By Sophia Chakos-Leiby
Daily Bruin Contributor
As an HIV prevention counselor and programs director for the
Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, Jayson Marston
spends a typical workday drawing blood and testing clients for HIV
and other sexually transmitted diseases.
The difference between Marston’s work at AIM and a
counselor’s work at any other reproductive health clinic is
that AIM specifically caters to the physical and emotional needs of
people in the adult entertainment industry.
The non-profit Los Angeles-based organization was founded by
Sharon Mitchell, an actress in the adult entertainment industry for
more than 25 years, and medical director Steven York in response to
an HIV outbreak among many people Mitchell worked with in
movies.
Mitchell started out by organizing HIV and STD education
seminars in pornography warehouses, with support from UCLA Medical
Center doctors.
“I found a new calling because these people really needed
health services. I was totally reborn in giving back to where I
came from,” said Mitchell, who has since retired from the
industry.
Marston, a private sex-call worker at 19 who also tests men at
sex clubs and bath houses for HIV, said it is important to provide
health care for people in the industry.
Working in the adult entertainment industry is like any job,
Marston said, but the stakes are higher because people work
directly with their bodies.
Timely identification of adult entertainers infected with such
STDs as gonorrhea and chlamydia, Marston said, is especially
crucial because AIM must provide medication and notify everyone
whom the infected person has had sexual contact with in the past
three weeks. This notification, Mitchell said, keeps it from
spreading throughout the industry.
“It’s hard for people who have sex for a
living,” Marston said. “For example, you have one
person in a scene with 10 other people who have all been working
(in other scenes) for the past three days. Right away, that’s
35 to 45 people already exposed.”
AIM’s partner notification system is the only database in
the area that keeps records on everyone in the industry.
California entitles everyone to anonymous HIV testing but at
AIM, clients must sign a release saying they recognize the results
will not be private.
“People willingly get this testing because in straight
pornography, it is an unofficial industry standard for workers to
prove that they tested negative for HIV before they can be
hired,” Marston said.
During the past year, Marston said he has never encountered
anyone actively working in the industry who tested positive. Most
HIV infection is caught before people begin work, he said.
To address timeliness and frequency of HIV testing, AIM provides
antibody and DNA tests. Clients in the sex industry are tested
every 30 days by DNA probes, Mitchell said. These tests are taken
through saliva, and people receive their results the next day, as
opposed to antibody tests that do not show the virus until six
months after infection.
Such modern testing is expensive and hard to support
financially.
“People are weary, especially on a federal level, to fund
us,” Mitchell said. “Because we’re called Adult
Industry Medical, they think involvement would be funding the porn
industry.”
The industry initially provided Mitchell and York with funding
to start the clinic, but they now depend on donations from private
sources, like adult video and bookstore owners. In the past three
years, AIM has grown to serve between 400 and 700 people with a
working staff of only five people.
It is hard for some people to realize STD and HIV infection in
the industry is a public health issue that affects everyone and
requires sufficient financial support, Marston said.
“You ask how many partners someone has had in the past
year, but people don’t remember. They just laugh,”
Marston said. “But the thing is, they don’t just have
sex at work. They have sex in their personal lives too, so the
number of people affected is huge.”