Original subtitles

♪

Cathouse was my first introduction to, like...

prostitution.

I arrived while they were filming Cathouse on HBO.

Cathouse put the Moonlite Bunny Ranch

and Dennis Hof on the map.

Suddenly, everybody in America

knew what the Bunny Ranch was.

The show flaunted the amount of money

that girls can make.

I'm a businessman. I'm a partner with these girls.

You see the girls...

making money on the show.

And, then you're like, let's go for it.

Younger women were being drawn in

by the show itself.

They're coming because they bought into this idea

that this is this hidden gem of a career opportunity.

Cathouse definitely made it seem like it was...

the Playboy Mansion.

It wasn't like that at all.

It was like, oh [beep].

It was sold as this illusion of power.

[Dennis] They're independent contractors.

They don't have to work unless they want to.

But that's not the reality.

And you become

constantly trying to pay off your tab.

I felt, I'm never gonna be able to leave here

because I can't pay that debt off.

Its debt bondage.

This is brutal out here.

Dennis owned all of us.

If you don't do exactly what they want,

they become violent.

Once you're there, you're not allowed to leave.

I was trapped.

♪

It was no longer safe.

♪ [moody pop]

♪ You put me under the covers. ♪

♪ For all the world to see. ♪

♪ But I never recovered. ♪

♪ You never cared about me. ♪

♪ So now you're being uncovered. ♪

♪ I kept all the receipts. ♪

♪ You and all of the others. ♪

♪ Under a fantasy. ♪

♪

♪

[Crew] Interview Dolly Hart.

Around the time that I caught

a glimpse of Cathouse,

I want to say I was probably like 11, 12.

Being something that was on late at night

that my parents didn't really want me to watch.

And as a kid, that only makes you more intrigued.

They would go to bed,

and I would sneak out of my room,

go downstairs, and I would watch it

with the volume turned down low.

[Dolly] The girls looked like they were having fun.

I think what got me the most is, like,

the camaraderie between the women.

♪

Just that, seeing how...

you can make friends there.

I'm over here thinking, like, when I grow up,

I'm gonna visit the Bunny Ranch.

[Alice] I just thought it was like the coolest thing, like...

damn, getting paid to just be gorgeous, like...

Yes, that sounds amazing.

So I decided I'm gonna go to the Bunny Ranch.

♪

After the first season of Cathouse had been on the air,

young women wanted to...

live in the glamor image of it.

And so, the show began to attract

younger women to the Bunny Ranch.

It kind of grew on me as we were working there,

that people were being drawn in

by the show itself.

It became clear to me that we were part of

the recruiting system for the Bunny Ranch.

I, I, I did not feel good about it.

I did not feel good about that.

♪

In the early 2000s,

Cathouse the television series,

focuses on the prostitutes at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch.

It is a phenomenal success.

It's seen by 2.6 million people in its first airing.

Dennis Hof is getting free advertising,

and HBO is also getting a money-maker.

Once mainstream got a taste of us...

oh, it was just golden, right?

They wanted more because

their ratings went through the roof.

It was like full blown celebrity-ism.

[indistinct chatter]

I didn't think that it would be

all over the place like it was.

I had no idea, until I saw the show dubbed in Spanish,

and I realized, wow,

this, this is actually a big deal.

[Dennis] We've taken my house, my Cathouse,

into the homes of people in 27 languages,

in 49 countries, and you know what they do?

They look at it, and say, "That ain't so bad."

[News] Dennis Hof is a multi-millionaire.

[Dennis] I don't recruit girls.

They come to me.

[News] The Bunny Ranch name has become so successful,

it's now a highly watched series on HBO,

appropriately called "Cathouse."

And the biggest cat of all, Dennis Hof,

says this is just the beginning of

a budding bunny empire.

The Bunny Ranch was Dennis's first brothel.

It was in a little circular area,

almost like a little strip mall,

and it was all brothels that had different brothel owners.

Dennis didn't like having his competition

right outside his front door,

so he started buying them up.

His whole focus was on getting these girls

to make him really insane amounts of money.

