Check out the Weekly's cover story, “The Family Prostitute,” this week, about California woman going to Nevada in some significant numbers to work in the legal brothels there to pay their bills.

So much for the recovery.

Here, for instance, Nikki: She's the sole supporter of two small children and her mother, and the work is important to Nikki. “In the Inland Empire,” she laments, “there are no jobs at all. I couldn't even get a job at McDonald's right now.”

Snip.

“We've seen over the course of the last couple of years a massive flow of women from all around the country,” says Marc Medoff, general manager of the Love Ranch. “It's their first time in the sexual-entertainment business and they're showing up here — literally on our doorstep sometimes — for the purpose of seeking work to support their families: their husbands, their children, their parents. It's a zillion-fold increase. When things started to get really bad, in the fall of '07, we started seeing things increase and there's been no let-up.”

Read the whole feature here, and view all of Kevin Scanlon's photos in the slideshow, “The Family Prostitute: Portraits of Women Brand-New to the Sex Trade.”

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