Jim Mitchell is still on parole for killing his brother, Artie, to scare him into making a settlement. But now a former stripper at their O'Farrell's Theatre has sued Mitchell, claiming a patron raped her and the club itself encouraged prostitution.
Kathleen Pacello charges firm president Jim Mitchell approved private booths in the theater to facilitate prostitution, and that a patron raped her in one of them a year ago. She also charges the club fired her last May after she reported the rape and complained about the booths to club management.
The San Francisco Chronicle says Pacello's suit argues the theatre works in such a way that patrons could would expect to have sex with dancers, alluding to theatre ads she says tell guests, "What you do on your side of the curtain is your little secret."
Pacello is seeking unspecified damages. An attorney for Mitchell, Nanci Clarence, tells the Chronicle she thinks Pacello is banking on the fact that Mitchell is still on parole for killing his brother, Artie, to try to frighten him into making a settlement.
``This suit is a shakedown,'' she tells the Chronicle. ``We'll fight this to the end.'' Clarence says Pacello didn't report the incident for several days after it happened and a management probe failed to corroborate her story.
``There are guards within hearing distance of every one of these booths, and no one witnessed or heard anything,'' she says, adding that when she encouraged Pacello to file a police report, she demurred, saying no one would take a stripper seriously.
San Francisco police have no record of any complaint by Pacello, and Clarence also denies Pacello was fired in retaliation.
The Chronicle also says several dancers, interviewed in their dressing room Feb. 8, disputed Pacello's charge that the theater's management encourages prostitution. Some of the dancers told the paper they "know there is an element of danger every time a curtain closes and leaves them alone with a customer. But they said their intuition protects them from dangerous situations."
The Mitchell Brothers were among the most successful porn producers in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, with credits that include the legendary Marilyn Chambers film, Behind the Green Door. But their personal relationship was stormier and stormier until Feb. 27, 1991, when Jim Mitchell kicked in his brother's front door in Corte Madera and fired eight shots, killing him.
Mitchell served less than three years behind bars on a voluntary manslaughter conviction and was paroled almost three years ago.
Their strange saga has been told in a newly-produced cable television film, Rated X, produced by Emilio Estevez and starring Estevez and his brother Charles Sheen - who himself faces a lawsuit by two porn actresses claiming his bodyguards assault them at his home last year.
