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What impels the rich and famous to risk their reputations trolling for hookers?

Support — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:28:48 +0000

By Ethan Baron, The Province October 3, 2009

http://www.theprovince.com/sports/What+impels+rich+famous+risk+their+reputations+trolling+hookers/2064534/story.html

: David Ho

Billionaire businessman David Ho prowled the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for drug-addicted prostitutes.

Cinema heartthrob Hugh Grant was caught in his car with a Los Angeles streetwalker.

: Hugh Grant

Pro football star Eugene Robinson was busted for attempting to buy sex from an undercover policewoman on a seedy Miami strip.

All are high-profile men with more money than they knew what to do with. If they wanted the company of prostitutes, they could afford to hire the priciest of escorts. Instead, they risked their reputations and careers trolling the slums for bargain-basement hookers.

Why?

- – -

In 1999, U.S. National Football League safety Robinson had led the Atlanta Falcons to its first Super Bowl.

The day before the game, Robinson, nicknamed “The Prophet” for his religious fervour, had received the Bart Starr Award for high moral character. That evening, he hit up a streetwalker for oral sex in Miami, but she turned out to be a police decoy.

“Lord Jesus, what do I tell my wife and kids?” he moaned to investigating officers, according to Dade County court records. “I am a born-again Christian. I have accepted the Lord as my saviour. I didn’t mean to do it.”

In 1995, movie star Grant took prostitute Divine Brown into his BMW in Hollywood, where vice cops tipped off by his flashing brake lights found him receiving oral sex.

David Ho, 57, admitted to a Province editor that he cruised Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside trying to save prostitutes, and was twice found by police in their company.

This week, prosecutors laid against Ho a raft of charges including unlawful confinement, causing bodily harm, possession of a prohibited gun with ammunition and drug possession. The charges resulted from a 2008 incident that police say left a woman — not identified as a prostitute — with a broken ankle and other injuries.

None of the allegations in the charges against Ho have been proven.

Ho, a condo magnate and founder of failed Harmony Airways, has told Province deputy editor Fabian Dawson about an incident in which a prostitute called police saying he was holding her in his Seymour Street apartment.

He also said he’d been pulled over by officers in East Vancouver while he was in his vehicle with two well-known, drug-addicted sex workers.

- – -

A business tycoon. A movie idol. A pro athlete. These are not the types of men usually associated with shadowy slums and low-budget sex workers. Yet they are drawn to that sordid world for the same reasons as men who lack that wealth and power, experts say.

“A large percentage of the population have this need for stimulation,” says Matt Logan, a B.C. psychologist and former RCMP staff-sergeant who does consulting work on sex offenders for law-enforcement agencies worldwide.

“They want to be on the edge — they could be caught. They’re as turned on by the adventure of being so on the edge as they are by the sexual component.”

Some men seeking stimulation can satisfy their need by skydiving or even by watching a good hockey game, says Logan, who was a Mountie for 28 years.

Another powerful force, Logan says, can drive the stimulation-seeker down a darker path: Fantasy.

“To understand a sex offender is to understand fantasy,” Logan says. “Once you understand what an individual’s fantasy is, you can understand why they do what they do.”

With regard to picking up street prostitutes, the fantasy may involve kinky sexual acts that a high-priced escort might refuse, Logan says.

“The people that we find who are deviant and sadistic are often feeding their fantasies with prostitutes who are so drug-addicted they’re willing to let them do it.”

But Ho, and people close to him, asserted to Dawson that a strong altruistic impulse motivated him to seek the company of drug-dependent streetwalkers.

“I am addicted to helping them,” he told Dawson.

In the incident in his apartment, Ho said, the woman had been seeking his aid and a safe place for the night, but a man barged in and ransacked the property.

When he was stopped with two prostitutes in his vehicle by officers in East Vancouver, he said he was intending to help one of them by paying off her pimp so she could return to her family in Kelowna.

Ho also told Dawson he’d rescued a woman from a violent pimp and arranged for her to return to Hungary, where he supports her with a monthly stipend.

- – -

“Every once in a while, they’ll do something that will be philanthropic. They’re really feeding a fantasy,” Logan says.