[Alice] He was like the Monopoly Man

of all the brothels.

He would just buy them off of people,

and he'd buy one, then the next,

and the next, and the next, and the next.

[Dennis] In northern Nevada, where the Bunny Ranch is,

I have four places up there.

But you fly into Reno.

I have three places in Southern Nevada

that are one hour from the strip.

He was very successful.

He was making money left- I mean, left and right.

♪

He just started transforming them.

He cleaned them up.

[Amy] He was like the remodel king.

I mean, "Pull that carpet out.

Make this bigger."

[Glen] He just completely renovated everything,

and turned them into

multi-million-dollar investments.

[Alice] So there's this constant need for

new ladies to be entering the industry.

Not to mention that there's a certain

appeal to fresh faces.

And Dennis loved the new ladies.

[Dennis] These are the girls from the new season

right here, all these hot blondes.

[Host] How do you recruit the women?

[Dennis] We don't recruit the girls.

Uh, we recruit the girls by them watching

our TV show on HBO.

They'll hear me on Howard Stern,

or they'll see us in magazines.

That's how we do this.

[Amy] People wanted to be on the show.

Oh my God, people came from all over.

If you look at the mechanics of

how it is that they wind up there,

it's because of Cathouse.

Women trust women so,

when they see them on HBO,

and then apply for a job there,

it's part of the exploiter's marketing toolbox

to make sure that you normalize an atrocity.

[Racquel] Cathouse was promoting a very

enticing message for the viewers

that was really nefarious.

What it says to us, frankly, is that it can't be that bad

if so many people are interested in doing it.

[Dennis] These are all applications. New York.

Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Clarksville, Tennessee.

Miami, Florida.

Some of the good ones do slip through.

That's why it is good to be, ah, um...

consistent and keep going and keep emailing me.

♪

[Tom] Many more young women from places like...

Indiana and Ohio

learned about the Bunny Ranch and came.

♪

[Dolly] I just saw, like, the velvet couch,

the pink bunny house,

and it was like, this is so cute.

As a girl, I was having trouble making friends

because I'm like, this first-generation little

Mexican girl getting bullied left and right and,

being labelled the ugly duckling.

I have extremely curly hair, and so...

I guess I was very racially ambiguous,

so I was being called the n-word.

It was brutal.

And, I didn't come from a privileged background,

so I was working 17-hour days,

6 days a week.

You're tired, you're burnt out.

And you see the girls

making money on the show, and...

then you're like,

"Let's go for it. Let's do it."

[Racquel] Cathouse really packages prostitution

in this neat, little, cute package,

and it makes it very marketable to young women.

The story really comes together in the editing booth.

Those are decisions that are made by HBO.

The design and music of the opening credits of Cathouse

feel like a sitcom.

♪ [upbeat] ♪

♪

[Racquel] And when we think of sitcoms,

we automatically think about something

that is happy, that is fun,

that is light in tone.

It predisposes young women to like these characters,

and I find myself rooting for the people that

I'm supposed to root for, according to the show.

And I, I know better,

and yet I still feel that pull.

Yeah, we did get a number of girls who came

after seeing the show, like Brooke Taylor.

[Racquel] In episode one of

the second season of Cathouse,

the young woman, Brooke,

we see her for the first time,

she has pigtails, you know,

she looks like Cindy Lou Who.

[Woman] A little nervous. [laughing]

[Brooke] Oh. That's okay. Me too.

[laughing] We'll be nervous together.

- So you're going too? - Yes.

Oh, God, all right.

Great, great, great. Well, hey!

[Racquel] I find it disturbing because

it's making it cutesy and infantilizing them.

It's making it as if they're little girls...

as if these women are not now about to go

and do very, you know, like adult work.

♪ Here, pretty kitty. Here, pretty kitty. ♪

♪ Here... ♪

♪ pretty kitty. ♪

- Brooke? - Yes, hi.

It's nice to meet you.

We would lean toward music that could be kind of cheeky.

You were going to be a cat in the Cathouse.

And that's the name of the show, is Cathouse.

