jobs such as musicians and circus performers, and lap dancers. At the time of this article, 633 entertainment workers were granted special work permits in 2002.  Workers from Latvia, Lithuania and Poland lead the list of those granted new work permits or whose permits have been renewed by the DETE. The Philippines, South Africa, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia were also high on the permit list.

In January 2002, work permit rules were tightened, with the stipulation that all applications had to be accompanied by a letter from Fás showing that "all reasonable efforts" had been made to fill the vacancy in Ireland or from the rest of the European Economic Area.

September 2, 2002 
Lap dancers claim they are exploited    
Irish Examiner 
Cormac O’Keeffe
According to this article:

Lapdancers are to be interviewed by employment inspectors following dancer complaints that they are being robbed, expected to provide sex to customers and have had their passports confiscated.  The gardaí alerted the Dept. of Enterprise to the complaints.

No new work permits will be issued to lap-dancers pending a full review of the operation of work permits in the industry. Working in conjunction with the gardaí and labour inspectors, the review will look at club operations and treatment of employees. FÁS has banned adverts for lap dancers. At the time of this article, 633 entertainment workers have been granted work permits, with lap dancers accounting for a significant percentage. 

The DOE requested any dancers who feel they have been exploited to contact them and inspectors intend to be sensitive to fear some may have of speaking out.

• http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/
  2002/09/02/story515006719.asp

September 2, 2002
The Irish Emigrant - Issue No.813  
Editor: Liam Ferrie
According to this article:

Maura Connoly of the Ruhama Women's Project, a group working with prostitutes, suggests that lap-dancing clubs should be banned, saying that they lead women into prostitution. The number of lapdancing clubs has risen quickly in recent years, particularly around Dublin. 

In support of this argument, a former lap-dancer, Louise Eek, from Sweden spoke of her experiences.  Eek became a lap-dancer for a week but found herself involved in prostitution, and only extricated herself years later when she was diagnosed with cancer. Most of the women she knew in the business in the '70s are dead through suicide or murder. 

• http://www.emigrant.ie/article.asp?iCategoryID
  =177&iArticleID=7406

September 4, 2002
Around Ireland: lap dancing, new bridges and a disaster avoided in Tyrone  
Irish Echo Online
According to this article:

Maura Connelly, director of the Ruhama Women's Project called the opening of the Chicken Ranch lap-dancing club in Milltown "part of the rapid expansion of the globalized sex industry" and that the perception that it is innocent fun disguised the fact that it often leads directly to full time prostitution.  Connelly said that lap-dancing should be outlawed.

• http://www.irishecho.com/search/searchstory.cfm?id
  =11561&issueid=266

September 14, 2002 
Features - Patricia Feehily
Limerick Leader
Phew! Now you can sip your Ballygowan in peace
Opinion:

Ms. Feehily discusses the decision by the Advertising Standards Authority to act against Ballygowan for using a nude woman to advertise the purity of its water and the crassness of trendy Ireland.  She says that "women are being demeaned and dehumanised all over the place in the name of art" everywhere from fashion to fiction and believes the advertising and fashion industries both need a "good dose of old fashioned modesty and taste".

Feehily goes on to discuss the lap dancing industry in Ireland and "its obvious links with the global sex industry and the exploitation of human beings" and expresses her hope that something will be done to stop Irish women from working in the industry and making millions for "exploitative business men."

Quote:
"Hopefully too, the silly Limerick clientele will be able to stop dribbling into their pints and can resume normal human relationships again. The thing that always amazed me about lap dancing apologists was not their denial of the exploitation of the dancers or their insistence that the girls were in control and earning a fortune. It was their pathetic attempts to introduce an element of respectability to the whole sorry spectacle.

The girls, their oglers claimed blithely, were all students of either law, medicine or astro physics in their various third countries and were just working their way through college. Wow! We're all impressed. But did anyone ever ask for proof of their Iqs or their academic qualifications, or care about them for that matter?"

• http://www.limerickleader.ie/issues/
  20020914/feehily.html

September 16, 2002
A gangland killing, lap dancers who are said to sell sex
Evening Standard
Chris Blackhurst and Adrian Gatton

A gangland killing, lap dancers who are said to sell sex and the criminal past of the man behind the Spearmint Rhino empire - A Standard investigation reveals the bizarre background to today's legal battle to strip a lap-dancing club of its licence.
According to this article:

Since 2000, Spearmint Rhino has become a magnet for businessmen entertaining clients or wanting to unwind after work. It now has seven clubs in the UK, three in London, two in Birmingham and in Harrogate and Bournemouth, and claims to be aiming for 100. Vauxhall in London and Sheffield are due to open shortly. Holborn, in London, is also on the company's list. Ultimately it wants to acquire public respectability by listing on the London Stock Exchange.

This article alleges the following regarding the men behind the Spearmint Rhino lapdancing clubs:

Stuart Cadwell (boss of Spearmint Rhino UK)

• Was viciously attacked with a machete by two men after leaving the club on Aug. 21, 2001.  He was rushed to the hospital and survived.  At the time of this article no one had been charged for the assault.  Police suspect Caldwell was targeted by associates of a north London crime family in a feud with his company.
• Was questioned in September 1990 by California police over the death of a woman who suffered massive head injuries after walking into the tail rotor blades of his helicopter. The woman was the girlfriend of Cadwell's close friend, David Amos, who was himself convicted in 2001 of the machine gun killing of a strip club owner in Los Angeles in 1989.  Amos was close to a member of the Bonanno mafia family in New York and had paid a hitman to murder Horace McKenna.