A fascination with the gritty underworld of street prostitution drives some men to troll urban slums seeking women for hire, says sex expert Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“A little bit of danger excites them,” Schwartz says. “Some people want love and affection, other people want to be dominated and other people look for people who are seedy, or trampy, or dangerous.”

A short, hiked-up skirt, a rough appearance or dyed hair may be elements that attract certain men, Schwartz says.

The lack of legal consequence to previous involvements with police may give some men a sense of security, Schwartz says.

“You envision yourself in this protective bubble, and even if you get a close call, you think you’re in a ‘close-call’ category.”

A man for whom a prostitution arrest would make the front page may nevertheless allow their desire for a streetwalker to overcome any cost-benefit analysis, Schwartz says.

“He’s thinking, ‘Yummy, and I’ll think later,’” Schwartz says. “This guy doesn’t really want to be humiliated and exposed, but he really wants that excitement of a street prostitute.”

- – -

In B.C., men caught soliciting prostitutes or police posing as prostitutes may be diverted from the justice system into a program run by the John Howard Society of the Lower Mainland. The men in the program have jobs that bring in an average of $50,000 a year, says Ian Mitchell, manager of the prostitution-offenders program.

“We have the odd one at $400,000 or more, but they’re quite rare,” Mitchell says. “We very seldom get people like David Ho, people who are high up in society, people who have a ton of money.”

Rich men are more likely to seek the more expensive services of escorts, Mitchell says.

Although he notes that Ho may in fact have been trying to help street prostitutes, Schwartz says most men he sees in the program

come in with no clue about the tormented lives of the women they hire for sex.

“It’s not something they think about,” Mitchell says. “They see these women, and it’s just a warm place to put their penis.

“The main reason they do it is: (a) because they can; and (b) because the social message that’s in the background is, ‘It’s OK, don’t hurt anybody, don’t get caught, wink, wink.’”

In our society, boys are socialized to expect sex on demand, Mitchell says.

“So a certain percentage of the population buys into that and [thinks], ‘I’m horny, I’ll go out and get a prostitute.’”

Of the men who enter his program, 60 per cent are married or in a serious relationship, Mitchell says.

- – -

Ironically, the very stature that draws massive publicity to a high-roller’s prostitution arrest may protect them from damage, says sociologist Schwartz.

A prostitution conviction could drastically limit an ordinary man’s job possibilities, but for those already in positions of power, the effect may be mild, Schwartz says.

“They can in fact control the financial consequences,” Schwartz says. “They’re in a much more privileged situation than 99 per cent of us.”

Hugh Grant, in the wake of his 1995 arrest and $1,180 US fine, appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and accepted responsibility.

“I think you know in life what’s a good thing to do and what’s a bad thing, and I did a bad thing,” Grant told Leno.

He continued to receive leading roles in films such as Bridget Jones’ Diary, Mickey Blue Eyes, About a Boy and Love, Actually.

“He’s pretty much unscathed in the public arena,” says Schwartz.

Grant’s relationship with actress and model Elizabeth Hurley continued for five years after his arrest.

Eugene Robinson, though vilified by fans and the press for the incident that many saw as a reason for his team’s subsequent Super Bowl loss to the Denver Broncos, played another season with the Falcons, then a season with the Carolina Panthers.

In exchange for having the prostitution charge dropped, he agreed to take an AIDS test and enrol in an AIDS-education course.

Robinson is currently a radio commentator for the Panthers, and coaches football at a Christian high school.

As for David Ho, time will tell whether he takes any major hits in his personal or professional life.

“I don’t know if this guy will suffer much in his business deals,” says Schwartz. “You could ask your readers: You could have his $5-million house and be humiliated, or have a sterling reputation and not have it.

“A lot of people would say, ‘Hmm.’”

ebaron@theprovince.com

Banging for big bucks

Support — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:35:51 +0000

Source: http://www.montrealmirror.com/2008/110608/news3.html

HIGH COST, HIGH PRICE: McLennan

by CHRIS BARRY

Montreal has certainly had its share of quality celebrity exports over the years: Leonard Cohen, Captain Kirk, Patsy Gallant, to name a few. Yet what’s a hack like Leonard Cohen ever done to merit his glowing international rep? Exactly.