So, here comes Kitty, Kitty.

But I didn't think of it as, "come one, come all."

There wasn't a Snidely Whiplash, you know.

"Here, Kitty Kitty, you know, come to,

come to destroy your life," or anything like that.

It's, I guess, a testament of my naivety.

[Tom] This was the kind of avalanche of girls

who had found out by seeing the first season.

- Can you see it? - Oh, I do see it.

Oh my God. [laughing]

[Jill] Oh my God, I remember filming this.

[Brooke] Bunny Ranch! Let's do it.

[Jill] Well, I...

if a girl is of age...

you know, I mean,

we ended up getting, you know,

after the show started airing,

getting a lot of people that came in,

you know, some girls. But yeah, I mean...

I guess I never thought of it that way.

As a recruitment thing.

[Dolly] Cathouse definitely made it seem like it was...

the Playboy Mansion with

Bunny playmates

jumping on each other, tickle fighting.

But it was nothing like that.

♪ [menacing]

Not everything you see on TV is a reality.

I love your show on HBO. I've been watching it.

It's great, The Bunny Ranch. [Dennis] Yeah.

At the time I was at HBO,

HBO was really at the top of their game.

They were very, very popular. Very, very successful.

You had shows like The Sopranos.

And HBO always wanted to be a little edgy,

and so there were a number of programs

that were very edgy, sexually. Sex sells.

HBO were among the first of television

to really bank on that notion.

But Cathouse was glamorizing the sex trade.

It was glamorizing pimps.

It was not looking at the suffering of the women

who are in these brothels.

So, after four years, I left HBO.

I went to this organization called Equality Now.

And when Cathouse aired for the first time,

we wondered at the time

how we would deal with

sexual exploitation as entertainment.

[Suzette] I try to make it as nice as possible,

so they don't really want to leave.

They want to stay here and have fun.

[Taina] There's free-flowing alcohol

and everybody's laughing.

There's a pool.

I mean, it's a beautiful marketing ploy to recruit...

young, vulnerable women to try it out.

Dennis had underage girls,

who weren't quite 18,

sending him nude photos and things like that.

He loved the idea of hiring a girl and

having her start when she was 18 years old.

He loved young girls because you can control them.

It's all about control.

♪

He had people that worked for him that would sit outside

Dayton High School and Carson High School.

Tried to recruit young women.

There's a restaurant really close to the Bunny Ranch.

He would host teen nights.

He would talk to the girls.

♪

[Brenda] Like, "You're so pretty.

When you get older, I would like to have you come

and work for me."

It was grooming, absolutely, 100%.

Grooming, manipulation.

So, when I first got onto the

Bunny Ranch website,

I was looking at all the girls...

and seeing who was there, and of course,

the famous ones were there, um...

And then I noticed their sister brothels,

and I was like, well, okay, maybe...

I should apply to one of these.

I actually applied for Kit Kat 'cause I'm like,

the Bunny Ranch is kind of intimidating.

♪

And on the day that I was travelling towards Nevada

and the brothels, I was definitely nervous.

But, more than anything, excited.

But upon, like,

arriving to the actual location...

at first I was like, wait a minute, like, we're...

out here in the boonies, like...

[laughs] you know, it doesn't look like that

on the show.

♪

When I arrived at the Bunny Ranch,

it was this little, like,

almost trailer-looking house.

And I got there while they were filming Cathouse.

♪

It was really eerie.

There was all these young girls there, and I remember...

when they were filming some scene, it was like,

I remember hearing the loud footsteps

as they were kind of running through the halls

playfully with the cameras

and trying to make it out like it was this playful time.

♪

And I had already been a prostitute for about

five years when I arrived at the Bunny Ranch.

So, I knew that these kids

had no idea what it's really like.

They had no clue what prostitution takes out of you.

♪

Your dignity, your worth as a human being,

your treatment in society.

It is not like Cathouse.

♪

[Dolly] The first time I met Dennis,

I was like, "Holy [beep], this really is Dennis."

From, like, I seen this man on TV.

He welcomes the new group of the week,

and that's where he does the rundown of how,

like, money splitting works, and...

to follow the Bunny Bible, and don't be disrespectful.

The house rules definitely made sense to me.

[Bekah] Yeah, I remember the Bunny Bible.

I remember learning all these rules.

They definitely try to just legitimize prostitution and

the brothels, that this is a normal employee workplace,

like this is HR.

[Amy] The Bunny Bible was all the rules.

There's always a lot of rules.

[Alice] Condoms are required.

[Shelly] There was no drugs allowed.

[Amy] You could choose who you slept with.

Don't do anything sexual in the parlor.

♪

But the rules didn't apply to Dennis.

[Dennis] Come on, girls, light it up.

[Bekah] These rules are from the perspective of,

this is to keep you safe.

But it felt like just a way to control all the women.

[Dennis] I'm a businessman that supplies a place

and an opportunity for ladies to work,

and we share the proceeds.

The last thing I am is, is, is a pimp.

♪

[Bekah] I remember standing at my first line up.

It was so, so weird. You know,

the bell rings and you know that a customer has shown up,

and everybody has to hurry up and get there

for the lineup so he can look at each person.

And it was always like a nerve-wracking experience,

because you're standing there in a lineup of just

the most beautiful women on the face of the planet,

AND I am 4'8" and I have colleagues

that are like 6'2" and I'm like,

head level with their boobs.

[Dolly] My first lineup,

of course, I was nervous.

I had no idea, like, would I even be good at this?

Dennis always said that sex work empowered women.

The power's in the negotiation.

♪

[Diana] You are merchandise.

You negotiate prices based on...

if I knock my price down $50 and he thinks I'm pretty,

maybe he'll go with me instead of her.

[Dolly] The first time...

that I ever did the

full-service sex work, um,

I thought, what if this dude starts off good,

but then halfway through switches up?

Like, what if he attacks? Men are scary.

It was like, oh, this job is gonna be

a little harder than I thought.

♪

I learned very quickly,

in this line of work,

they really don't give a [beep] what you look like

as long as you're blonde and white.

So, that was very disheartening,

and it was very difficult

for me to make money at first.

[Taina] What Cathouse doesn't say is that

it's much easier to get in than it is to get out.

It's very, very hard to get out.

Prostitution is not a common job like any other.

Having some hot, sweaty dude hunching over you

and trying to get whatever rape fantasy

he has in his mind played out by choking you,

or whatever position that his wife won't do.

This is access to your body...

to your soul.

There's no work that, that takes out of you

what prostitution takes out of you.

♪ [suspenseful]

♪

Look...

Dennis' world was buying and selling people.

♪

[Bekah] Dennis traded human bodies

just like he would have a used car.

You are a product that is to be bought and used,

and then discarded.

And women are just commodities.

[Dennis] People are working, developing new product

for me right now in the back seat of a car somewhere,

because 18 years from now

they'll be coming to work for me.

[Racquel] Dennis Hof took

whatever rules he used in his timeshare practice

to prostitution in Cathouse.

You see every single one of these rules in practice.

[Dennis] It's the customer's job

to get you to do this free...

or for very small money.

It's your job to take their house,

and their car, and their 401K plan.

Now, somewhere in the middle,

you got a happy buyer and a happy seller.

♪

[Racquel] It's really important to note that

when Dennis is giving the women advice on

how to negotiate higher rates,

that it also is self-serving because...

the brothel has a 50/50 split,

meaning that the house gets 50%,

and the women get 50%.

But the women don't even take home 50%

because they also have to pay for supplies.

♪

[Dolly] Dennis does the rundown of how we split it.

He was doing the 50/50.

And I was like, okay, that's fine.

And then he said, "Oh, well, that includes tips."

And I'm like... That's horse [beep].

And then, he's like, "That includes gifts."

So, he had a girl split a car

that one of her clients gave her...

made her, like, pay out the other half of the car.

And I'm over here like, why did you tell him?

[laughing] Why did you tell him?

♪

[DeAnne] They booked $1,000 maybe...

on a good day.

When they got paid out, the brothel took their 500.

Now from the girl's 500, they're given a card

that shows all the money that was deducted.

[Bekah] They don't explain that your room and board

is gonna be coming out of your 50% of the money.

[DeAnne] $45 a day, seven days a week.

♪

[Bekah] So is all your supplies.

♪

We had to buy our clothing.

We had to buy the condoms.

♪

[Diana] Get our hair and our makeup done.

[Shelly] We had to buy the lube.

We had to buy the sex toys.

♪

[Alice] Pay the photographer.

♪

$80 for the sheriff card.

[DeAnne] You have to pay if you want to do your laundry,

you need to tip the housekeeper.

You need to tip the staff.

The cashier expects a tip.

♪

Everybody's got their hands in that money.

[Bekah] They take as much money as possible.

Your little 50% just basically dwindles down.

♪

[DeAnne] And that was the norm.

And you would sit there at the cashier

when the money came in,

and you would hear over and over again,

"Is that all I've got?"

[Diana] You could go days without

having a client.

But the tab grew, and it grew, and it grew,

and you become...

constantly trying to pay off your tab.

That's why it was called debt bondage.

♪

[Bekah] There are many girls there

that are falling in debt.

And that's a position you don't ever want to be in

at the brothel.

♪

That means that whenever a customer finally does

pick them, they have to do whatever he wants,

no matter if they want to or not.

♪

The brothel is designed to make money for

the pimp, for the house.

It's not at all in favor of

the women that work there.

And the brothel owner always wins.

[DeAnne] I saw women come into the brothel

and they had a certain set of boundaries.

For instance, they didn't do certain types of sex acts.

But as they became more and more desperate

and they needed money,

their personal boundaries changed.

Suddenly they were doing things

that they didn't feel right about.

They lost themselves.

When you're desperate, you don't have a choice.

You're gonna do what you can to survive.

♪

And that's not empowerment at all.

♪

I learned very quickly that it wasn't like the show...

that a lot of the men that would come through there

were very racist.

And I was like, oh, no,

I should totally be making more money,

but I know why I'm not.

It made me angry. And then,

I just started talking [beep] to the men,

and they'd be like, "Alright! Sold!"

It was weird. I had to be mean to get bookings.

The meaner I was to them,

the more they booked.

Because it's like they wanted to see...

a brown girl get riled up or something.

It just sucked again that I had to work harder

than I should have. And meanwhile,

you could see the white women walk out

with just their PJs and get picked.

The reality isn't the same as the show.

[chanting] HBO, the network pimp.

HBO, you've hit a new low!

Cathouse has got to go!

[Taina] So, when Cathouse first was being aired,

we decided to protest HBO.

HBO, the network pimp!

[Taina] The protest was in front of

HBO headquarters in Manhattan.

[Taina at protest] It is absolutely critical

that HBO take a very close look

at the types of programs they...

put on the air that actually degrades

and objectifies women and girls.

I just remember people walking by like

they didn't quite understand, like,

why we were protesting, or what, what,

sort of, what the problem was with Cathouse.

Like, what are they talking about?

So, it was the only way to raise awareness about abuse

and what the impact of mainstreaming violence

does to human beings, especially women and girls.

The show was mainly produced by women,

that is, Sheila Nevins was at the top and,

and everybody under Sheila on the HBO side

were all women. And Patti Kaplan,

who was the...

director-producer of the show.

[Host] The New York Post gave you a bad review.

They said, "This is a bad infomercial for hookers."

They say it's not journalistic,

it's trite, it's phoney.

Maybe even more damning, they say it's boring.

Were you trying to do sort of a journalistic-

[Patti] It's so, so not boring.

[Host] Right there we see a business transaction.

I mean, the guy looks like he's ordering

off the menu at McDonald's.

[Patti] It's something nobody's seen.

Nobody's seen.

And only HBO can do this kind of a program.

[Protester] Why is Sheila Nevins of HBO...

leading this culture

in her network?

Can someone please call Sheila Nevins down here now?

Sheila! Can you hear me, Sheila?

Can you come down here?

There's a few people that want to talk to you.

We want to know why...

you think this is the way

to build a successful network.

[Taina] The people who make money from the sex trade,

they are unbelievable marketers.

They wanted prostitution to be mainstreamed.

They want it to be normalized.

And Mr. Pimp Dennis Hof,

the ultimate marketer, tried to do that.

[Dennis] Hello. Thank you for having me here

at the world's oldest university

to discuss the world's oldest profession.

Prostitution.

[Taina] "It's the oldest profession"?

That's a slogan. It means nothing.

It's the oldest form of oppression.

[Dennis] You know what the exploitation is?

The exploitation is on us men,

who don't get enough variety, quality,

or type of sex that we want.

[laughing & applauding]

That's exploitation!

♪

[Bekah] I was a high school dropout.

And, I mean, I was homeless.

And so I was forced into prostitution at 17 years old.

My pimp had forced me to get a fake identification

that showed me as older.

The reason I went to the Bunny Ranch

was because I had another pimp.

I was forced to go work at the Bunny Ranch

because my pimp would send us there,

if we were getting arrested too much

in Las Vegas and our face was getting

too known by the vice.

I was being pimped out by one man to be

pimped out by another man, Dennis Hof.

I had firsthand knowledge of

Dennis and Suzette working with pimps

who supplied them with women.

If a pimp has a reputation of having very well-trained

women who aren't a problem, they're probably the best

working girls, are some of the ones with pimps.

They're terrified, they're controlled.

They've been trained.

They've been indoctrinated.

That's a lot less work for the brothel.

[Bekah] Suzette and Dennis both knew

all the girls that were being trafficked

that had pimps outside of the brothel.

You know the girls that are getting beaten?

I mean, the branding that we would have, you know,

we would have the same matching tattoos.

It was my pimp, his initials.

That's where all of our brands were,

was on the back of our neck.

So I wound up covering that with a big tree.

They didn't care about my situation at all.

All they cared about was, was I performing?

I never felt like there was somebody that

I could have said anything to.

It just felt like no one cared.

[Dolly] Management did not care if you were being

called some type of slur, but if...

one of the black or brown girls...

said anything to hurt one of the little white girl's

feelings, like, we were seen as the aggressor,

and we would immediately get us a talking to

in the office.

That's where it was like...

this is brutal out here.

[Dennis] Our system is flawless.

We just don't have any problems.

And that's why we don't have any underage girls in here.

[Bekah] The brothels try to say like, oh, well,

there's no trafficking that takes place in brothels.

That is simply not true.

When I had to go to the local sheriff's office to get

your local sheriff's card to work at the Bunny Ranch,

I had my fake social security number, my fake address,

my fake birthday, my fake name.

And here I was in this state licensing agency

getting a work card to go work for this legal pimp.

The whole system just encouraged itself.

♪

I was constantly checking in with my pimp over the phone,

via text message, letting him know, kind of,

how much money I had.

And he would tell me I needed to go put

X amount of money in the bank.

It felt like I was kind of free for a moment.

♪

♪

I almost felt like I was back to being normal, in a way,

that I was able to drive my own car

and go and do something.

♪

But then, I had to go right back.

I had to turn around and

go right back in through the gates.

And that is the moment I realized

that while I was at the Bunny Ranch,

I gave Dennis Hof 50% of the money,

and I gave my other pimp 50% of the money.

I was literally having sex with strangers for nothing.

Dennis was notorious for just partying,

which meant have sex with whoever he wanted

and not giving them any money.

My pimp told me that

if he ever tried to party with me,

to just stay as far away from him as I could,

because of course, he wasn't gonna let me

free [beep] someone, right?

So I knew anytime Dennis was around in the parlor

or wherever, I would try to kind of stay away from him.

[Dolly] I'm sure Dennis is very capable of assault

'cause he is a man who's rarely told no.

He definitely is a predator.

He just knew who he could, like,

coerce and who he can manipulate.

He could be a real piece of [beep]

[Dolly] Oh, yeah, absolutely.

