FALLS CHURCH, Virginia — Prostitution is illegal in the state of Virginia, but dozens of brothels nevertheless operate openly in Fairfax County alone, according to local officials.
How did the state’s largest municipality, a wealthy and highly educated suburb of Washington, D.C., become a sanctuary county for pimps, madams, and whorehouse operators? All signs point to the Commonwealth’s attorney, self-styled progressive prosecutor Steve Descano.
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County police say their “hands are tied” when it comes to known prostitution businesses, and it seems that the man tying their hands is Descano.
Descano has not explicitly announced the decriminalization of prostitution, but one can better understand the county’s booming prostitution industry by considering Descano’s record of selective enforcement, his policy of not prosecuting most misdemeanors, and his stated willingness to ignore laws that he disagrees with.
It is a misdemeanor in Virginia to be a prostitute or engage in prostitution. “Residing in a bawdy place” or “keeping a bawdy place” are also misdemeanors. Putting a woman into prostitution — being a pimp or running a whorehouse — is a felony.
Nevertheless, one neighborhood over from my own, a couple of blocks from where my county councilwoman lives, Rose Spa operates as an obvious brothel out of a two-story colonial on a residential street. The evidence is overwhelming that this is a whorehouse: neighbors’ eyewitness accounts of only male customers, the spa’s website, the online reviews by johns of the spa’s prostitutes, and the advertisements for the spa (linked to the phone numbers on the spa’s front door and website) on websites that advertise prostitution.
This is one of dozens of brothels in the county, according to local elected leaders. County Supervisor Pat Herrity said that about 80 to 100 “illicit massage businesses” are “operating in plain sight today” in the county, the Fairfax Times reported.
Rose Spa has been operating since late 2024 and has received multiple complaints and visits from the police. When locals ask why the brothel is allowed to continue operating, police have said, “Our hands are tied,” according to multiple neighbors. Instead of building a felony case against the operators of the business, they have resigned themselves to hitting the business with minor charges and code violations.
Police in July charged Rose Spa (at that time doing business as L Health) with two misdemeanor charges: Operating a massage parlor without a proper permit, and “residing in a bawdy place.” Descano’s office, citing those pending charges, refused to comment on the case, but his office also refused to say whether it would be involved in the prosecution.
Descano, when he came to office in 2020, publicly announced that his office would not get involved in many misdemeanor cases, instead leaving it to police to present evidence, make motions, and try to win convictions — an irregular but not unprecedented arrangement.
There are other reasons police would believe Descano wouldn’t prosecute a case against a brothel.
For starters, there’s the lesson from the Tyson’s Corner brothel. In 2024, the FBI busted up a high-end brothel network that operated in Massachusetts and also in two shopping-and-hotel districts in Fairfax County: Tyson’s Corner and the Mosaic District. After the federal prosecutors got the ringleader to plead guilty under the weight of plentiful evidence, local prosecutors in Massachusetts charged the high-profile customers. In contrast, Descano declined to do so, with his office citing a lack of evidence.
Immigration is central to Fairfax’s bustling brothel industry, and that’s an issue where Descano has staked out a clear position: He rejects cooperation with federal immigration officials, and he has instructed his prosecutors to avoid prosecuting, whenever possible, in cases where bringing charges would have “immigration consequences.”
In other words, when the suspect is an illegal immigrant or could lose his or her visa if charged with a crime, Descano’s office tries to avoid bringing charges. Particularly, he advises against prosecuting when there “is no identifiable victim.” Prostitution is widely considered a victimless crime.
Then there’s the money trail. Descano was elected in 2019, powered by six figures worth of donations from the Justice and Public Safety PAC, funded by George Soros.
Soros, through the many nonprofit groups and elected officials he funds, is a key driver for the legalization of prostitution. For instance, last decade, the Open Society Foundations, Soros’s main nonprofit organization, published a book titled 10 Reasons to Decriminalize Sex Work.
Another PAC among Descano’s top donors, Justice for All, funds “legal services and protections to individuals engaged in consensual sex” as part of fighting the “criminalization of sex work.”
Finally, Descano has declared in print that he won’t enforce laws that he ideologically disagrees with.
Perhaps the police are wrong, and if they built a felony case against the brothel-keepers, Descano would prosecute, but the evidence suggests otherwise.