Was a Sexual Predator Employed at a Strip Club?

Sept. 2, 2016

A criminal case and a civil lawsuit suggest sexual assault at Fantasy’s in Grawn.

Ten days passed before the exotic dancer told police she’d been violently raped on the men’s room floor inside Fantasy’s strip club. The lawyer for Christopher Kingsland, the man accused of the sexual assault, wanted to know why she waited so long to contact police.

The woman testified that she waited because she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to go through the process of filing a complaint and assisting a prosecution, namely because she didn’t want to go through what she was in the middle of right then — sitting in a witness box, reliving what happened, and enduring a cross-examination.

“Why do so many women not go to the police at all?” she asked by way of an answer. “Because they don’t want to got through this.”

THREE CHARGES AND A LAWSUIT

At the Aug. 23 hearing, 86th District Court Judge Michael Stepka bound over Kingsland to face trial on charges of firstdegree criminal sexual conduct, assault by strangulation, and being a four-time habitual offender. Kingsland has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces a minimum of 25 years and up to life in prison. He remains in jail in lieu of $250,000 bond.

Kingsland’s accuser, whom the Express will refer to as Dancer A, is one of three former Fantasy’s employees who have accused the 44-year-old of sexual assault.

Dancer A also has filed a civil lawsuit against Kingsland, as well as Fantasy’s owner Leon Quigley, and his son, Ryan Quigley, who was Kingsland’s supervisor. She is seeking over $25,000 in damages and alleges the Quigleys were negligent when they hired Kingsland because he had a lengthy and violent criminal record.

Kingsland was convicted of bank robbery in 1988, breaking and entering in 1989, and three counts of kidnapping in 1998. He was convicted of the assault of a police officer in 2005.

The Quigleys deny the allegations of the civil lawsuit, though in an answer to the complaint, Leon Quigley admitted he knew about the bulk of Kingsland’s criminal past before he was hired to manage the strip club.

Leon Quigley initially agreed to speak to the Express but then did not respond to telephone messages. His attorney, David Berkal, did not return a message seeking comment. Mark Dancer, who filed the suit against the club, also did not respond to a request for comment.

SMOKING IN THE MEN’S ROOM

Dancer A admits that she drank on the job, but she said she wasn’t intoxicated the night of the incident and that she hasn’t used drugs since she went to rehab in 2008.

At the preliminary hearing, the 28-yearold mother of two said the ordeal began when she had attempted to step into a heated argument between Kingsland and another dancer.

“She was young, and I was trying to help the younger girls,” Dancer A testified.

She said Kingsland had pushed her violently, so she tried to punch him, a blow that Kingsland deflected. That made him angry, she said, and he put her in a bear hug.

Dancer A said she feared she was going to lose her job, so when Kingsland had asked her into the men’s room to have a cigarette, she followed; in the winter months, the restrooms were used for smoking, so it didn’t seem like an odd place to go.

Once inside, however, instead of reaching into his pocket to get cigarettes, Kingsland had un-zipped his pants and exposed himself, she said.

Suddenly they were struggling over her pants, and she testified that before she knew it, she was on the ground, being raped. Next, she said through tears, he had strangled her from behind, pinching her trachea so that she couldn’t breathe. She said she thought she wouldn’t make it out of the restroom alive.

“It got violent very fast,” Dancer A had told the Grand Traverse County Sheriff deputy who in-vestigated the case, Matt Karczewski. She said Kingsland had called her a “bitch” and used vulgar language as he raped her.

She testified that Kingsland had demanded that she turn over and face him, and as she kept begging him to stop, he continued to repeat “Look at me.” When she finally turned and their bodies separated, she scooted backward, and it was over, she said.

“The last thing he said was, ‘I cannot believe you’re not going to let me finish,’” she testified.

REVENGE AND A PAYDAY

Kingsland’s attorney said the woman’s emotional testimony belies what he believes is the truth of the case: that the woman made up the whole story for revenge and profit.