The last one was at his birthday party.

He expected me to have like a threesome

with him and this other girl.

I went to go say happy birthday, and he's like,

"Hey, would you be down for a threesome?"

And I was like, "Am I getting paid?"

And he's like, "No, it's my birthday."

And I was like, hm, like, no. [laughs]

Dennis was intimidating.

You can never trust these dudes,

but I've never been a fool.

I'm like, money first. [laughs] Money first.

[Bekah] I saw the absolute worst of humanity

as a prostitute.

My pimp taught us how to protect ourselves

because violence is so common.

If you don't perform, if you don't do

exactly what they want, they fly into a rage.

They become violent.

Around the time that I was there,

Vince Neil from Motley Crue

came to visit Dennis at the brothel.

Filed by an Andrea Terry,

about what happened to her.

[Rebekah reading] "He tried to get me

to touch his penis.

I reminded him that we had to pay before

any sexual acts could take place.

With such a rage in his eyes,

he grabbed me by the throat

and pushed me against the window frame,

holding me there, yelling at me,

then yanked me down towards the bed.

He was more angry than I've ever seen someone."

♪

[Bekah] What offends me the most about this story

is that instead of Dennis kicking Vince Neil out

for assaulting one of his employees,

he took him to the bar,

bought him another drink,

and then paid for him to party with some other girl.

I mean, they...

they don't protect you.

In the end, the police actually charged Vince Neil,

and he pleaded no contest.

But if the Bunny Ranch and Dennis Hof

had their way, no one would have ever known.

♪

[Dolly] I hadn't booked in like two weeks.

Two or three weeks, and...

you still have to pay room and board,

even if you're not booking.

That was just adding up.

And, I was like, I know this is not my fault

because my regulars are still coming.

But, no new bookings? No- What?

Like, something's happening.

So, I noticed emails.

A bunch of emails, client emails in my inbox,

and I was like, oh, great!

I go to refresh, they're gone.

They're gone.

I caught my emails being rerouted, but...

now I was like, I'm gonna be a target.

The big difference I did see between Cathouse

and the reality of it is that...

the women don't have your back all the time.

It isn't this big sorority.

It's very manipulative...

conniving, and...

we had to fight harder, I mean,

the Women of Color had to fight harder when...

somebody was messing with our money.

♪

[Bekah] Every time I needed to go into town,

I had to talk to Suzette and have to ask permission

to be able to leave my workplace,

like I didn't have control over my own movement.

And I remember having to argue with Suzette

for just being able to leave the premises.

♪

[Taina] The Bunny Ranch is a fortress.

[gate buzzing]

You cannot go in without being buzzed in.

You cannot leave without being buzzed out.

[Bekah] You have multiple gates.

There's security cameras.

I saw numerous times that girls would be

on the phone trying to borrow from other girls,

trying to get money for a ticket out of there,

sometimes they didn't even have cash to pay a driver

to take them to the airport.

[Bekah] If you do owe money to the brothel,

you can't just walk away.

You can't just say, "You know what?

I'm gonna call a cab and I'm gonna leave,"

like that, that's not possible.

People try to say it's a regular job.

Who doesn't leave their job?

♪ [somber piano]

♪

You're literally there 24/7.

That, that's not normal.

It's like they're being kept in captivity.

♪

[Dennis] This is an opportunity for you either

to make a lot of money in 4 or 5 years,

invest it properly,

and never have to work another day in your life.

Or, to make a good amount of money

in a short period of time every month

so you can be with your kids,

you can work on your writing or acting career,

or your studies.

I get a lot of girls that are paying off their school loans.

[Taina] It's a myth that there'd be a lot of...

millionaires of, of women in prostitution.

The minute they leave prostitution,

they are in abject poverty,

and it's very, very difficult for them to

rebuild their lives without extensive medical,

psychological, psychiatric assistance.

♪

[Dolly] It started getting a little rougher,

and very unfair, and...

having quite a few debacles with, like,

racist girls...

in the house, and racist clients.

It was no longer safe.

♪

The women who had no family,

who had no one to help them,

they got stuck there.

