The owners of a Florida strip club were arrested this week after it was learned that a 15-year-old girl had been working there.
The Orlando Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation arrested four people, including the owner, general manager, assistant manager, and another manager of the Flash Dancer Orlando strip club, after an investigation found that a 15-year old girl had been working there from 2019 to 2021. The teen allegedly worked for two years at the club without proof of her I.D.
According to an arrest affidavit obtained by local news outlets, the girl had been employed at the establishment since 2019, when she was just 15 years old, without proof of her name or age or a license to work. She reportedly gave a fake birthdate, claiming that she was 20 years old. She said she was working to support her mother, who was unemployed. In addition to working at the strip club, she held other jobs doing hair and nails, and worked at other adult entertainment venues in the area six months earlier, the affidavit said.
Investigators found that strip club employees engaged in sex acts on patrons for tips, including the girl. Surveillance video from March 2021 showed dancers engaging in sex acts at the club. During certain private performances, the general manager of the club was present, and had the “authority to direct or otherwise control” what the dancers did during the private sessions. The owner of the club also placed the girl in prostitution advertisements with her stage name under it, the affidavit adds.
Under Orange County, Florida, code, adult entertainment venues like strip clubs must provide the county sheriff’s office with an information packet containing documentation for each employee on the first Monday of each month; but according to investigators, the owners of the club provided no documentation for the teenage girl besides a fake date of birth and her name.
“Flash Dancer Orlando has failed, repeatedly, to present to MBI an accurate list of dancers and current workers at the establishment,” the affidavit reads in part. “Specifically, in this investigation, Flash Dancer Orlando concealed [the victim’s] work as an adult entertainment dancer, by excluding her from every list sent to MBI, during the time [the victim] spent dancing at the establishment.”
Deputies with the Orlando MBI were alerted to the case in February 2021, when one deputy noticed a vehicle with no visible tail lights leaving the club. The deputy pulled the car over. The girl was a passenger in the vehicle. During the stop, she gave the deputy her name and an inaccurate birthdate; but the deputy was able to confirm her real date of birth. She was arrested on a juvenile custody order and taken to a local Juvenile Assessment Center.
The owner and the three managers were arrested this week, each charged with one count of human trafficking for commercial sexual activity of a child under 18. If convicted, each count carries a life sentence.
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The arrest comes amidst a mounting effort to ban adult-oriented entertainment like drag shows for children, including in Florida. In February, Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration moved to revoke the liquor license of Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation, a performance art center, after it hosted a “sexually explicit” drag show advertised as open to “all ages,” despite performers engaging in lewd acts, such as: exposing prosthetic breasts and female genitalia, exposing the buttocks of performers, simulated masturbation, and sexually explicit children’s Christmas songs like “Screwdolph the Red-Nippled Reindeer.”