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The county attorney's office plans to seek a court order to close Suncoast Lingerie, which has been accused of violating the adult business ordinance.
By JAMES THORNER
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 18, 2001
HUDSON -- It's not easy being a "Nasty Heather."
Opposed by her neighbors near Sea Ranch Drive and U.S. 19 in Hudson, Heather Fox reluctantly moved her lingerie modeling business about a mile farther north this summer.
About the same time, one of her employees, also named Heather, was charged with prostitution after disrobing for an undercover sheriff's deputy.
Now Fox faces her biggest test: The Pasco County attorney's office plans to seek a court order to shut the doors for good on her business, Suncoast Lingerie.
"I work hard for my money," said Fox, who calls her female staff "Nasty Heathers" in her ads. "I don't do anything illegal. I respectfully work all day to put food on my table for my children."
But it's the nature of the work that has caused the county to invoke its adult business ordinance approved in April.
The law bans employee-customer contact and established a three-strikes-you're-out policy for violations. A companion ordinance, which also took effect in April, banishes lingerie studios and their ilk to industrial areas.
According to undercover detectives, Suncoast violated the ordinance in spades. Not only did Suncoast refuse to move to an industrial park, but employees exposed genitals and breasts and fondled themselves and their customers, assistant county attorney Sid Kilgore said. Deputies also spotted women performing oral sex on other customers, he said.
"Over the span of a few weeks there were multiple violations over the course of multiple nights by multiple persons," Kilgore said.
Kilgore will present his findings to county commissioners today at a meeting that begins at 9:30 a.m. at the Historic County Courthouse in Dade City. Fox plans to attend to complain about what she calls harassment from the Sheriff's Office.
Fox said she has obeyed the ordinance, forcing each of her employees to sign a promise that they will do nothing illegal. It's not prostitution she practices, Fox said. It's fantasy fulfillment involving modeling lingerie for male clients.
The county is so frustrated after failing to entrap her employees that it has resorted to suing her, Fox said.
Even the employee arrested this summer for prostitution, Heather Lane, was a Sheriff's Office plant -- part of a plan to turn all of her employees into informers, Fox said.
"They don't care if I do anything illegal; they just want me gone," she said.
That's good enough for residents of the Sea Ranch neighborhood, who have spent almost three years trying to remove the lingerie parlor from the entrance to their community.
"We're just pleased to no end that we don't have to tell people coming to visit to turn at the prostitution place," said Brenda Enfinger, who has protested the business for years.
The county will move against other lingerie and massage parlors, most on U.S. 19, as evidence of ordinance violations accumulates, Kilgore said.