But Natalie “Natalia” McLennan, hey, now there’s another story. Born and raised in Montreal West, the Royal West Academy graduate and former tap dancing protégé left town a few years back looking for fame and fortune in the Big Apple, and actually found it. Yes, our hometown gal scaled the heights to become the top prostitute in a town chock-full of whores, earning herself a cool $2,000-an-hour warming the willies of Wall Street big shots, celebrity athletes, politicians and other studs with way too much money to burn.

Along the way, she got entangled in one of the most delicious scandals New York has seen in a long time, when it was discovered that Governor Eliot Spitzer had been a regular client of New York Confidential, allegedly forking over some 80 grand to the escort agency run by Natalie’s mega-unsavoury ex-boyfriend, Jason “King of All Pimps” Itzler.

Despite having left the agency just before the bust and the attendant media circus accompanying it, our heroine, who’d picked up a minor drug habit on her path to greatness, found herself looking at some potentially serious prison time.

Now safe and sound in Montreal living the straight, simple life working at a downtown spa, Natalie’s recounting of her ordeal, The Price: My Rise and Fall as Natalia, is available from fine booksellers everywhere.

Mirror: When did you get back into town?

Natalie McLennan: About a year ago. I’m living in the Plateau now, rediscovering the city—it’s great. I pretty much came back to reconnect with my family and because I couldn’t get shit done in New York. So many distractions there, parties to go to, restaurants to eat at, friends to hang out with. So I knew Montreal would be a good place to just come and do what needed to be done, which was finish my book.

M: You’ve notably declined to name any of your famous clients. Was that a difficult decision to make or simply obvious?

NM: It was obvious. Revealing names wasn’t even an option. When I was first working out my publishing deal, there were quite a few publishers who only wanted me to write a tell-all in the extreme sense and rip everybody’s private lives wide open. But I wouldn’t budge on that—not ever.

M: So, as a prostitute, you were getting 2K an hour with a two-hour minimum and–

NM: Crazy, right?

M: I’ll say. So how does it feel to just be giving it away now? Is it a sort of, “Hey, I used to get 4K for this, and now, like, at best all I’ll get is an orgasm” kind of thing?

NM: (laughing) Ah, but Chris, don’t we all really just give it away?

M: Huh? Um, I dunno. I guess it’s really two different things anyway, right? Fucking for money and fucking for pleasure.

NM: Yes, it’s two totally different things.

Too much money

M: When you’re earning that kind of insane money selling the simple pleasures of your company, do you tend to strut around thinking, “Goddamn, I’m as hot a chick as has ever walked the earth, look at me, I’m absolutely spectacular?”

NM: You know, it was so surreal. I was in this weird little fantasyland, walking around with way too much money. There was definitely a lot of pressure too though. But I clued in right away what my niche was: a really awesome fun girl to hang out with. And I was pretty and I’m a sexual person, so the whole package really put it together. I made sure I was always in a good mood when I was with clients. I was also very fortunate to never lose a sense of who I was within the business, you know? Like, it’s true I got caught up and swept away a little, but even in those moments, I made of point of checking in with myself to make sure I was always true to myself.

M: Do you have any advice for other girls looking to earn themselves a cool 2K an hour as prostitutes?

NM: Um… Ah, I dunno.

M: Seriously, what would you suggest? Like, “Always brush your teeth, comb your hair, make sure you’re clean down there.” What sort of–

NM: Oh my God. I really don’t know. I guess I’d tell them to be careful. It’s true I got lucky but that’s not the case for everyone. My worst nightmare is some girl reading my book and saying “Oh my gosh, wow, that’s something I could totally do and feel comfortable with” and then not going into the right part of the industry and getting hurt. But if they’d already made up their minds, I’d tell them to make sure they’re doing it for the right reasons, to get a good therapist, and make sure they’ve got some good friends and family around. That’s it.

M: If you had a hot-looking daughter, might you recommend a career in whoring to her?

