Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

Safety before stripping

Megan, who asked to not be identified by her real name, practices her routine Wednesday at Night Moves. Proposed legislation will implement guidelines that adult entertainment centers statewide will have to follow.

Practicing the dance moves she typically performs in front of an audience, Megan walked to the middle of the stage in her seven-inch high heels and twisted her body around the pole.

She is one of about 40 women who dance at Night Moves, Bloomington’s only strip club, where she has worked for the past three years.

Night Moves enforces strict age requirements that follow the Monroe County guidelines for sexually oriented businesses. Performers must be 18 to dance.

Though there are already a number of regulations on sexually oriented businesses in Indiana, new legislation has been drafted to confront a serious issue: human ?trafficking.

Human trafficking is the forced and illegal movement of people for either labor purposes or for sexual exploitation. Indiana Senate Bill 296 addresses this issue by implementing a number of statewide guidelines adult entertainment clubs would have ?to follow.

All adult entertainment performers would have to provide proof of age and proof of legal residency. Licensed premises for adult entertainment would take a ?photograph of each adult entertainer who auditions, all employees would be forced to sign a document acknowledging their awareness of the problem of human trafficking and there would have to be at least two places where human trafficking awareness posters are displayed within the premises.

SB 296 passed through the Indiana Senate on Feb. 23 with a vote of 48-1. It has now been referred to the House Committee on Public Policy.

Megan, who asked to not be identified by her real name, started dancing while she was in college. Her class schedule made it impossible for her to get a well-paying job. Working as a dancer allowed her to go to class during the week and work a couple of shifts on the weekend, making anywhere from $300 to $800 on the busiest of nights. She was 18 when she started dancing.

“They’re very strict about that,” said Megan, who has never seen an underage girl dance at Night Moves. “They actually found one girl that had used a fake ID to get the job, and then they made the connection because obviously we got to know her a little more and figured out, ‘Wait, you don’t match up.’ And then they fired her, and she was done.”

Jerimy Koch has worked as a bar manager at Night Moves for about 15 years. He runs the auditions for girls who want a spot on the night club’s roster.

“Get on stage and dance to one song, make sure she’s comfortable,” Koch said, describing the audition process. “Stripping is harder for one guy than in front of a crowd ... the biggest thing in the application process is to make sure that the girls are comfortable.”

In order to check the age of their applicants, the Night Moves management gets a copy of girls’ photo IDs. Due to the risk of underage girls using fake IDs, Koch explained he doesn’t like to accept paper IDs.

“They scan your ID, and they check your age and everything like that,” Megan said. “(They) make sure you’re allowed to work and that you’re a citizen. There’s a short application with some information, and they take your picture.”

By Monroe County law, sexually-oriented businesses must follow specific regulations in terms of age and distance from various other structures. Sexually-oriented business is an umbrella term that applies to a strip club or adult cabaret, defined as a nightclub or bar where persons appear semi-nude or where live performances take place and are characterized by the exposure of specified anatomical areas.

A sexually-oriented businesses cannot reside within 1500 feet from a place of worship, a school, a daycare home or center, public parks, a library, any residential districts, another sexually-oriented business or a municipal Historic Preservation Overlay District.

Indiana State Sen. Jim Buck, R-21st from Kokomo, one of the authors of SB 296, worked closely with a national strip club trade group known as the Association of Club Executives in an effort to curb the human trafficking problem.

“The establishments want to get rid of as much of that negativity in the industry as they can,” Buck said in an interview with IndyStar. “This bill doesn’t attempt to pass judgment on whether it’s a good industry or bad industry. What it does say is it is a regulation that even the industry recognizes is needed.”

“This is an industry where there are gangs across the country and around the world that trap these young women into this environment,” Buck said.

Indiana State Sen. James Arnold, D-8th, from LaPorte County, another one of the authors of SB 296, worked in law enforcement in Michigan City, Ind., before joining Indiana politics. He has had personal experiences in dealing with human trafficking at adult entertainment businesses.

“My experience has been over the years is that we have not had any regulation over these adult entertainment businesses,” Arnold said. “We understand that under the Constitution they have a right to do them, but there’s got to be some regulation ... There’s a problem with this nationwide.”

Arnold added that when the Super Bowl was in Indianapolis, state senators had to quickly pass laws to address human trafficking. Reportedly, young girls would be brought in from across the country and the world for prostitution purposes.

Some of the regulations that SB 296 would implement are already being satisfied by the management at Night Moves, including getting age verification from photo IDs and taking pictures of the dancers.

“It’s really not as bad as people think,” Megan said. “I’m sure there are clubs that are really awful and scary ... it’s not that bad in here.”

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe