YNOT – Officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Thursday ordered the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation’s clinic in Sherman Oaks, Calif., to cease all but administrative services. Since 1998, the clinic has operated as the adult entertainment industry’s primary resource for monthly health screenings most heterosexual studios require before they will employ a performer.
“We’ve told the clinic they have to notify people of test results that have already been taken and make appropriate referrals, but they cannot provide new services,” County Public Health Director Dr. Jonathan Fielding told the Los Angeles Times.
Fielding blamed the closure on the state health department’s decision not to grant AIM a “community clinic” license. The California Department of Public Health notified AIM of its decision on Tuesday.
According to DPH Deputy Director Al Lundeen, the license denial was procedural, not substantive. AIM omitted some information from the application it filed June 7, but by Thursday morning the foundation had supplied the missing data, Lundeen said.
Fielding indicated a legal technicality tripped up the clinic’s operational status. Because AIM is a nonprofit agency, it cannot operate under an affiliated physician’s license as it has been operating. Fielding said his office became aware of the discrepancy in April and informed AIM in May.
He also said performers who are in need of HIV tests are welcome to visit any of the facilities listed on his department’s website. However, it remains unclear whether the tests offered by the facilities meet the adult industry’s requirements. Standard “antibody” tests may not register positive results for as many as six months after an individual has been infected with HIV. AIM provided affordable PCR-DNA testing, which is much more suited to the monthly reports adult studios and performers require before intimate contact takes place.
The AIM clinic’s closure came one day after Derrick Burts, a former performer who tested positive for HIV in October, held a press conference during which he criticized AIM’s treatment of his case and called for mandatory condom usage on all adult movie sets. Burts, 24, accused AIM of misleading the public about the source of his HIV infection and said the adult industry needs to do more to educate performers about the hazards they may face on the set.
He said his former talent agent encouraged him to perform in gay porn, which Burts subsequently did, because “that’s where I would make the money.” During all five of the gay shoots in which he performed, he wore a condom, he said.
“Getting into gay porn, I knew there was a higher risk of getting HIV,” Burts said during Wednesday’s press conference. “So I always made sure I used a condom.”
However, on the advice of his agent, he did not wear condoms on heterosexual sets. Burts indicated he now regrets that choice.
“The agent there [at the Orange County-based modeling agency] promised me a better life,” Burts told the Times. “He told me I would have a chance to make thousands of dollars off of one shoot. They loved my look and said I had money written all over me.
“What they tell you in porn is, ‘You’re not going to make any money if you wear a condom, you know. Viewers don’t want to see that,’” he continued. “So I didn’t even know you had an option to wear a condom. I had never seen a condom on a straight set in my entire life.”
On Wednesday, he repeated his story, adding a personal, emotional plea for mandatory condom use.
“They fill your head with all this stuff and tell you the testing will protect you,” he said, noting that he tested positive for HIV within months of performing his first explicit scene. “How many more times does [what happened to me] have to happen before something is done about it?”
Burts said he believes he contracted HIV on one of the gay porn sets, possibly during oral sex or perhaps as a consequence of semen contacting the skin in his genital region.
“Going into this industry, I thought I was getting tested every month, I’m safe,” he told the assembled media. “It’s not guaranteed that I got [HIV] from a gay shoot. To blame it all on the gay side would be wrong. The fact is I tested positive. AIM claims testing protects you. That’s not true.”
He also reiterated that AIM’s November statement indicating Burts contracted the virus in his personal life, and not on an adult film set, was untrue. During his time working as an adult performer, he had sex outside of work only with his girlfriend, who also is an adult performer. She has continued to test negative, Burts said.
Burts admitted he placed an escort ad on the website Rentboy.com, but he said he never worked as an escort. The ad has been removed from the website.
Following Wednesday’s press conference — which was hosted by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, an AIM rival in the mainstream that has been vocal in its condemnation of the adult industry’s testing and of AIM’s protocols in particular — AIM attorneys Karen Tynan and Jeffrey J. Douglas released a prepared statement contesting Burts’ and AHF’s assessment of the situation.
“Any statements made by Patient Zeta [as Burts was known until revealing his identity on Tuesday] which portray AIM as not providing appropriate and proper services are not truthful and are self-serving,” the statement noted. It added that AHF “has a history of aggressive and hostile actions against AIM, and the most distressing aspect of this situation is that Patient Zeta is simply being manipulated for AHF’s own purposes and in furtherance of their agenda.”
In particular, the AIM statement took exception to Burts’ insistence AIM has misled the public and public health officials by claiming Burts acquired HIV outside his work in adult films.
“AIM’s statements made to the media and every report to the California Department of Public Health were based upon the information provided by Patient Zeta to AIM,” the statement affirmed.
