UES Strip Club Sex-Trafficked Young Workers, Explosive $25M Suit Says

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An Upper East Side strip club pimped out its workers and systematically forced them to engage in sex acts with clients, two former dancers allege in an explosive $25 million lawsuit.

Sapphire Gentlemen's Club, on East 60th Street between First and Second avenues, bills itself as making "every man’s fantasies come true."

But that "unseemly promise" led the club to create a prostitution ring and "turn a blind eye to sexual assault, physical assault, illegal drug use and underage drinking," according to the lawsuit, which was filed in state court on Monday.

At the center of the trafficking operation were Sapphire's "hosts," who "behaved like Gods," in the words of one former dancer — threatening dancers to engage in prostitution or else be punished with a loss of income, the suit alleges.

"Some Hosts would even regularly supply customers with cocaine and condoms, to ensure the client experienced no roadblocks to getting anything they wanted," the lawsuit says.

Though headquartered on East 60th Street, Sapphire also has two locations in Midtown, where at least some of the alleged misconduct occurred, according to the suit. Sapphire's management could not be reached for comment, with the club's phone not accepting calls on Tuesday.

"It's been going on there since the beginning of time"

Plaintiffs include a 19-year-old who began working at Sapphire last summer, and another woman who was employed there from 2015 to 2019. Patch is not naming either woman, since both identified themselves as survivors of sex trafficking and neither could be immediately reached for comment.

The 19-year-old alleges that a Sapphire host compelled her to drink until she lost consciousness while soliciting new customers outside the club. After refusing an initial request last December to perform oral sex on a "loyal customer," the teenager eventually "acquiesced" and participated in the prostitution ring — leading her to eventually resign from the job, which she was using to help pay her way through college.

Things weren't always so dire: in Sapphire's early years, the club had "clear and established rules" that governed physical interactions between customers and dancers, the plaintiffs say — specifically, allowing customers to "take in everything they wanted to visually" but with limits on where they could touch the dancers, the suit says.

Over time, however, Sapphire's managers decided they could earn more money by "upselling" private rooms to clients, where they could be alone with dancers and engage in whatever sexual act they wanted, the lawsuit alleges.

The second plaintiff says she began to sour on Sapphire around 2016, when she was asked to give a lapdance to a naked customer, she says. Over time, she watched customers become more demanding as they learned that they "could get anything they wanted 'in a private room,'" the suit alleges.

Employees who were unwilling to prostitute themselves were then marginalized, with the second plaintiff suffering a financial loss on some days after previously earning multiple thousands of dollars each night, the suit says. She ultimately quit in 2019.

That prostitution was happening at the club was hardly in question — Sapphire's owner, when asked if prostitution was happening there, once replied that "1000 percent, it's been going on there since the beginning of time," the suit alleges.

In some cases, workers also suffered physical violence, according to the suit, which includes surveillance images allegedly showing a customer punching a dancer in the face at Sapphire's West 39th Street location in 2018.

Believing that upwards of 1,000 more victims will be identified once the lawsuit enters its discovery phase, attorneys for both women are asking for $15 million in punitive damages plus $10 million in compensatory damages for the emotional distress inflicted on the women.

"By conservative estimates, Defendants have generated tens of millions of dollars, annually, from their illegal prostitution ring, while the true cost of their actions have been borne by the Plaintiffs, and others similarly situated in the form of irreparable emotional harm and substantial economic damages," attorneys wrote.

"As such, it is now time for the Defendants to be held accountable, at long last, for their egregious and unlawful actions."