DETROIT, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Two Ukrainian women are suing the former owners of a Detroit strip club, alleging they were forced to dance 12 hours a day and were repeatedly raped and beaten.
A lawsuit filed in federal court in Detroit states the women, identified as Jane Doe One and Jane Doe Two, were living in the Ukraine in 2004 when men saying they worked for a company called Beauty Search Partners enticed them to move to the United States where they could make more money, Courthouse News Service reported Wednesday.
One of the Does was a stripper in the Ukraine. The other dated one of the three men who would later become their tormentors, saying she trusted him to help her with the move.
Once they arrived in the United States, the women said they were forced to perform as strippers for 12 hours a day, six days a week -- more than 72 hours each week for months. In addition, the three Beauty Search partners, Veniamin Gonikman, Aleksandr Maksimenko and Mikhail Aronov, took all the money they earned, usually between $500 and $700 a night.
The lawsuit alleges Maksimenko and Aronov also regularly beat and raped the women, and refused to allow them to leave the club on Detroit's 8 Mile Road, Cheetah's on the Strip, without one of them going with them.
Eventually one of the women escaped the club with the help of a patron who took her to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two days later, the FBI raided the club and freed the second woman.
The club owners were charged with a variety of crimes. Maksimenko pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison, and Aronov was given seven years in prison, the complaint states. Gonikman was apprehended in Ukraine, and sentenced to three years in prison, it adds.
The two women are now suing the three Beauty Search partners along with the club's parent company, BFC Management. Their suit states the club's parent company known or should have known the women were working for no pay and that they were held captive there for months.
The lawsuit seeks back pay and an unspecified amount of punitive damages.