The women who could get out of the brothel

got out of the brothel with their own money,

or have family get them out,

or a pimp would pull them out.

♪

[Bekah] My pimp finally let me come back to Vegas...

when he felt like he had punished me enough.

When he had taught me a lesson that

I better be smarter out there in the streets

and stop getting arrested.

I felt relieved.

Even though I was gonna stay in prostitution,

I didn't want to be at the brothel anymore, and...

I remember packing my stuff up

and getting in my little car,

and I put the Bunny Ranch in my rear view mirror.

My pimp, as horrible as he was,

at least let me leave that prison.

♪

I wasn't able to get away from my pimp until the

federal authorities finally became involved.

He was racking up credit card debt in my name,

so I had about $50,000 of credit card debt.

I had a $600,000 home in my name

that got foreclosed.

I had two $80,000 cars that got repossessed.

They arrested me and they thought maybe I would snitch,

but because I was too afraid to testify against him,

I wound up taking a charge...

and serving 13 months in federal prison

for conspiracy to commit tax evasion.

I served my 13 months in prison, and so...

I moved back to Texas January 7th of 2012 and...

started my life over.

I wound up going back to school.

Lo and behold, I'm actually pretty smart.

I wound up getting my master's degree in

criminology and criminal justice.

In 2013, I launched Bekah Speaks Out.

I train law enforcement officers,

social workers, nurses, across the country

on human trafficking education.

My name's Bekah Charleston.

I spent some time working at

the Moonlite Bunny Ranch for Dennis Hof,

and they like to claim that that prevents

trafficking from happening, but it doesn't.

And then one day, I remember I was out at dinner at

a work event and CBS called me on my phone.

It hasn't really sunk in yet.

[News] Bekah Charleston says receiving a full pardon

from President Donald Trump is a gift.

[Bekah] And so, to finally have it happen

the day before Christmas Eve is just surreal.

And now, I have a shiny piece of paper

that the president signed that says he forgives me

for being a victim of human trafficking.

Honestly, it takes so much strength to be

vulnerable enough to begin the healing process.

It's a really hard shift that a lot of people

are never able to make.

[Dolly] You know, Dennis Hof,

he has definitely gained financial...

power and control off of, like,

women's autonomy and...

our labour, our...

and let's be- our talents to maintain...

like, clients.

You need to have personality.

There's a reason why there's returning clients.

He thinks that it's all 'cause of him.

♪

I finally...

started...

[sighing] to detach from the brothels

because they were messing with my money.

And that's when I started, like, packing up.

And, yeah...

I left.

If I could talk to my 11-year-old me

watching Cathouse...

Oh, man. [laughs]

Sorry if I get emotional in this, um...

What I would say to that little girl

is don't let...

any of the [beep] things thrown your way break you.

Don't diminish yourself to make others comfortable.

Be comfortable being you.

♪

I was a working girl for Dennis Hof.

I just thought, oh, God, it's gonna be so much fun.

He said, "You get to pick and choose

who you have sex with."

[Dennis] I don't make anybody do anything ever.

[Tom] I know that there are allegations of

rape and violence.

The job of the documentary was not to do

an investigation into the Bunny Ranch.

The job was to create a good time series.

[Dennis] We're at the Bunny Ranch.

We're having fun.

I just thought, oh, God, it's gonna be so much fun.

And I thought it was safe, but it wasn't safe.

[DeAnne] He was a very sick man.

He hurt a lot of people.

[Dennis] I'm a straight guy.

I pay my taxes, I do the right things.

He's a monster. I was molested,

and beaten, and raped on a regular basis.

Girls come in, shut the door, put a blanket over you

and beat the [beep] out of you.

The Bunny Ranch is kind of like Walmart or church.

You don't have to go unless you want to.

[DeAnne] If you make Dennis unhappy,

he is gonna hurt you.

This feels like organized crime.

He was sort of a degenerate Tony Soprano.

He thought he could do whatever he wanted.

[DeAnne] He had gotten so big...

that he couldn't be contained anymore.