NM: I would never recommend or try and steer someone else into it. I know it was okay for me at the time when I did it. But everybody is different. Everybody deals with situations differently. Some people are better at handling different things.

Shits and giggles

M: When you’re charging 2K an hour for sexual services, is pretty well everything a go? Like, at that price, if a client is into scatting, do you just smile demurely while he takes a good old-fashioned beer shit on you? Going, “Ah, this is wonderful, baby, let’s roll around in it afterwards while we make sweet love?”

NM: I have to tell you that… It wasn’t… Oh God. Um, okay. With anything goes… Lemme think. (long pause) No, I definitely had my boundaries and I definitely maintained them. I knew what I was comfortable with and knew what felt good to me. And really, that’s the thing. I think the number of clients who’d want to engage in something that someone else doesn’t enjoy is really a small percentage and probably not the kind of client you want anyway.

M: I guess so. But I think if I was spending 4,000 bucks to see the high-diving act, I would make sure that I saw the high-diving act, you know what I mean? Like, I wouldn’t care if the diving horse I was paying all that money to didn’t enjoy diving. Too bad. Then again, I guess if you’ve got that big a budget for whores to begin with, you’re not really thinking about dollar value in the same way someone of more modest means might. Did you have a preferred sex act with clients?

NM: Wow, what an awesome question, no one has ever asked me that before.

M: Are you kidding me?

NM: People tend to tiptoe around certain things, or they just don’t go there. Um, my preferred sex act. Well, I think that’s a little private. Which I know sounds crazy since I just wrote a book about it.

M: Well yeah, I’m not exactly asking what you think about when you’re masturbating or anything especially personal, you know? Just what, as a professional, was your preferred sex act. Like, was it the quickest, easiest thing or….

NM: Um, okay. Let me transport myself back to the world of escorting for a minute. (Pause) Okay, I really don’t know.

M: Alright, so be it. So how often would you genuinely wind up having a bang-up enjoyable time with a client?

NM: Most of the time. I made sure I did, I made sure it was fun. Just imagine having a job where it’s fun, easy and you’re making insane money. Those are all the positives.

Women in prison

M: So why did you leave New York Confidential then?

NM: My relationship with Jason was deteriorating, I didn’t feel safe there anymore, I didn’t feel happy there anymore, there were some new managers that came in who were really mean, negative people. It changed the whole vibe of the agency. Like, we had this whole sex utopia going on there and it just vanished, you know? So at that point, I just figured, well, why am I here? So I decided to leave.

M: And then, a month later, they got busted. You ended up doing time at Rikers? How did that come about?

NM: I’m sorry, I really can’t discuss the details of my case, but yeah, I did, only because they set my bail so high, $250,000. That’s why I went to jail for 26 days, three days longer than Paris Hilton. Jail is a terrible place. When I was growing up watching Law and Order, I would always cringe whenever the jail doors would slam, and then, ah, like, fast-forward 15 years. It was really brutal. One thing I know for sure is that I’ll never be in that situation again. It’s a nightmarish experience.

M: Were you especially popular with some of the more, how do you say, masculine girls at Rikers?

NM: Honestly, I don’t want to burst anybody’s balloon, but when you’re at Rikers, it’s really just a survival thing. Nobody is at that stage of it yet. When you go upstate and you actually get sentenced to do time, that reality exists. But for me, it was more about not getting hurt. The girls in there were really aggressive. Really aggressive.

M: And to you especially, I’d assume, the famous 2k-an-hour call girl. After all, they get the New York Post in Rikers.

NM: Yes, exactly, they do! And they published this full-page picture of me that everyone was walking around with. Everyone in there was really resentful because I had a good lawyer and regular court dates to try and resolve my situation. A lot of girls there don’t have those opportunities to get themselves to a better place.

M: And they all think you’re loaded too, right? Which is both good and bad in jail.

NM: Yes, exactly.

Looking for local fun

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: McLennan, a Montrealer again

M: Were you able to walk away from the business with any money?

