WASHINGTON, May 20 (UPI) -- The State Department is taking steps to clean up its international visitors program stung by scandal last week when a delegation of East Asian academics, government officials and non-governmental organization workers made an unscheduled visit to a Carson City, Nev., brothel.
Here's the catch: the delegation was invited to the United States to study strategies on ending the scourge of sex trafficking.
"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 United Press International Tuesday.
The Nevada Appeal on May 15 reported that the 10-person delegation from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam visited the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, "the place where wet dreams become reality," according to the ranch's Web site.
Dennis Hof, owner of the bunny ranch, told UPI Tuesday: "We got a call from somebody that said there was a State Department delegation that would like more information on the bunny ranch and legal prostitution in the Nevada. As we do with the media, we opened the doors to them."
According to a State Department official, the delegation was told about the ranch in a briefing by Nevada State historian in Reno on the history of legal prostitution in the state. Summers said an "uninvited guest," who was affiliated with the ranch, offered the delegation a tour.
Hof in an interview was careful to say that to his knowledge none of the members of the 10-person delegation "had sex with any of the bunny ranch girls." He added, "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."
Nonetheless, the incident has already invoked criticism 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."
In the delegation, the only State Department officials present were translators contracted for the program, but not associated with either the foreign or civil service. Nonetheless, one State Department official said, "We were very pissed. Things are going to take place to ensure this never happens again." The official said that a series of steps were being discussed to coordinate the closer monitoring of the international visitors program.
