Clinic Offers Aid, Haven to Region's Sex Workers

At the Adult Industry Medical clinic in Sherman Oaks, people talk as casually about sex as they do the weather.

"Have you had sex today?"

"How many partners?"

"Did you use a condom?"

Leading the discussion five days a week is former porn star Sharon Mitchell, 43, executive director of the nonprofit health clinic whose fliers speak of serving "the special needs of the sex worker," especially those in the pornography business.

The main need is preventing sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV, which causes AIDS, in a line of work in which men and women may have dozens of sexual partners in a matter of weeks.

"We talk about sex in great detail, and in a nonjudgmental manner," Mitchell said. "We don't deal with shame."

After an outbreak of HIV among porn stars, Mitchell and a Northridge doctor--with help from some X-rated companies--founded the Adult Industry Medical HealthCare Foundation in 1998. AIM soon became the leading clinic nationwide catering to workers in the multibillion-dollar, San Fernando Valley-based pornography industry.

So far, Mitchell said, AIM has identified 11 HIV-positive cases among porn actors who might otherwise have gone undiagnosed and exposed the virus to dozens, if not hundreds. She added that adult film actors, producers and directors recognize the profession's hazards but consider the risk of infection so slight that they often don't insist on using condoms. In fact, most porn stars receive extra money--as little as $50 per sex act--if they forgo condoms.

"Basically, I put Band-Aids on shotgun wounds all day," Mitchell said. "I can't stop HIV, but I can help prevent it."

AIM is in an office building on an aging strip of Ventura Boulevard, near a piano school, a Judaica gift shop, a tropical fish and reptile store and a children's liver foundation. The clinic would blend in with the palm tree-lined boulevard if not for the white blood and urine deposit box hanging outside the door.

Facility Sees as Many as 500 Clients a Month

Each month, AIM sees 400 to 500 adult entertainers, who are required by most of their employers to provide blood and urine samples for HIV and STD tests. Mitchell and others enter lab results into a database that tracks cases. If the clinic finds that a disease has been contracted, AIM notifies those infected and any of their partners they may remember.