A Washington Post reporter who once served as the paper’s Miami bureau chief reported Wednesday evening that Casa de Campo, the resort at the center of New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s prostitution scandal, is a place where prostitutes do make occasional appearances.
In the neighboring Dominican Republic town of La Romana, Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia found prostitutes who said wealthy customers had hired them for sex and covertly brought them into the resort.
“The prostitutes talk of occasionally being secreted into Casa de Campo in the back seats of chauffeur-driven SUVs with tinted windows,” Roig-Franzia reported, “gliding into the complex past a large, thatched-roof security checkpoint after the swipe of a card opens the gate.”
“A 27-year-old prostitute recalled a four-day job at a Casa de Campo villa for which she collected $500 a night instead of her regular $170. She shed her usual plunging necklines and lacy peek-a-boo tights in favor of more subdued dresses. ‘I looked very respectable,’ she said.”
Casa de Campo, where longtime Democratic donor and Menendez pal Dr. Salomon Melgen owns a villa, is home to high-society elites who frown on the seediness associated with hookers from La Romana.
“It’s not socially acceptable” in Casa de Campo, according to one local Roig-Franzia interviewed.
“The resort’s vibe tilts much more toward decorum — you wouldn’t even go to lunch unless suitably attired — than the anything-goes bacchanalia that defines some Caribbean getaways,” the Post reporter wrote. “Security guards diligently turn away anyone who looks to them like a prostitute.”
Still, the Dominican region where Casa de Campo is located appears to be like much like any other place in the world where prostitution is legal.
“In the scruffy neighboring sugar-mill town of La Romana, prostitutes cluster in strip clubs with private ‘party’ rooms upstairs,” Roig-Franzia added.
“On a recent night, a dozen swarmed a visitor to one of those clubs. They preened in skintight skirts so short that they hid almost nothing; they gyrated their hips, clutched their breasts and pouted their lips. ‘How about me?’ ‘What would you like?’ ‘Let’s have a drink, sweetie.’”
Sen. Menendez has denied any contact with prostitutes, but two Dominican women told The Daily Caller in November that they were paid to have sex with the New Jersey Democrat. (RELATED VIDEO: Women: Sen. Bob Menendez paid us for sex in the Dominican Republic)
Most recently, the online publication of a dossier compiled by an anonymous whistle-blower included what appear to be accusations by several other women that Menendez paid them for sex. According to testimonials included in that dossier, two of the women said they were 16 years old when the sexual contact began.
TheDC reported Wednesday that an FBI investigation, which began in Miami on August 1, 2012, is now operating out of the bureau’s Newark, NJ field office.