“I believe nothing happened,” Stephen Kane said.

There’s no physical evidence that proves his client and Dancer A had sex, he said. Kane said Kingsland was a tough manager, and he believes Dancer A retaliated against a boss she didn’t like in a manner that would enable her to collect damages in a civil lawsuit.

“It gets back at a boss she hated, and it puts money in her pocket from the owners of the company,” Kane said.

He discounted the statements of two other dancers who told Karczewski that Kingsland had sexually assaulted them; those statements did not become the basis of criminal charges, and the women have not joined in the civil lawsuit. Kane said those women also might have been motivated to make allegations because of their dislike for Kingsland.

“I also believe the evidence will show they didn’t particularly like my client any more than [Dancer A],” he said.

Kane believes the case will go to trial unless there is an unexpected development. It’s unclear whether Kingsland’s criminal history would be introduced; Kane said he doesn’t believe it is relevant, and he will argue it is inadmissible.

Prosecuting Attorney Robert Cooney said he didn’t want to comment on a pending case.

DRINKING AND DRUGS

Dancer A started working at Fantasy’s a decade ago, when she was 18 years old, around the time the club opened. She took extended leaves following the birth of her children, and it was upon returning the second time that she met Kingsland, who became manager of the club in May 2014.

Based on Dancer A’s testimony and statements from witnesses in police reports, Fantasy’s, though not a bar, was a place where alcohol and drama flowed freely among the dancers.

In cross-examination, Kane asked Dancer A about times she was disciplined or suspended from the club.

She said she took time off twice for disciplinary reasons — both incidents occurring while Kingsland was manager.

“I had never been kicked out before by another manager,” she said.

She said she was disciplined for “starting drama” with the other girls.

She denied that she had been disciplined for drugs, prostitution or drinking — she said she’s long been free of drugs, didn’t solicit customers, and was allowed to drink in the club under Kingsland and only was reprimanded if she drank too much.

Although there was a rule barring drinking at the club, Dancer A testified that drinking was not only commonplace but also that Kingsland looked the other way or even facilitated drinking at the club.

“If I got too drunk, he would reprimand me,” she testified. “He was not bad when it came to that because Chris was an alcoholic himself and drank a lot himself.”

Kane denied that there was rampant drinking at the club.

“I think that was one of the bones of contention, that he was pretty tough on that,” Kane said. “He certainly didn’t allow them to be drunk.”

ANOTHER DANCER’S ALLEGATIONS

The case against Kingsland was not instigated by Dancer A. The police called her only after they interviewed another woman, Dancer B, who called police to report that she had been sexually assaulted by Kingsland.

Dancer B, a cousin of Dancer A, called police from an apartment in Acme and, when an officer contacted her, she told the investigators that they had better get her statement soon, because she wasn’t sure her resolve to report the matter would last.

That was on Jan. 23. Ten days earlier, Dancer B said, she was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up behind the club after closing when Kingsland appeared, grabbed her from the side, ripped a cigarette from her mouth, forced her into an office, and raped her.

In Dancer B’s several months as a Fantasy’s dancer, she learned to watch out for Kingsland, she told Karczewski. Although she wasn’t attracted to Kingsland, Dancer B said she could tell he was interested in her. He often would slap dancers’ butts, kiss them and aggressively pursue them, she said.

She said she had gone along with sex acts with Kingsland in the past in order to keep her job. One time, maybe a month earlier, she had wanted to end a shift early because she wasn’t feeling well. She said Kingsland had offered to wave the $150 fine for leaving work early if she would perform oral sex. She told Karczewski that she had complied.

Dancer B’s account of what happened might have been problematic to bring to court.

After the alleged assault, the woman exchanged text messages with Kingsland in which he asked her why she told her boyfriend that he had raped her; she texted Kingsland that she didn’t say that, that she only had told her boyfriend about “us” to “make him upset,” according to the police report. Dancer B told police that when Kingsland learned that she was thinking about going to the police, he fired her.

