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Minors in R.I. can be strippers

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G

Gaborn

Member
PROVIDENCE –– Rhode Island teens under 18 can’t work with power saws or bang nails up on roofs.

But dance at strip clubs? Sure. Just as long as the teens submit work permits, and are off the stripper’s pole by 11:30 on school nights.

It’s enough to surprise even those in America’s mecca of striptease and sin –– Las Vegas.

“Everybody buzzes about ‘Nevada and Sin City, tsk, tsk,’ ” said Edie Cartwright, spokeswoman for the Nevada attorney general’s office. “But we regulate it.”

Providence police recently discovered that teen job opportunities extend into the local adult entertainment world while they were investigating a 16-year-old runaway from Boston. The girl told detectives that she worked at Cheaters strip club this spring, and the police got tips about other underage girls working at another club on Allens Avenue.

That’s when the police found that neither state law, nor city ordinance bars minors from working at strip clubs. Those under 18 can’t buy pornography, and no one may take pictures or film minors in sexually suggestive ways. But the law doesn’t stop underage teens from stripping for money. Even if the police saw underage boys or girls on stage at a strip club, they wouldn’t be able to charge them or the club owners with a crime.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” said youth services Sgt. Carl Weston, “and I can’t find anything that says it’s illegal for a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old to take her top off and dance.”

State law says that anyone who employs a person under 18 for prostitution or for “any other lewd or indecent act” faces up to 20 years in prison and up to $20,000 in fines. But that isn’t enough to prevent underage girls from working in strip clubs, said senior assistant city solicitor Kevin McHugh, who researched the issue a dozen years ago when a teenage dancer was found at a raided strip club.

The term “lewd or indecent” is subjective, McHugh said, and is applied to behavior that’s protected by the First Amendment. “Since we have strip clubs in Providence,” McHugh said, “citizens don’t consider [stripping] lewd.”

With the age of consent at 16 in Rhode Island, the police worry that teenage strippers could take their business to the next level and offer sexual favors –– and it wouldn’t be illegal. State law currently allows indoor prostitution, and two bills intended to ban it have stalled in the General Assembly.

State and federal child labor laws dictate the number of hours and times of days that minors may work, and forbid certain jobs considered to be hazardous. For example, those under 16 can’t work on ladders or pump gas. Youths age 16 and 17 can’t work in manufacturing or excavation.

“Nowhere does it say anything about a kid not being able to strip,” Weston said.

Establishments with city liquor licenses need to keep the teenagers from the booze, but not the stage. “You can’t serve alcohol if you’re under 18,” Weston said, “but you can be the target of a man’s groping hands at age 16.”

But a Rhode Island teen stripper won’t find work in Massachusetts, where state law prohibits anyone from hiring minors under 18 for live performances involving sexual conduct.

Other states have had mixed encounters with the issue.

After a 12-year-old girl was found dancing nude in a club in Dallas last year, the city council swiftly passed rules barring minors from strip clubs and automatically revokes for a year licenses for sex businesses caught employing or entertaining minors.

But an Iowa county judge ruled last year that a striptease by a 17-year-old girl at a strip club was artistic expression protected by the First Amendment. The state attorney general’s office has asked the state Supreme Court to review the ruling.

Nevada, meanwhile, doesn’t let anyone under 18 work in casinos or in public dance halls where there is alcohol — and there are no strip clubs in Nevada without one or the other, or both, said Cartwright, of the attorney general’s office. Minors aren’t even allowed to deliver mail to brothels.

When questioned about Rhode Island’s law, Michael J. Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, offered a copy of the current state law but did not comment for this article.

But Weston, of the Providence police, was adamant that the law should be changed.

“It leads to a societal breakdown,” he said. “These are just little girls.”
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Story Here

Honestly I don't see the problem here. If you're old enough to legally have sex you should be old enough to be a stripper.
 
N

Ninja Scooter

Member
3240337437_b68aa1a482.jpg
 
V

Veidt

Blasphemer who refuses to accept bagged milk as his personal savior
Never in my life has the sight of an aeroplane lifting off, made me :lol before.
 
W

Why would you do that?

Member
As much as I hate to say it because of the young children involved, stripping and pole dancing are seen as forms of art, despite being of a sexual nature, and it wouldn't be that much different than, well, dancing in a play.

Of course, the audience would perform the standing ovation a little differently, but, well, I dunno...

Well, that's how I see it at least.

Edit: 'Course I wouldn't be happy if I were to visit a strip club that employed minors, but I just don't think that every little think kids do with their body should be illegal. Like that girl who was arrested for child pornography when she sent nude pics of herself to boys.
 
D

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Why would you do that? said:
As much as I hate to say it because of the young children involved, stripping and pole dancing are seen as forms of art, despite being of a sexual nature, and it wouldn't be that much different than, well, dancing in a play.

Of course, the audience would perform the standing ovation a little differently, but, well, I dunno...

Well, that's how I see it at least.
Click to expand...


AbandonThread.gif
 
F

Fodaquinhentos

Banned
Why would you do that? said:
As much as I hate to say it because of the young children involved, stripping and pole dancing are seen as forms of art, despite being of a sexual nature, and it wouldn't be that much different than, well, dancing in a play.

Of course, the audience would perform the standing ovation a little differently, but, well, I dunno...

Well, that's how I see it at least.
Click to expand...

Fitting screen name.
 
N

nestea

Member
The_Inquisitor said:
For you guys not getting it.

The plane references people getting a ticket to R.I to go see the underage B& nude.
Click to expand...

Still don't get it. Are there miners on the plane?
 
N

nestea

Member
The_Inquisitor said:
OMFG. :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

Dude MINOR not MINER

Please tell me that is a joke post.
Click to expand...

Dunno what a miner is going to find in Rhode Island. Not sure if there are even any mines there.
 
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