Rebekah “Bekah” Charleston felt uneasy as she walked into the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in western Nevada.
“While the TV show ‘Cathouse’ made it appear gorgeous from the outside, it’s a double-wide trailer in the middle of nowhere. “You’re entering a literal compound,” the former sex trafficking victim told Fox News Digital.
“That was bizarre. “No cars were permitted,” she stated. “No one ever left their workplace. We were compelled to sleep in the same rooms where we had served customers all day. We’d get to change the linens, but we’d still sleep in the same rooms. That’s unlike any other job.”
The North Texas woman is now speaking out about A&E’s docuseries “Secrets of the Bunny Ranch.”
The six-part program delves into the emergence of “America’s No. 1 sex destination” and its charismatic proprietor, Dennis Hof, a self-described pimp who died in 2018 at the age of 72. It includes never-before-seen footage, personal images, and never-before-heard interviews with former employees.
“Speaking out in a docuseries like this is kind of terrifying and overwhelming,” Charleston said. “But … “I think it’s important that we hold people accountable now.”
Growing up, Charleston was a troublesome kid who ran away from home at the age of 16. Living on the streets, she was driven into prostitution by her boyfriend. By the age of 17, she had become involved with a trafficker. Charleston stated that she was in her early twenties when she was taken to the Bunny Ranch as “a form of punishment.”
“I was in Las Vegas working for [my trafficker] at all the casinos and escort services,” she told me. “I started getting arrested too often. The cops began recognizing me, as they frequently do in Las Vegas. So he made me go to the brothels.”
Charleston’s trafficker had one guideline for her to follow: stay away from Hof.
“My trafficker warned me that … all [Hof] would try to do is get girls high and drunk and then have services with him for free,” according to her. “And my trafficker wasn’t about to let me do that.”
According to the documentary, the women were expected to read “The Bunny Bible,” which also served as a guide for their client negotiations.
“We would line up like cattle every Thursday to get a pap smear,” said Charleston. “We basically go one after another in a room in the rear. A doctor would be on the premises to perform a pap smear. I also had to have my blood tested once a month to ensure that I did not have HIV or AIDS.
The Bunny Ranch served as the location for HBO’s reality television series “Cathouse,” which began in 2005. While the series showed the workers as making a lot of money, Charleston said it was far from the truth. Several former employees had similar sentiments throughout the documentary.
“I started at the Love Ranch,” Charleston claimed, referring to Hof’s second legal brothel in Nevada. “You had to earn your place at the Bunny Ranch, which was [Hof’s] preferred brothel. I ended up making a lot of money, enough to move to the Bunny Ranch.
“The house takes 50% of your money off the top, no matter what,” she told me. “The unpleasant reality is that you automatically receive half of whatever you charge consumers and must do all sexual services for. Then you’re charged for accommodation and board, meals, and supplies.
“Everyone has their hands on your 50%. I know several folks who have worked there and boasted about making a million dollars per year. So that’s automatically $500,000. And then there’s 12 months of bed and board, 12 months of supplies, and other expenses. It ends up being significantly less than stated.”