Foxy Lady Closing Leads to Call for Sex Work Decriminalization

The iconic Foxy Lady, the oldest continuously operating strip club in New England, initially opening 38 years ago, was closed by the Providence, Rhode Island, Board of Licenses on December 12, the day after three of the club’s dancers were arrested on misdemeanor charges of sexual solicitation.The closure of the legendary club, which was at the center of a 1998 scandal involving then Boston Red Sox star Mo Vaughn, may now be permanent after the state’s supreme court denied the club’s petition to throw out the board’s closure order. But with 200 employees suddenly out of work just two weeks before Christmas, one local politician has called not only for the club to be allowed to reopen, but also for the city of Providence to decriminalize sex work. Just this week, the Mayor of New Orleans issued a similar call for her own city, as AVN.com reported. â€œI would like to see it reopen, especially right now,” said Katherine Kerwin, a newly elected city council member who will represent the district in Providence that contains the Foxy Lady's location, according to The Providence Journal. “What are these people going to do without jobs?”But Kerwin added that simply reopening the long-standing club may not be enough.“It’s a good moment to begin this conversation about decriminalizing sex work,” Kerwin added. “It’s awful, but sometimes when these bad things happen it does prompt people to act.”But Joanne M. Giannini, the former Rhode Island state rep who authored the 2009 law which allowed the Foxy Lady to be closed, said that shutting down the club was simply just collateral damage in the war against “sex trafficking.”“No one wants to see 200 people out of work,” Giannini told the Journal. “But we don’t want to turn back the clock where young girls become victims of sex trafficking and we can’t do anything to help them.”Under the state supreme court ruling, the club may be allowed to file a new petition get its license to operate back, and reopen. The Foxy Lady became a permanent part of local New England lore when Vaughn, then a superstar home run hitter with the Red Sox, was arrested on drunk driving charges after slamming his pickup truck into a parked car on the shoulder of a highway at about 2 a.m. on the morning of January 9, 1998. Vaughn, it was soon reported, had been drinking at the Foxy Lady that night, where he was evidently a frequent customer.The rotund Vaughn also reportedly ate a hamburger, hot dog, bacon, eggs and toast, that night at the Foxy Lady, apparently breaking his offseason training regimen.Photo by WPRI TV YouTube Screen Capture