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A Long Island strip club operated as a “thinly disguised brothel” where managers sold dancers to high-rollers for sex behind locked, soundproofed doors, an explosive new $2.5 million lawsuit claims.
Management at Gossip Restaurant & Cigar Bar in Melville allegedly ran a clandestine “concierge pipeline” where wealthy clients paid thousands of dollars for sex acts in “VIP” rooms as security stood guard outside, according to the filing in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“If a customer wanted to rape and kill you, they could do it back there,” one dancer quoted in the lawsuit claimed.
The complaint was brought by ex-dancer-turned-attorney Christine DeMaria, who claimed two of the club’s VIP rooms were specifically designed to isolate women for sexual access — soundproofed and with locks on the outside.
“Gossip’s managers… actively tried to coerce [DeMaria] and other dancers to cross the line from lawful exotic dancing into unlawful prostitution,” the suit alleges.
DeMaria claims she was viciously blacklisted and fired on a fake theft charge after repeatedly blowing the whistle on the club’s “monetized trauma.”
“I was told, over and over, that this was just part of the job,” she said in a statement.
“It is not. I did not consent to being assaulted because I danced for a living. No one does,” DeMaria said. “Our bodies are not the price of employment.”
When DeMaria began dancing at the Long Island jiggle joint in 2016, she thought that the club’s “steep fees and ever-present male staff” were there to protect the dancers from “the constant risk of sexual assault,” the filing states.
But she soon realized that the “house fee” system was set up to funnel dancers to more lucrative work in several private rooms in the basement, according to the suit.
“Within weeks of starting,” the filing claims, DeMaria witnessed her co-workers performing sex acts, allegedly “orchestrated and monetized” by Gossip management.
Visiting porn stars “openly engaged in sex acts,” including performing oral sex on stage, once with a customer joining in, the suit alleges.
Several dancers claimed to DeMaria that they had been sexually assaulted by Gossip clients following an on-stage sex performance that emboldened the creeps, the lawsuit states.
The situation took an even darker turn in 2022, when the dancers’ locker room was renovated to include a new pair of private VIP areas that were soundproofed and had locks on the outside of the doors, the lawsuit alleges.
The club charged a $2,000 fee for these “high-roller rooms” — which became spaces where “oversight disappeared and boundaries became negotiable,” states the filing.
The suit claims that in early 2022, a Gossip manager forced two dancers into a VIP room with a client who “brutally raped and assaulted both women” as the manager and a bouncer stood outside.
A few months later, a client grabbed DeMaria’s private parts “aggressively, causing significant pain” inside one of the VIP rooms, and she booted him from the room in response, the suit alleges.
After several more alleged aggressive episodes that year — and increased peer-pressure to join in on sex to compel even higher fees from customers — DeMaria went to management to complain, her suit states.
Managers then allegedly accused her of stealing $40 from another dancer — and fired her, she claims.
She later graduated law school, founded a nonprofit for sex workers and was awarded the prestigious $200,000 David Prize in 2023.
DeMaria is seeking at least $2.5 million for gender, sexual harassment, retaliation and wage violations at the club.
An attorney for Gossip did not respond to a request for comment.
DeMaria has sued at least four other strip clubs with similar allegations this year, including Sapphire 60 on the Upper East Side.
“While the incidents vary from club to club, the pattern is unmistakable: some strip clubs profit by tolerating, and even fostering, a culture where women are assaulted or coerced into prostitution,” said DeMaria’s attorney, Megan Goddard.
“Let’s be absolutely clear: sexual assault is illegal everywhere, and that includes inside a strip club.”
English (US)