BUFFALO, N.Y. — Jurors heard graphic testimony on Wednesday from former dancers at Pharaoh's Gentlemen's Club during the ongoing trial of its owner Peter Gerace.
Gerace is charged with using Pharaoh's as a "drug-involved premises" to promote sex trafficking of dancers under a federal indictment, which also charges him with drug trafficking and bribing a public official.
During his two-hour opening statement at the start of the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi spent a good deal of time delivering an impassion narrative about one of several dancers in the club, which the government claims Gerace zeroed in on, due to their drug addiction, to coerce them into being trafficked for sex.
Jurors got to hear from one dancer for themselves on Wednesday.
In a courtroom eight stories above Niagara Square, the former dancer told of being lured to stripping in the hopes of making good money, which she said she did.
But she said drug use at Pharaoh's among patrons and staff, including Gerace, was so rampant that she quickly fell into a drug lifestyle that quickly led to full blown addiction.
"It's like a switch that gets flipped in your mind. I would wake up and plan my day around drinking and drugging," said the woman, who began dancing at the club when she was about 20 years old. She testified that she began using cocaine and then went to opiates and heroin.
"All day, every day," is how she described her drug habit, which was costing her approximately $2,000 a week to feed, which was what she made from her job stripping at Pharaoh's.
"It all went to drugs," she said.
Now 39, the woman says she has been drug-free for almost 13 years.
She testified about a time when she went to an upstairs office at Pharaoh's, which prosecutors have described as Gerace's "private lair."
There, she said Gerace asked her to "take care of" a friend of his, a man whom she did not know. She said she promptly went to a bathroom with the man and had sex with him after which Gerace handed her $200.
"I didn't feel anything about it because I was high. But when I came down I felt depressed ... disgusted," she said.
Under cross examination by Gerace's attorney Eric Soehnlein, however, it was revealed that Rosier had already been in and out of rehab before she ever worked at Pharaoh's and that she continued to to arrange dates with the same man —independently from Gerace — for money outside of the club.
"It became easier once I realized it was another way to make money," she said, adding that it was a way to support her insatiable addiction.
She matter-of-factly answered questions asked to her about her numerous arrests for crimes, including multiple drunk driving charges and drug possession, and testified that she harbors no hatred for Gerace.
The testimony of another dancer, however, was fraught with emotion.
Another woman says she was tempted to work at Pharaoh's by the promise of the large amounts of money she could make, which would far exceed her salary as a Certified Nurses Aid in a nursing home.
"I didn't even know what a lap dance was," she testified, describing her first trip to Pharaoh's while accompanied by a stripper who worked there and who told her what she was making.
She says she met Gerace there and was offered a job on the spot.
However, she said her parents disowned her upon learning of her employment, and prosecutors contend Gerace saw that as a vulnerability that he could exploit.
She testified that she soon became addicted to cocaine and reached for tissues as she struggled to contain her emotions when describing the paranoia and suicidal thoughts she began experiencing.
She also said she began a sexual relationship with Gerace.
Brocato, who says she has now been sober for a year and a half and has returned to a career in the nursing field, testified that she witnessed dozens of sex acts between customers and dancers inside a VIP room at Pharaohs.
She explained that dancers willing to engage in such practices or provide "extras" in the vernacular of the strip club scene, earned more money a portion of which, prosecutors insist, went to the club and eventually helped line Gerace's pockets.
Meanwhile, Gerace continues to send correspondence to 2 On Your Side not only denying the allegations against him, but also accusing the prosecution team and Tripi in particular of being "a disgrace to our justice system."