A BEHAVIOURAL expert has backed a stripper’s call to ban touching in the city’s men’s clubs to protect the dancers’ safety.

Keep them to yourself: Stripper “Cherry” refuses to work in Cairns strip clubs which allow patrons to touch the dancers.

Cherry, 27, said she was disgusted and appalled on her return to Cairns to find both the city’s clubs allowed punters to grope the dancers above the waist.

She said there was enough stigma attached to being a dancer without the public thinking she allowed men to touch her breasts.

Addiction Help Agency director Margaret Renfrey, who is a behavioural and mental health professional, said the touching rules allowed punters to get too close, taking the performance to a whole different level.

“Touching a person’s body breaks down a psychological and physical boundary.

“Once you touch someone, that barrier is broken,’’ Ms Renfrey said.

She suggested the rules also allowed men to get too aroused.

“It’s about the safety of the strippers.

“If someone is so highly aroused, where do they take it when they leave?”

While Queensland legislation allows touching of the body, but not the genitals, in strip clubs, Cherry said the clubs should show more respect for professionals.

“I’ve been doing this for 10 years. But this takes the power away from the girls.’’

Covergirls and Toybox both feature touching and non-touching dancers.

Cherry walked off the job after one night at Toybox and wants dancers to know they can perform in cities like Townsville or Mackay without the threat of being touched.

A mong the throng, 250 strong, that jammed the Tualatin police station Tuesday night to protest the imminent arrival of Stars Cabaret were at least two first-time visitors to town.

The first was Claude Dacorsi, who is on tap to manage the strip club. His back to the wall, Dacorsi seemed baffled the crowd didn’t appreciate Stars’ commitment to community values and working women.

The other newcomer to Tualatin? That would be reality. With police Chief Kent Barker on hand but helpless to intervene, reality slapped these folks around for two hours, stripping them of the illusion that the law, the Legislature or their local government — not to mention 21 years of unbridled obscenity in Oregon — will assist in their desperate fight to keep Stars Cabaret in Beaverton, where it clearly belongs.

The room was thick with anger and apprehension when the town meeting began. Dozens of citizens arrived convinced that concerns about public safety and prostitution, and the proximity of schools and family-friendly businesses, were sufficient to stop Stars from moving into the disheveled tavern — Out of the Blues — on Southwest McEwan Road.

They were convinced, in other words, that Tualatin is not subject to the market forces and court decisions that have governed the rest of Oregon for the past 21 years.

In 1987, the Oregon Supreme Court took a long look at Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and decreed obscenity is perfectly legal.

The court having also ruled that dance — whether a James Canfield ballet or a lap waltz at the Acropolis — was protected expression, strip clubs began busting out all over.

As countless little towns soon discovered, nude bars and adult video parlors are more than welcome in any commercial zone. Attempts to regulate those lewd expressions were quickly struck down by the courts.

What the court allows, attorney Charles Hinkle notes, is the “regulation of an adult business if you can establish it has a negative, deleterious effect on the area. Government can say that no commercial enterprise can exist on Sandy Boulevard, for example, if it attracts an undesirable amount of traffic, diminishes the property values in the area or becomes the locus of criminal activity.

“Of course,” Hinkle adds, “you can’t just say the sky is falling. We’ve had adult bookstores and dancing establishments in every metro area since 1987. The opponents can’t come up with a shred of evidence these establishments have a negative effect on the neighborhood, and they’ve had 21 years to try.”

For a reality check, I called Detective Pam Judge, a Beaverton police spokeswoman, and asked whether that city’s Stars Cabaret was the local hub of criminal activity.

“I can’t say we’ve had any more problems there than we have with any other business in the area,” Judge said. Prostitution, she added, is not an issue in the neighborhood.

Tualatin is not completely helpless in its fight against Stars, and bubbles of creative thought eventually surfaced Tuesday. Scott Mitton suggested making the property owner a better offer, and Tom Kruger envisioned flooding the place with protesters who “buy the minimum one drink and don’t tip the dancers.”

The line of volunteers may be already forming.

But I wouldn’t count on an assist from Oregon voters. Three times in the past 20 years, Hinkle notes, the voters have been asked to amend the Constitution to allow for the regulation of sexually oriented businesses through zoning . . . and three times the voters have said, “No, thanks.”

How Tualatin voted when Stars Cabaret was not yet a twinkle in its eye, I can only imagine.

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WATERBURY — A 21-year-old exotic dancer found unconscious in a bathroom Saturday night at Mr. Happy’s Cafe, a strip club on Homer Street, died Sunday at Waterbury Hospital, police said.

According to Lt. Christopher Corbett, a police spokesman, the woman is a city resident, but he declined to release her name until an autopsy can be completed. The procedure is scheduled for today.

