The seedier side of celebrating Father's Day was brought into stark reality yesterday with testimony by a New York stripper about prostitution in a local restaurant after hours.

And popular former boxer and restaurateur Freddie Thomas, 64, has had an arrest warrant issued in his name after he failed to show for the first day of his trial with another man, 30-year-old Kenneth Jermaine Burgess.

The men are charged with procuring women to act as prostitutes.

Acting Magistrate Justin Williams issued an arrest warrant for Frederick William Thomas, 64, the owner of the Club House and Sports Bar, where the strip show was raided by police on June 18 last year.

The Crown called Tamika Monique Williamson of Brooklyn, New York, one of four strippers allegedly brought in by Burgess, to testify.

Her testimony revealed that the sexual activities she was arrested for extended beyond the club, and included a party on a boat earlier that day where she performed sexual favors for money.

Crown counsel Oonagh Vaucrosson began her line of questioning by asking the 20-year-old to tell the court how the whole affair began. Williamson explained that a man had approached her in the New York strip club where she worked in May of last year, and asked for her telephone number.

A few days later she received a call from 30-year-old Kenneth Jermaine Burgess, of Sandys, who told her he was going to hold a weekend of parties in Bermuda, including a bikini contest and other opportunities to dance, which could earn her between $3,000 and $5,000.

Williamson said she was interested and Burgess called her again to get her personal details so that he could book her airline ticket. He also told her not to import drugs or firearms because she would get stopped. Williamson said he did not tell her that prostitution or exposure in a public venue was illegal.

On June 15, Williamson arrived at the airport in New York, where she met three other women who had also agreed to go Bermuda. When they arrived on the Island, Burgess met the women at the airport and took them to a guest house in Devonshire. They quickly showered and changed before being taken to Club 40, then Champions. Williamson said that she did not pay to get into the clubs or for her drinks.

The bathing suit contest was held the next day.

"I didn't have a full bathing suit so I asked if it would be okay to wear thongs," Ms Williamson said.

The women were driven to the contest at about 11 p.m. that night and stayed until 3 or 4 a.m., when they were taken to Champions to party before returning to the guest house.

The sex, according to her testimony, began the next day.

The women were taken out on a large boat and cruised offshore. Another boat met up with theirs and collected Burgess and one of the women. Other boats carrying men rafted up alongside, and the women stripped and danced for tips and performed sex and oral sex, Williamson recalled.

The boats gradually left and the women returned to the Island to prepare for another night out. After showering at the guest house, they were taken to the Club House, and when they arrived, Williamson noticed that the windows had been covered with sheets. The four girls changed into their dancing clothes in a side room - for Williamson, that meant stilettos and a blue spandex dress with the bottom cut out and a thong to match.

Burgess, she said, told them that lap dances were $20 and the room where they were getting dressed was the private room where anything private could be done. Ms Williamson explained that "private things" in the stripping industry "are known as oral sex and sex". The price for oral sex was set at $150 and intercourse cost $300.

Once dressed, Williamson started dancing in front of men seated on a bench against the walls of the club. At about 1.30 a.m., one man asked her for a lap dance, which is when the police came in. She said there were about 15 to 20 people in the club at the time of the raid.

When officers entered the club, they found Williamson clad in a skin-tight outfit with her breasts exposed.

They caught 23-year-old Pamela Givens in the gaming machine room "kneeling and moving her head in a circular motion in the lap of a male who was sitting on the floor beside her", according to a statement read in court last year when the three women were convicted with performing indecent acts and sentenced to three month suspended prison sentences.

Seventeen people at the Clubhouse and the Oasis Nightclub were arrested during the raid, including Williamson, Givens and Chrissy Rirllano, 22. The fourth woman had left the club early. During cross-examination, defence counsel Patrick Doherty asked questions suggesting that Thomas, not Burgess, instructed the woman at the sex show. But his attempts proved largely fruitless as Williamson confirmed her previous answers.

When he suggested that Williamson did not see Burgess while at the Club House, she said that she saw him standing at the door collecting the $50 entrance fee and working the floor.

"It was his party, he was watching over it," she said.

Williamson told the court she only earned about fifty dollars before Police arrived. Over the course of the weekend, she earned a little under $2,000 - she did not win the bikini contest, of which the first prize was $2,000.

The case was adjourned until July 24. If Mr. Williams finds the defendants guilty, they could be fined up to $500 or spend six months in prison for holding the strip show.

If convicted of bringing the women to Bermuda as prostitutes, Burgess could be imprisoned for up to a year.