More Former Call Girls Take Stand

In attempting to prove that former escort-service entrepreneur Deborah Jeane Palfrey was, in reality, an upscale pimp, prosecutors yesterday summoned seven more admitted ex-prostitutes to the witness stand in federal court in Washington -- not one of them as unlikely a call girl as Rhona Reiss, PhD.

"I got to the hotel," Reiss testified, describing one of "more than 100" sexual encounters she had with clients of Palfrey's firm. "He introduced himself and he sat down and took his pants off" and asked her to perform a sex act. "I did."

"How old are you?" Palfrey's attorney inquired.

"Sixty-three."

And how old was she when she took a job with Palfrey as a $250-an-hour escort, indulging the sexual fantasies of male clients in homes and hotel rooms in the Washington area?

"Fifty-six," Reiss said.

She studied occupational therapy as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, received a master's degree in the field from the University of Florida and a doctorate in higher education from the University of North Texas. She used to be director of education for the American Occupational Therapy Association.

"Her numerous career adventures include clinical and academic positions in Tokyo, Chicago, Sydney, Dallas and Washington, D.C.," the Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions said in a 2006 news release, announcing Reiss's appointment to the faculty as head of a graduate program.

Not listed among her career adventures was the position she accepted in February 2001 after answering a Washington City Paper ad for Palfrey's now-defunct escort business, Pamela Martin & Associates. In her application letter, Reiss, who now lives in Gaithersburg, touched briefly on her academic bona fides and highlighted her more relevant credentials: "fantastic smile, lovely breasts, very shapely legs."

"She said it was adult entertainment," Reiss told the jury, recalling her job interview with Palfrey. "She asked if I had done that sort of work before. I hadn't."

And so went another day of testimony in Palfrey's racketeering and money-laundering trial in U.S. District Court, another parade of erstwhile call girls, reluctant characters in a legal drama at once sad and comically absurd. Most spoke in monotones, some squirmed, a few dabbed at tears.

They are women conservatively attired for court and hardly resembling the glamour photos they mailed to Palfrey when they were looking for work in 1998, or 2003, or 1995.

"I was going through a time period, I did not feel attractive, and it was nice to have gentlemen, whether they believed it or not, tell you you were pretty," said Debborah Brown of Florida, an escort from 2000 to 2002.

Palfrey, 52, a Northern California resident who ran her D.C. escort service from 1993 to 2006, is charged with racketeering, money laundering and using the mail for illegal purposes. Palfrey contends that the firm was an "erotic fantasy concern," providing women for legal, "quasi-sexual" game playing, and that she was unaware that her employees engaged in prostitution. The government alleges that she knew all about it.

The escorts -- college-educated, tastefully dressed, conversant in current events and mostly (but not always) young -- were dispatched by Palfrey to clients who were happy to pay $250 an hour for the women's intimate companionship.

Four former call girls testified Tuesday that they and Palfrey talked about prostitution only in ambiguous terms but that performing sex acts for money was a tacit condition of employment with Pamela Martin & Associates. But some of the former escorts who testified yesterday, including Reiss, said Palfrey at times talked openly about prostitution.

Reiss, now retired from both her former professions, did not explain her illicit career choice. Like the others, she signed a contract with Palfrey pledging to abide by the law -- a document that prosecutors allege was a sham intended to give Palfrey deniability.

Defense lawyer Preston Burton has brought up the contract with every former call girl who has taken the witness stand, pointing out clause No. 5: "Individuals caught performing illegal activities of any nature will be terminated."

When he raised the issue with Reiss, showing her the document and her signature, she told him, "I didn't sign any agreement saying I wouldn't do anything illegal." In her parsing of the clause, Reiss said, the rule technically did not prohibit illegal activity.

Burton seemed surprised.

"You're an educated woman," he said. "How did you understand it?

She didn't pause.

"Don't get caught."