An employee at the club found the woman unconscious, but breathing at about 10:30 p.m., Corbett said. There are no signs of foul play in connection with her death, he added.

“We are investigating the possibility it was a drug overdose,” he said.

The woman was hospitalized Saturday after she was found in the bathroom, but died Sunday, he said. Family members have been notified of her death.

The club has been the scene of police and fire calls, including two small fires in 2005 and 2006 that sent customers and scantily clad women into the parking lot.

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A bachelor party in Virginia Beach ends with a man in the hospital after he got into a fight with the exotic dancer who perfromed there.  Police say 28-year-old Hanna Whipple argued with one of the men at the party, she left, then climbed into an SUV and ran over the man she was fighting with.  The victim suffered a broken leg and collarbone.  Whipple is charged with malicious wounding.

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BY DAY she dons a pair of steel toe caps and a high-vis jacket.

But Claire Novis cuts a different figure at night. When darkness falls the senior geologist swaps her sensible work gear for sequins and tassels.

Because the 31-year-old, from Longbenton, Newcastle, is a belly-dancing teacher and has toured the globe to perform.

She said: “I first got into it when I was at Durham University in 1999, it was just a bit of fun but I fell in love with it and it’s taken over my life.”

Claire works as a senior geologist engineer at Arup, in Central Square Forth Street, Newcastle, and says her colleagues were taken aback when they first peered into the boot of her car. She said: “They see me wearing steel toe-caps and a hard hat so to see my sequined outfit and hip belts was a bit shocking for them.

“But I get the same response from people I dance with – they can’t believe what I wear at work, there’s quite a contrast.

“People think I’m nuts but I think they’re used to me now.”

Claire has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004 and at the Hilton Hotel, Algiers, in Algeria, for their 2007 New Year celebrations, as well as in Egypt.

She has also performed on stage with the headliners of the Avalon Stage, the Baghdaddies, at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. And in the little spare time she has left, she teaches other Newcastle residents.

She said: “The youngest I’ve taught is 16 and the oldest is 75. They come from all walks of life.”

Now, Claire has launched her Egyptian-style dance business Claire Dances.

She added: “It’s more of a passion than a money-making venture.

“I just love getting other people into the dancing and watching them progress.”

Claire will be teaching in West Moor and Jesmond – to find out more visit www.clairedances.co.uk

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The stepfather of a 14-year-old girl who worked at a Lexington strip club says he’s disappointed that a grand jury dismissed the charge against the club owner.

Camelot West manager Ronald M. Shields, 51, was charged in March with using a minor younger than 16 in a sexual performance. He was accused of giving the girl a job as a dancer in the strip club, court records say. A Fayette County grand jury dismissed the charge last month.

“She could have come up missing, dead or anything,” Terry Comley said on Tuesday. “I’m just really unhappy with the system.”

The girl worked for about two days at Camelot West on Alexandria Drive until she was caught by her mother, Kimberly Comley, and stepfather on March 11. Another relative told the parents where to find the girl.

Kimberly Comley called police after she entered the club and saw her daughter sitting at a table in a dance outfit.

Police have said the identification card the girl used to get the job did not resemble her at all. But Shields contended that the photo on the ID card looked like the girl, and she was able to give the birth date on the card after club employees took it from her.

Shields could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

The girl’s paternal aunt, Tina Hobbs, 33, who was charged with third-degree unlawful transaction with a minor, a misdemeanor, pleaded guilty in May and was sentenced to 60 days in jail.

The same charge against Hobbs’ boyfriend, Jimmy Ray Kiger, 32, was dismissed in July.

Kiger and Hobbs were accused of transporting the girl to and from the club. Court records also say that Hobbs admitted to driving her niece to Camelot West and receiving cash from her after the girl worked at the club.

“Jimmy didn’t really know what was going on,” Kiger’s lawyer, Sally Wasielewski, said Tuesday. “He had no participation in it.”

Wasielewski said Kiger was just “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The girl’s parents claim that Hobbs and Kiger gave their daughter drugs, and that she wasn’t herself when she started dancing at the club. They said Tuesday that Kiger also should have been found guilty.

“As far as I know, it’s over and done with,” Terry Comley said. “And I don’t like that.”

He said his stepdaughter has been placed in a group home near Ashland for truancy since the club incident. She’ll stay in the program for a year.

“She is full of guilt, shame, and she thinks everybody is just going to look at her bad when she gets out,” he said.

Terry Comley said he thought it was important for the public to know about what he considers an unfair outcome in the case.

“He didn’t even get a slap on the hand; he didn’t get nothing,” he said of Shields, the club owner.

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