In California's unregulated porn film industry, an alarming number of performers are infected with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. And nobody seems to care.
By P.J. Huffstutter LA Times Staff Writer

During production of the 1997 movie "Mimic," American Humane Assn. representatives wandered through the Los Angeles set, ensuring that a herd of cockroaches was well taken care of. Licensed animal handlers were to follow state and federal anti-cruelty laws designed to protect the insects, which had been trained to swirl around actress Mira Sorvino's feet. The roaches had to be fed at a certain time. They could only work a few hours each day. They could not be harmed.

At the same time, in studios in the San Fernando Valley, scores of other actors and actresses were working on movies. They put in long hours, commonly without meal breaks. They often worked without clean toilets, toilet paper, soap or water. More importantly, they were exposed to a host of infectious, and sometimes fatal, diseases.

These performers were making heterosexual adult films for an industry that in California is entirely legal, and utterly unregulated. Its producers take in several billion dollars annually from cable television programming, videos and Internet sites watched by a public whose appetite seems insatiable. They pay taxes, lobby in Sacramento and contribute to political campaigns.

Yet actors and actresses are discouraged from wearing prophylactics during filming because porn producers believe the public wants to see unprotected sex. So adult porn stars commonly engage in sexual acts with scores of partners, and then return each evening to their private lives--dating or having relationships with people across Southern California.

In the words of former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, when told about the lack of oversight of the adult film industry: "These folks are a reservoir. They don't just have sex with one another. They have sex with regular people outside their business--doctors, lawyers, teachers, your next-door neighbor."

But California regulators and political officials don't believe the public is worried about protecting the porn stars themselves--despite the enormous popularity of the films they produce. As David Gurley, staff attorney for the California Labor Commissioner's office, says: "Porn stars--people think they're not worth the time. The public sees these people as disposable."

Actress Anne Marie Ballowe is a former porn star who flourished in the burgeoning business. She was born in Taegu City, S. Korea, the daughter of a U.S. serviceman and a South Korean woman. The family moved to the United States, where her parents soon divorced. Her mother gave her to her father, who was living in a small Missouri town, when Ballowe was 7. She says she was raped by schoolmates at age 16. The following year she ran away to Los Angeles with dreams of a better life.

She found it. Sort of.

Ballowe became famous, paid thousands of dollars to grin for the camera, prance beneath the hot lights--and have sex with strangers. For years she enjoyed the perks of her job, shuttling around town in limousines, attending hot Hollywood parties, dating famous athletes and rock 'n' roll gods. During her seven years in the business, she starred in scores of Triple-X films.

Legal and medical records show she walked away from the business in 1998 with chlamydia, which could make her sterile; cytomegalovirus, which could eventually make her blind; hepatitis C, which has damaged her liver; and HIV, which could cause AIDS and probably kill her. According to medical records, her liver is too damaged--in part because of the hepatitis--to allow her to take the anti-viral drugs that could delay the onset of AIDS.

Along the way, she also became a drug addict, and she has exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia. Today the 29-year-old former actress lives in Honolulu. There, sitting inside an AIDS clinic for homeless patients, waiting for medication, she hides her past behind an engaging smile. "I know people hate what we do," she says. "But porn stars make a lot of money for other people. If farmworkers have rights, so should we. The laws need to change."

Hours later, staring at the TV screen inside a friend's apartment, Ballowe watches a clip from a 1998 video she made for Hard Core Television and K-Beech Video Inc. It is the film in which Ballowe has alleged she was infected with HIV by an actor named Marc S. Goldberg. She was paid $10,000 for her work, but records show the check bounced just days after she learned that she was HIV positive.

As the video plays, Ballowe quietly excuses herself and walks into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Water runs into the sink, nearly muffling the sound of retching.

Ballowe's suit says that during several days of filming in Chatsworth in February 1998, the actress had sex with about 25 men--a mix of actors established in the business, would-be stars trying to get a break in the industry and adult-film fans who had been recruited at adult video stores. Most of the men showed up at the set with paperwork that declared they were HIV-negative. Some wore condoms. Others, like Goldberg, did not.

"If I was a prostitute in Nevada, I'd still be alive," she says in an interview. "If I'd been a migrant farmworker, I'd still be alive. As it is, I'm dead. I'll be buried before I get wrinkles." Read more

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