LAS VEGAS -- A Las Vegas nightclub empire is accused in a federal complaint of steering its female employees into having sex with high rolling customers, including Arab royalty.
The legal action was filed in federal court by a former cocktail waitress for the Light Group, which operates 16 successful venues in Las Vegas, including nightclubs. The complaint alleges the company actively recruited and groomed young women for its clubs, allowed widespread substance abuse, and expected its employees to do whatever it took to promote the business.
Drugs, booze and sex inside Las Vegas nightclubs is not a revelation. Those things come with the territory. The difference, as alleged by the complaint in federal court, is that those elements were allegedly all part of a business plan.
Read the lawsuit against Light Group
The father of one witness known as Jane Doe compared it to a cult, in that the nightclubs became surrogate families for the young women, who according to the confessions of a club girl, were expected to tolerate the intolerable.
"When you do Light Group you are taught service with a sexual undertone. When the Arab customers came in, it was not about service, we were just supposed to be there for them to touch and grab and hold onto. They didn't care if you made them a drink or not, you were there just as an object," said Jane Doe, witness.
Of all the things Jane Doe says she endured as a cocktail server at Jet, some of the worst came at the hands of the very wealthiest customers -- Arab millionaires and royalty. Such customers were not rare at the clubs, especially after September 2008 when Zabeel Investments of Dubai, headed by the heir to the throne of Dubai, bought 50 percent of the Light Group. For the young women working, the Arabs were always a handful.
"They expect you to do anything they want, no matter how degrading. They have no fault in asking and if and when you say no, they're almost floored that you spoke back to them in the first place, let alone that you are not going to do what they asked, and then they cause a ruckus, call the management until they find one that will do what they asked."
In her lawsuit, Jane Doe alleges that attractive women were recruited, even in their teens, to work in Light Group restaurants as a feeder system for the nightclubs and that they were conditioned through the use of drugs and booze to become accustomed to what would be blatant sexual harassment in any other workplace, preyed on by high rollers and celebrities, and even managers.
Once the women get into their thirties, they are shown the door and newer, younger replacements are brought in like Jane Doe, who was transformed from honor student cheerleader to surgically enhanced strung-out party girl.
"If I had a teenage daughter, 19-years-old, I would not let her work on the Strip in light of this case," said Al Marquis, the attorney for Jane Doe.
Marquis and fellow attorney Michael Amador are not newcomers to the ways of Las Vegas but both say they are astonished by how insidious and well organized the system allegedly is.
"They are exploiting 19, 20, 21-year-old girls with cocaine and alcohol and convincing them it is appropriate for their supervisors to fondle and grope them, treat them to humiliating experiences, to let customers do whatever they want, and ultimately to fly them out of town to have sex with high paying customers.
Jane Doe says she drew the line when she was asked to fly to Los Angeles for what a boss told her was a marketing trip. She asked a more experienced co-worker what that meant.
"She said these trips are for the Arab customers, they're high paying customers that they like to do favors for. They take you to L.A., a bunch of girls, these men put you up in a hotel, take you to dinner, then take you to a nightclub, get everyone very drunk, and then the way it usually works, at the end of the night, you go back with these clients and sleep with them, and they're very happy and they find out who the new girls are," said Jane Doe.
A long year of booze and drugs, allegedly supplied at her workplace, left Jane Doe a wreck. At the end of a five-day runner, after she had asked to be sent to rehab, she says she was instead poured into a taxi by her boss and sent home. Despondent, she tried to take her own life, ended up in a psychiatric ward, and has come forward with the lawsuit to help the other women still caught in the glamorous web.
"I don't want people to be expendable. A life is not expendable, especially one that is unlived. It almost ruined mine and I was 22," she sobs.
The Light Group, which is a very successful company, says the allegations are outrageous and completely untrue and it intends to fight back in court.