John Gray (Spearmint Rhino owner)

• Owns a mansion in Buckinghamshire and houses in the US, two  private planes, a 55ft yacht and two Mercedes. 
• Has six convictions in the US for offences ranging from carrying a concealed weapon to writing bad cheques.
• Has been refused a licence to operate a club by Blackpool council
• Is struggling to persuade Edinburgh to allow him to open a lapdancing club there
• Was born John Leldon Gray. Legal documents show he has used the names, John Luciano, John Luciano Gianni and Johnny Win. Police in America says he now uses the identity John Gray but is also known to them as John Leldon Gray, John Luciano Gianni, Leldon Gray and Johnny Win.
  • There is also a John L Gray, born in February 1957 and linked to two Spearmint Rhino addresses and one of Mr Gray's home addresses, who is registered in the US as "deceased".
• Was first arraigned in 1981, for handling stolen goods.
  • Under the name John Luciano, received a six-month, suspended prison term and two years' probation.
• In 1983 was convicted in Burbank for disturbing the peace.
• In 1985 was convicted in Pomona of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle.
  • Received three months in jail and three years' probation (later reduced to one year.)
• Ran a building firm, Graco Construction,  in the 80s. Moved into restaurants then table dancing.
• In 1994 received a one-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, for embezzlement.
• Made a false statement claiming he owned more assets than he did to win a contract to build living quarters for the US navy and sentenced to Boron Federal Prison.  Investigated by the FBI.
  • Government dropped charges  for suspected fraud in two other contracts and three bank loans through a plea bargain. In return, Mr Gray pleaded guilty and received six months in jail, three years' probation and an order to pay $134,000 compensation.
• In 1995 received 6 months in jail for bouncing $137,000 worth of checks to pay contractors.
  • Sentence suspended after plea bargain and ended up with 68 months' probation - a period which only ended in April 2001, after he had set up in Britain.
• Settled cases out of court in lawsuit brought against Spearmint Rhino by 4 US women for using their pictures on billboards and in literature about striptease without their permission.
• In Los Angeles, 38 separate suits have been filed against him or his business since 1999, many relating to bad debts.
  • judgments against him or his many US companies over the years total more than $300,000.
• Claims to own 31 clubs in the US even though the company's own website identifies only nine.
  • Max Ahmadi, Mr Gray's former vice-president, says he can only list 12 or 13 at most.
• Is being sued by another former business partner in LA, Mike Gray for breach of contract over a stake in a club there.
• Is the director of 27 companies in the UK.
  • Two of his clubs are in dispute with Customs and Excise over a VAT bill for £217,000.

Philip Whitehouse (Vice President)

• Got a 12-month conditional discharge and a £3,000 fine in June 2002 for employing unregistered doormen at Tottenham Court Road.

Michael Mahoney (until recently a director of the Tottenham Court Road club)

• Has two convictions in the US for embezzlement.
• He and Mr Gray were in Boron Federal Penitentiary in the Mojave Desert in California at the same time.
• Was also Mr Gray's accountant
  • Has been fired for allegedly defrauding Spearmint Rhino of $250,000 to buy cars, jet skis and jewellery. Altogether, the club is pursuing him for $1.7 million it claims it is owed.

Earlier in 2002, a pregnant waitress in the club's Tottenham Court Road branch won £60,000 in a sex discrimination claim against Spearmint Rhino. In another industrial tribunal hearing, between a broker and his bank, it was claimed "80 per cent of the market" liked to visit Spearmint Rhino for "whoring". Noise complaints and suspicions that the "don't touch" rules are being broken, have seen councils take a tougher attitude towards the club.


On the date of this article, Spearmint Rhino's lawyers were in court to attempt to prevent Camden council from revoking its license for the Tottenham Court club over concerns it is a front for prostitution.

Spearmint Rhino has recently added a lapdancing club in Moscow.

September 22, 2002
Tassles among the Trimbles for Ulster mag  
The Observer 
Henry McDonald 
Opinion

McDonald describes the cover of Fortnight magazine on which is an image of a voluptuous lapdancer. 

Magazine editor, Malachi O'Doherty said they had decided to be playful and have a bit of fun while looking at the big political issues. Feminist academic, Fionola Meredity, wrote a lap-dancing article for the magazine which McDonald describes as a serious and at times amusing account of the lapdancing industry in Ireland.

McDonald questions whether or not Fortnight is "dumbing down" and O'Doherty rejects the notion.  Further details of O'Doherty's career and the history of Fortnight magazine are given. McDonald points out that Easons book store had sold out of the copy of Fortnight with the lapdancer cover and that "sex sells".

• http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/
  story/0,6903,796375,00.html
  

September 30, 2002
Lap-dance ban council profits from porn trade  
The Herald
Tom Gordon
According to this article:

Glasgow City Council has leased warehouse space to one of the country's biggest wholesalers of pornographic magazines with titles such as Private Sex and Color Climax. It also leases out a high street shop to a sister business that sells imported hardcore magazines, videos and DVDs. The combined rent to the council is £16,500 a year.

Catherine Harper, spokeswoman for Scottish Women Against Pornography said: "I have to assume, given all the good work of the council and its policy opposing the promotion of lap dancing and pornography, it is unaware of this. If it is true, I am sure the council would want to rectify it immediately."

Sandra White, the Glasgow list SNP MSP, who had applauded the council's stance on lap dancing, said: "Once again they've shown they can talk a lot, but don't deliver. Either they're ignorant of what's going on in their own council or they're just plain hypocrites."

A council spokesman said: "We did not know these allegations until they were put to us by The Herald. "The premises at Chapel Street will cease to be let out to one of these companies by the end of this month. We shall visit the shop at Saltmarket. If we find The Herald's allegations are well founded, we shall take steps to terminate the lease."