Husband and wife charged clients for sex

A HUSBAND and wife team who charged clients €200 an hour for sex with them at their Ennis home have avoided jail.

Spanish national David Navaro (50) and Brazilian-born Celia Galan (41) arrived from Barcelona in 2015 and a surveillance operation was mounted outside the couple’s home in July 2016 as a result of Garda suspicions there was a brothel being operated from their property.

Insp Tom Kennedy told Ennis District Court that on July 23, 2016, gardaí entered the home at Station View, Ennis, Co Clare and discovered a laptop, phone, notebook with clients’ names and an Escort Ireland ad confirming that prostitution was conducted at the property.

Insp Kennedy said that the two were advertising on Escort Ireland website as ‘Ann & Peter’.

Insp Kennedy said that the two worked as a couple all of the time with their clients and did not work individually.

The inspector said that they would charge clients €200 an hour for sex; €170 for 45 min- utes and €130 for 30 minutes. Call-out rates worked out at €250 for the first hour of sex.

Insp Kennedy said that the couple told gardaí they were making €1,200 a week from the activities at the house and €4,000 to €5,000 a month.

Solicitor for the two Daragh Hassett said his clients were conducting a ‘cottage industry’ at the address “and this is rampant in Spain and not something that breaches the law there”.

Mr Hassett said his clients weren’t aware that what they were doing was illegal. He said that if anything, the couple overly co-operated with gardaí.

He said that the two “essentially gave gardaí CPD (continued professional development) in how these things operate”.

The couple pleaded guilty to knowingly living in whole or in part on the earnings of the prostitution of another person and aided and abetted that prostitution contrary to Section 10 of the Criminal Law Sex Offences Act at Station View, Ennis on July 23, 2016. Judge Durcan fined each €600.