The St Julian’s gentlemen’s club Déjà Vu. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Gentlemen’s clubs, where lap dancing takes place, were not regulated by law and specific legislation should be enacted, a magistrate said.

Magistrate Edwina Grima noted that although it appeared that the Executive planned to pass laws governing such clubs, what went on inside at present was still unregulated.

She pointed out that the only law regulating these sorts of entertainment spots was the one applicable to brothels and similar places, which was incorrect because lap dancing clubs were run very differently from venues where prostitution occurred.

The magistrate noted that the law spoke of “committing an immoral act” but failed to define what was immoral or moral.

Her call for regulation followed a string of similar cases over the past two years in which topless lap dancers were acquitted of committing immoral acts because of the term’s lack of definition.

Magistrate Grima was commenting in a judgment in which she acquitted Marco Bonnici, 32, owner of the St Julian’s gentlemen’s club Déjà Vu, of running a brothel on January 23, 2011.

He was arraigned after a policeman walked into the bar and found Luciana Loredana Secan, 23, a Romanian, lap dancing topless for a customer.

Ms Secan was charged with offending public morality by exposing herself in the club and was acquitted as well, also because the law does not define what is immoral.

The absence of a definition of what was moral or immoral did not mean that morality did not exist or that an objective meaning could not be included in the law, the magistrate said.

Erotic acts like those one came across in a gentlemen’s club could never be defined as moral, especially when a woman exposed herself to satisfy lust. This industry should be regulated to determine what was permissible and what was not, she said.

Magistrate Grima said that, unfortunately, in time society was becoming more permissive. In fact, these types of places were found across the island and more so in entertainment hotspots.

It was a known fact that the women who worked in such clubs would come from Eastern Europe and, while some of the countries now formed part of the European Union, they were still suffering from the effects of Communism and poverty.

The law spoke of committing an immoral act but failed to define what was immoral or moral

Such women, the magistrate added, came to Malta to earn money through lap dancing and would often be self employed and pay a fee to the club to dance there, although this might not have been the case in this instance.

When the case was being heard, Ms Secan’s lawyer, Arthur Azzopardi, invited the prosecuting officer to accompany him to buy a Playboy magazine from a shop near the court house, arguing that even bookshops had become “immoral”, by the officer’s standards.

The magistrate said that such argument did not hold water because if society had become more permissive it did not mean that immoral acts had become moral.

She also acquitted Mr Bonnici of illegally employing Ms Secan as it resulted she was self employed.

Lawyers Shazoo Ghaznavi and Robert Galea appeared for Mr Bonnici.