A State Department delegation invited to the United States to study strategies to combat sex trafficking made an unscheduled stop at a Nevada brothel, reports the Nevada Appeal.
The 9-person group of academics, government officials and non-governmental organization workers from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam have been traveling the country as part of the International Visitors Program.
During their two-day stay in Nevada last week, the delegation viewed a presentation on the state’s approach to legal prostitution in the old Supreme Court Chambers at the Capitol, reports the Appeal.
On hand for the presentation on the “world’s oldest profession” was state archivist Guy Rocha and a spokesman for the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Carson City, Nev.
The bunny ranch website boasts it is “the place where wet dreams become reality.”
“The attitude on the frontier was, ‘These men need an outlet,'” Rocha said, explaining the history behind the state law.
“What made us exceptional was progressivism,” the paper quotes Rocha as saying. “Nevada resisted the push to change human behavior by prohibiting it.”
Following the session on Nevada’s sex trade, the international visitors got a “spur-of-the-moment tour” of the brothel, according to the paper.
Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof told the United Press International that to his knowledge none of the members of the delegation “had sex with any of the bunny ranch girls.”
“They were more concerned about trying to deal with prostitution in their own country, and in particular underage prostitution and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases,” he added.
According to UPI, the incident drew fire from anti-sex trafficking activists.
“The president has signed a national security directive making it the policy of the administration to oppose the legalization of prostitution,” Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, told UPI in an interview. “The State Department brings a delegation from Asia where the problems are particularly acute to a sex ranch as a means of showcasing how benign brothels and prostitution are.”
The federal agency moved quickly to snuff out the brewing scandal.
“The State Department does not condone the visit to the brothel ranch on May 14, 2003, or in fact any meeting that may have taken place between the visitors and representatives of the ranch,” Brooke Summers, a State Department spokeswoman, told UPI yesterday.
“We were very pissed,” another unnamed official told UPI. “Things are going to take place to ensure this never happens again.”
