PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) – The lawyer for a strip club accused of hiring two underage girls – aged 13 and 15 – said in closing arguments that the girls were lying, even though the club manager and the girls’ pimps are in prison. But this sadly classic argument wasn’t made in a criminal court: the state labor commissioner has taken a novel approach to address a child sex-trafficking case by using civil employment laws.
The story leading to the labor commissioner’s case is horrendous. Both girls were runaways and had pimps who made deals with the manager of the Stars Cabaret Beaverton, for the 15-year-old to dance nude at the club and the 13-year-old to have sex in the “featured entertainers room.”
The younger girl said some men told her to say her age over and over while they had sex. She said other men would choke her or push her face into the dirty floor.
Steven Toth, the former manager of Stars Cabaret Beaverton, is serving 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to employing a minor as a stripper and having her perform sex acts for customers.
Both of the pimps are in prison: Victor Moreno-Hernandez is serving 30 years and 10 months after a jury convicted him of rape, sexual abuse, compelling a minor into prostitution and giving methamphetamine to a minor, while Anthony Curry is serving a life sentence on seven counts of using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct.
But the club’s three owners did not face any charges in the case, and their money keeps flowing in.
Randy Kaiser, Todd Mitchell and Jeff Struhar are selling the Beaverton club to international strip chain Spearmint Rhino. The property – valued at more than $1 million according to city records – has sat empty since this past July, and the various corporations set up by the three owners also control three other strip clubs in Oregon.
“It’s definitely business as usual for the owners,” said Joel Shapiro, the girls’ lawyer.
Kevin Barton, the Washington County district attorney who prosecuted the cases against Toth and Moreno-Hernandez, said the decision not to charge anyone higher up in the corporations that own the club came down to a lack of evidence.
“Every single lead was followed as far as it could be followed,” Barton said. “If there was evidence, that would have been followed to its conclusion and presented to a grand jury.”
And that’s why the details of this devastating case played out in front of an administrative law judge at the offices of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries rather than before a jury and judge in a criminal courtroom.
In an unusual legal maneuver, Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian decided to do what he could to get justice for the two girls: He filed a complaint with the Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries, accusing the club owners of employment discrimination and demanding $4 million in damages for each girl.
“I didn’t believe the owners of Stars should be getting off scot-free after creating an environment that allowed this to happen,” Avakian said in an interview.
Courthouse News spoke with dozens of state labor offices and officials at the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. None had ever heard of state labor laws being used to combat child sex trafficking.