Mutt

Just like that, making porn was legal in California. The industry
exploded, thanks also to the VCR revolution, which made it possible
for people to watch in private rather than at seedy adult theaters.
What's more, anyone could buy a video camera and go into the
filmmaking business. A cottage industry of "amateur" pornographers
cropped up in the San Fernando Valley. They competed against several
major adult studios: VCA Pictures Inc., Wicked Pictures, and Sin City
Films, all in Chatsworth, and Vivid Video Inc. and Evil Angel
Productions in Van Nuys.

Over the years, the companies grew larger--and politically smarter.
They help fund the Free Speech Coalition, a Chatsworth-based national
nonprofit organization that has dues-paying members ranging from Web
site operators to porn actresses to adult cabaret chains. With an
annual budget of $750,000, the coalition's lobbying effort has focused
on protecting free speech and guarding the business interests of the
Triple-X world.

"Our focus is not just about the rights of the adult industry, but the
rights of you as an individual to have choices," says William Lyon,
executive director of the coalition. The organization has opened
offices in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia and Washington,
D.C. By next year, the group expects to expand into the South with
five more offices.

Today's pornographers maintain that the adult film industry is no
different from other lucrative businesses based on vice, such as
tobacco and alcohol. Sex is merely a commodity to be sold and branded,
like Microsoft software and Chrysler minivans. "We are a mainstream
business, pure and simple," says Steven Hirsch, chief executive of
Vivid Video Inc., a leading supplier of erotica to major entertainment
companies such as AOL Time Warner Inc., AT&T Corp. and DirecTV, the
satellite TV service controlled by General Motors Corp. "We are
nothing more than widget makers."

They are widget makers with one exception: Other industries are
monitored for health and safety violations in the workplace.

In the heterosexual adult film business, producers may not demand the
use of condoms, but they do require actors and actresses to sign
documents meant to excuse the filmmakers of liability. A typical
contract from Vivid says the company is not responsible, and will pay
no medical costs, for "sexually transmitted diseases . . . . such as
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), herpes, hepatitis and
other related diseases."

Ballowe and Goldberg signed similar waivers on the movie they shot
together. "I represent that I am in good health, with no known
sexually transmittable diseases. I understand that the benefits of the
workmen's compensation laws do not apply," the waiver said.

Ballowe's lawsuit alleges that Goldberg lied when signing the
document, and that the attempt to force her to waive worker's
compensation rights was not lawful.

Legal experts called by The Times agree. Employees cannot be forced to
sign away their legal rights to work in a safe environment--or to earn
a minimum wage, overtime pay and enjoy the protection of workers'
compensation insurance.

"You cannot have a provision that goes against public policy," says
John Laviolette, an entertainment lawyer who represents numerous
mainstream Hollywood producers. "If you're an employer and one of your
employees experiences an injury while on the job, those injuries will
be covered."

Producers, however, do not concede that performers are employees.
Instead, producers claim performers are independent contractors who
are not subject to workers' compensation laws.

Elliott Berkowitz, a Los Angeles workers' compensation attorney who is
representing Ballowe, counters: "They're employees. The companies tell
them when to show up, what to wear, where to go, what acts to do. If
Hollywood studios consider their actors and actresses an employee
during the length of their film shoots, there's no reason why adult
studios should be held to a different standard. They're both making
movies. And I guarantee you, studios like Disney have paid their taxes
and workers' compensation policies."

The issue has yet to be decided by the compensation appeals board. But
if it is, another obstacle awaits Ballowe. Hard Core Television, the
producer of the video, did not have workers' compensation insurance
for any employees. The distributor, K-Beech, had taken out a workers'
compensation policy describing its employees as clerical workers. TIG
Insurance Co., the Texas-based underwriter, insists the policy does
not cover porn stars--and therefore won't cover Ballowe's medical
bills.

Officials with Hard Core Television and K-Beech could not be reached
and attorneys for TIG declined to comment.

Whose job is it to track the san Fernando Valley pornography industry?

There are two leading candidates. One is the L.A. County Health
Department. It relies heavily on state and federal money, but the
federal funds are to end in 2004-2005. "Of course there's concern,"
says Kerndt, the county's STD control director. "We know that if a
disease enters this population, it could rapidly spread." Health
department officials say they don't have enough staff or money to
monitor the industry and point to a budget deficit that, by 2005, is
on track to hit between $350 million and $400 million annually.

The other candidate for oversight is the California Division of
Occupational Safety and Health, whose monitoring effort includes
oversight of Hollywood stunt work but not the porn industry. It is
"too fragmented, too hard to track," says Dean Fryer, a Cal-OSHA
spokesman. "We rely heavily on employees to give us tips about unsafe
working conditions."

Deborah Sanchez, supervising attorney for the Los Angeles City
Attorney's special enforcement unit, is sympathetic to the plight of
porn performers but sees little support from the public. "This reminds
me of all the other types of businesses that have traditionally been
oppressors--the garment industry, for example," Sanchez says. "The
difference is, there are unions for garment workers" these days.

Mainstream Hollywood actors have a union that oversees wages, health
insurance, retirement benefits and residual payments. Screen Actors
Guild officials say they would never allow their members to work on an
adult set.

Some adult-film actors know that they are entitled to employee
protections such as workers' compensation and overtime, but they see
no way performers could organize. "You would have to get every actor
and actress in adult to sign up at the same minute," says an actress
who goes by the stage name Wendy Divine and has worked on Vivid and
K-Beech productions for several years. "Even if that happened, the
studios could easily find replacements. They control everything."

Before Ballowe filed her lawsuit, she and Jade reached out to law
enforcement and other government agencies, asking that they
investigate working conditions in the industry. The first stop, in
1998, was Cal-OSHA. "They told us they didn't track our business,"
Ballowe says, and sent her to the state health department."

The California Department of Health Services, however, doesn't track
their industry. "It's a local issue controlled by the local county
health department," Ballowe says she was told.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, when contacted
by The Times, said the case was a criminal matter, not a public health
issue.

So they went to the Van Nuys office of the Los Angeles Police
Department, where they met with Det. David Escoto, then with the
department's Crimes Against Persons unit. "I told them there was no
way we could prove who did what," recalls Escoto, now in the
department's Foothill office. "I don't know how the industry works.
And I don't think there's a way to prove they all got HIV from the
same person.

No one would believe them anyway."

"That's utter rubbish," counters Dr. Michael Gottlieb, the former UCLA
medical researcher who identified the earliest AIDS cases. "There is a
way to track that information. It just takes money."

Gottlieb pointed to the case of Dr. David Acer, a Florida dentist who
was found to have infected six of his patients with HIV. Federal
epidemiologists used molecular sequencing studies of the viral strains
of the patients to see if there were any similarities in the virus
carried by the seven people.

The results showed that the patients' strain was similar to that of
the dentist--and vastly different from other HIV strains collected
elsewhere in the community.

But there was an important difference with the case of the dentist.
"People cared what happened to those patients," Gottlieb says. "They
were seen as innocent. No one sees porn stars as victims."

Correction. Almost no one. Somewhere in Los Angeles is one office
worker who does care. In the words of an adult-film actress: "I picked
up chlamydia on an Extreme set. I gave it to my boyfriend by accident.
I had no idea that I had it. I didn't have any symptoms."

She learned that she was infected nearly a year later, long after she
and the boyfriend had broken up. By then, he was in another
relationship and had unknowingly infected his new girlfriend. "She had
it, too," says the actress, who agreed to speak only if not
identified. "The girlfriend worked at some insurance company. She's a
secretary."

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