A strip club that hired a 15 year old mentally handicapped girl was defended in court by Dana Nessel, the Democrat nominee to be Michigan’s next Attorney General.
Nessel is running against conservative, Trump Republican Tom Leonard, Michigan’s Speaker of the House.
The local county Prosecutor in the case blasted Nessel in a recent ad about the issue, and Nessel did not deny the allegations, instead trying to spin them.
According to the Detroit News:
“A Republican group’s attack ad about an 8-year-old case that involved a teenage dancer at a Detroit adult club is inflaming a heated attorney general’s race between Democrat Dana Nessel and Republican Tom Leonard.
The campaign ad titled “Disturbing” features Shiawassee County Prosecutor Deana Finnegan denouncing Nessel’s defense of a Detroit strip club after a 15-year-old mentally handicapped girl was found performing there.
“I’ve looked closely at Dana Nessel’s record and it’s disturbing,” Finnegan said in the ad. “Crimes against children are the worst type…
Detroit News articles related to the July 2010 incident name Nessel as an attorney for a Detroit strip club named Club Onyx when a 15-year-old girl was arrested for dancing there. Police had arrested the girl months prior for dancing at a different strip club.
Two employees arrested in the July incident were released shortly after their arrest.
Nessel told The Detroit News in 2010 that the club was cooperating with police and had “requested members of the police department to come in and give lectures” to the club staff. Another lawyer for the club speculated that the incident had been a set up by police or others.
The News articles never mentioned the girl was “mentally handicapped,” but other media outlets said the girl had “mild retardation.”
