A former Canberra brothel operator lured young, naive women into the sex industry with the promise of big pay cheques, then raped them in sham training for his own sexual gratification, a prosecutor has told a jury.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But defence lawyers say the women chose to perform the sex acts, and they were sometimes more "clinical" then sexual.
Bradley Lester Grey, 54, is on trial in the ACT Supreme Court and is facing 26 charges against nine alleged victims, including 15 counts of rape and 10 counts of performing an act of indecency.
Mr Grey has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. A jury was directed to find him not guilty of one additional charge, which evidence wasn't presented for in court.
In his closing statements to the jury on Tuesday, prosecutor Trent Hickey said Mr Grey recruited women in their early 20s to work at Mitchell Mistresses.
They were often vulnerable, naive to the sex industry, and had little money, he said. In some instances, Mr Grey told them they could earn between $7000 and $10,000 a week.
One woman, who appeared as a witness in the trial, was flown in from overseas to work at the brothel after being approached on social media. She was homeless, had a big student loan, and had been through a bad divorce, Mr Hickey said.
Mr Grey initially told her Mitchell Mistresses focused more on the "girlfriend experience" than on sex with clients, but she later realised it was a brothel, and was hesitant to get on the plane, Mr Hickey said.
Mr Grey told her he had put a lot of money into getting her to Canberra, so she went. The witness realised the job was not what she expected when Mr Grey pulled up at the airport "in a shitty station wagon and this grey old man came out", Mr Hickey said.
The woman, like several other witnesses, said she was taken to Mitchell Mistresses, where Mr Grey helped her to make an online profile. He took her into a room and photographed her in lingerie, before telling her they would have to get started with "training", the court heard.
Mr Grey asked her to massage him and masturbated himself, Mr Hickey said. He later rubbed her genitals.
While the woman did not want to do the sexual acts, she felt she had to because Mr Grey had her personal details and controlled where she lived, Mr Hickey said.
In other instances, witnesses in the trial said Mr Grey told them to give him oral sex without a condom, and vaginally raped them. Prosecutors say forcing women to perform sex acts as a condition of employment negated consent at Mitchell Mistresses.
The training did not cover how to perform mandatory health checks, or make employees aware of how it was illegal to perform services on clients without a condom, Mr Hickey said.
Defence barrister Beth Morrisroe said Mr Grey had treated the training as a "tutorial" with some of the women and told one witness how to do a health check.
She disputed that the woman flown in from overseas had been in a precarious position, saying she had the option of free accommodation and was receiving financial support from her father.
The women didn't resist Mr Grey's alleged advances in most cases, defence barrister Ms Morrisroe said. They did not report the alleged incidents to police until well after they were said to have happened.
Mr Grey also did not ejaculate in a couple of the instances of training, meaning he could not have been sexually gratified, Ms Morrisroe said.
The trial continues.