“IT HAPPENED AGAIN. IT HAPPENED AGAIN”

Karczewski, the department’s Blair Township community police officer, interviewed more than 20 dancers, employees and witnesses in the case.

One bouncer told him that Kingsland was known “to be having sex with the girls who worked there.”

That man told police that he had run into Dancer A on the night of her alleged assault, and that they had sat in a car and talked for two hours in a Walmart parking lot. What she had told him that night, according to the police report, roughly matched her testimony.

He said Dancer A told him that Kingsland had given her an ultimatum — either have sex with him or be fired for trying to hit him. At first she had agreed but then had changed her mind during sex, she told the bouncer, according to the police report.

Karczewski asked the bouncer if he thought she’d been raped. “I’d have to say [yeah],” he replied.

The boyfriend of Dancer B told Karczewski that he didn’t want to learn a lot about what had happened, but he said that she had told him that night that she’d been sexually assaulted. He said he didn’t need to learn the details; he could tell that his now former girlfriend had suffered and was changed.

“She was a different person after that night,” the man told Karczewski.

Another anonymous employee told Karczewski that Kingsland is a “horrible person” who targeted “weak girls.” Another said he was “an angry little dude” and “not to be trusted.” Another said Kingsland treated dancers like a pimp treats prostitutes.

One described Kingsland as an abusive predator and described the suspected sexual assault of Dancer C, who often was seen crying in the club and, according to the police report, reportedly said, “It happened again. It happened again. He raped me.”

Karczewski had difficulty tracking down Dancer C, who by then had moved out of town. She broke down crying when she learned the person on the phone was a detective who wanted to talk about what had happened at Fantasy’s.

Karczewski finally arranged a meeting with Dancer C, and the woman said she didn’t remember much about what happened. She said she was almost always drinking while she danced at Fantasy’s and that there were two unwanted sexual encounters with Kingsland.

“It was easier just to let him than to fight about it,” she said.

Karczewski wrote in the police report that he thought Dancer C was holding back information.

SOMEONE TO TAKE CARE OF IT

A Fantasy’s DJ who also worked with Kingsland at a strip club in Flint told Karczewski that Kingsland had left that job in handcuffs after he was accused of “some type of assault.”

The DJ, who had moved to Traverse City with Kingsland, said Kingsland frequently spoke about having sex with Dancer C. He told the detective that he didn’t think Kingsland “straight up” raped women but instead would hold things over their heads to pressure them to have sex with him.

Kingsland was fired from Fantasy’s by Feb. 1. He initially agreed to cooperate with police but once he called a lawyer, he opted to remain silent. The day after he cancelled an interview with police, he left a voicemail for Karczewski saying that two of the women who accused him of sexual assault had been fired from the club for prostitution.

A dancer also called Karczewski out of the blue and told Karczewski that Kingsland was a jerk, but that he was the best manager for whom she’d ever worked. She echoed what Kingsland said; she claimed that many dancers were fired for prostitution, including the three who made allegations against Kingsland.

The detective interviewed Leon Quigley on March 1. Quigley said called Kingsland “a weird bird” but said he didn’t know anything about Kingsland being a sexual predator. He said that if dancers were having problems with the manager, they should have called him, and he would have taken care of it.

However clear the hindsight of those that knew the accused and his accusers, the future for Kingsland is, for now anyway, unclear. His criminal and civil cases are both pending before Judge Thomas Power in the 13th Circuit Court. While a trial date has not been set in the criminal case, the civil case is scheduled for a settlement conference on Feb. 14, 2017, and trial is scheduled in March. Meanwhile, the women who used to work for him have moved on. Today, Dancer A lists herself as a “stay at home mommy” on her Facebook page. Dancer C, also a mother, now works at a northern Michigan fast food restaurant. Dancer B remains a dancer — but no longer at Fantasy’s. She performs at a strip club in another town.