NM: No, there was a lot of money owed to me that I never got. Money that was sitting in an account which I believe got seized. It’s probably all for the best—it might have gotten me into a lot more trouble and I probably still wouldn’t have it. So hey, I came back to my humble beginnings in Montreal and now I’m trying something new.

M: Do you resent that Ashley Dupree, who you turned on to big money whoring, has somewhat successfully cashed in on all the notoriety from the Spitzer scandal?

NM: Well, has she really? She sold 500,000 copies of her single on iTunes, so that’s good, but she’s kind of disappeared now, hasn’t she? I know she’s still popping in and out of hotels, she’s in the press for that, but I’ll be very curious to see how the music career she’s working on will be received, how far she’ll be able to go. Actually, she’s a cool, down-to-earth, awesome girl. I only wish her the best. She just got caught up in a huge situation, this crazy scandal.

M: What do you think you’ll do for a career now?

NM: Well, the book is out and I love writing. I studied acting and still really love that whole world. So I dunno, I think I’m due for a light bulb moment soon. I can sense it coming. I’m enjoying living in Montreal again a lot. Except for winter, which sucks. I really need to find a winter activity to keep myself sane this year. So if anybody out there wants to teach me how to snowboard, tell them to get in touch with me. I’m totally open to learning, because I really need something fun to do now.

Sex trade booms despite deaths

Support — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:31:54 +0000

Source: http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2008/11/01/7272991-sun.html

As far as Nancy’s concerned, Edmonton’s the best city in Canada to work as an escort.

“There’s more money and less grief,” she says. “The police are excellent for helping us, the cost of living is good compared to bigger cities and the licensing system works.”

FAR FROM RISK-FREE

Edmonton escorts routinely charge up to $600 per hour, but Nancy warns that it’s far from risk-free.

“This business will weed you out,” she says. “A lot of very naive girls get into it, but it’s survival of the fittest. If you last, it means you’ve learned, or grown up.”

But if you don’t learn, she adds darkly, “You could die.”

Edmonton’s so-called inside sex trade has been rocked this year by two high-profile deaths. The body of Brianna Torvalson, 21, who had been working over the Internet, was found on Feb. 21 on an acreage in Strathcona County. No charges have been laid in her slaying.

Then on June 30, the body of Chantel Robertson, 20, was found in a shallow grave behind a south-side house. She had been strangled. Matthew Todd Barrett, 24, has been charged with first-degree murder and offering an indignity to a body.

Robertson was last seen at 2:30 a.m. June 28 when she was dropped off at a client’s house in the same neighbourhood. Sources said her cellphone – an escort’s “lifeline” – had been switched off and no one was able to make contact with her.

Nancy, a veteran of the business, says escorts quickly learn to size up a situation and determine whether it’s safe.

It begins on the phone. She gets a feel for new customers simply by talking to them. Are they nervous? Do they sound high? What are they into, sexually?

When she arrives, Nancy makes sure everything is as discussed. Are there extra people in the room? Did he lie about his appearance? Does he behave differently than he did on the phone?

“About 95% of the guys are totally fine,” she says. “Mostly, they’re just square dummies.”

She’d rather deal with someone high on crack than a drunk, any day.

“You just raise your voice and the crackheads are going, ‘Sshh, I don’t want any trouble,’ ” she says. “Drunks are the ones you have to watch out for. Booze makes people aggressive.”

Nancy prides herself on her ability to “de-escalate” volatile situations and talk herself out of trouble. Failing that, however, she says she can defend herself if things get out of hand. But in the three decades she’s been an escort, it never has.

“I know we’re taking chances,” she says. “Either you don’t allow yourself to think of it or it just doesn’t enter your mind.”

NO STRAIGHT JOB

Nancy doesn’t even consider getting out of the business and taking a straight job.

“Most women in this business don’t hate the business. It’s a good-paying job,” she says. “How many secretaries get their asses pinched for $10 an hour?”

David Aitken of the city’s bylaw department said there are about 160 licensed escorts in Edmonton, mostly working for any of the nine agencies. Of those, 13 have independent escort licenses.

However, Aitken said that over the past three or four years, there’s been a “significant” increase in prostitution activity over the Internet.