At 22, Sarah Omari has exchanged her police uniform for the management of Austria’s largest brothel, a transition that raises questions about work, privilege, safety and the changing sex industry.
On a Friday evening in Vienna, Sarah Omari sits behind a desk and interviews a prospective sex worker. Maya, 21, has arrived with her identity documents and two plastic cards. Omari checks them carefully, asks about her previous experience and whether she speaks German. Maya has worked in sauna clubs for three years, including in Vienna and Frankfurt. When Omari asks whether she wants to start that day, Maya shrugs. It is Friday.
The encounter takes place at the Saraya Club, described by Die Zeit as Austria’s largest brothel. The FKK club is on the outskirts of Vienna in the 23rd district, beside a McDonald’s and a specialist shop for horse equipment. Behind darkened glass, the 7,000-square-metre complex contains saunas, a swimming pool, bars, a buffet, a cinema, rooms for sexual encounters and entertainment areas. At weekends, it remains open from midday until six in the morning.
Omari, only 22, is the club’s manager. The business belongs to her father, who gave her the white sports car in which she arrives outside the entrance. Her move into the sex industry is striking because, only recently, she was a police officer in Vienna.
For two years, Omari patrolled the city’s 20th and 22nd districts. She dealt with accidents, issued parking fines and responded to fights. The German newspaper Bild captured the abrupt change with the headline “Rotlicht statt Blaulicht”, while Kronen Zeitung quoted Omari joking about the transformation: “Früher haben sich alle gegen die Handschellen gewehrt. Jetzt habe ich gelernt, dass sie bei den Herren doch sehr beliebt sind.”
The contrast between policing and running a brothel is central to the story reported by Die Zeit. As a police officer, Omari was responsible for enforcing laws. Now she manages a business operating in an industry associated with prostitution, drugs, exploitation and abuse. Her explanation for the change begins with her experience of police work and her family.
Omari says that, as a child growing up in a well-off Vienna family, she had always wanted to become a police officer because she wanted to help people and do good. She left school shortly before completing her final examinations, undertook two years of training and worked as an inspector on patrol duty. She enjoyed the camaraderie at the police station and liked going to the shooting range.
But the work proved more demanding than she had expected. She describes frequent overtime and double shifts, combined with the constant “Lebensrisiko” associated with arrests and pursuits. She often felt overworked. Then, in November, her father, who had previously operated several successful bars in Vienna, took over the brothel and offered her its management. After thinking about it for some time, she accepted.
Omari says she did not find it strange that her father had taken over a brothel. To her, it was a business like any other. The new job also appeared more convenient: she could take holidays much more easily and quickly.
The club’s business reflects a sex industry that, according to the Die Zeit report, has changed since the pandemic. More than 30 sex workers are present on the Friday described in the article, while on other days the number can reach 50. Most, like Maya, come from Romania; others are from Bulgaria, Moldova, Hungary, Greece and Turkey. Omari expects up to 100 male customers that evening.
The report says the number of registered “Rotlichtlokale” in Austria fell by more than a quarter between 2019 and 2024, while the number of registered sex workers fell from 6,400 to 5,200. In Germany, the number fell by a fifth to 32,000. Omari therefore accepts women who have the required documents and appear to meet her standards of hygiene.
In Vienna, sex workers need a police work permit and the so-called “Deckel”, demonstrating that they have undergone a medical examination every six weeks to check for communicable diseases. Omari also checks their appearance and requires them to speak German or English to avoid misunderstandings with customers.
The club operates on an admission-fee system. Men pay between 35 and 65 euros depending on the day and time, while sex workers pay 85 euros. In return, they can use the wellness facilities, eat from the buffet and use the rooms, with fresh bed linen provided. In most sauna clubs, the women work independently and negotiate their own prices.
Omari insists that she does not participate directly in payments between customers and sex workers. Yet the distinction is not absolute. For standard services, she agrees tariffs with the women: 80 euros for half an hour of sexual intercourse and 150 euros for an hour. She says this allows the club to advertise fixed prices and reduces disputes between women over undercutting one another. She has no influence over prices for extras.
The question of coercion remains more complicated. Omari says there are no pimps and that the women come independently, although, as Die Zeit notes, such claims cannot be independently verified. She acknowledges that some women appear desperate when business is poor and may spend long periods on the telephone. She suggests that family members or husbands may sometimes put pressure on them.
Omari nevertheless says she has no guilty conscience. Her reasoning is that the women would engage in sex work somewhere regardless, and that her club provides a safer environment than streets or private flats. She sees herself as a protector.
That belief is tested by the people working inside the club. Maya, who has told her family for years that she works in a hotel, says she can earn between 1,000 and 2,000 euros on good nights. On bad nights, she may not even recover the entrance fee. She says the money is hers and that she has no child or husband. “Mir macht das hier keinen Spaß, und es macht mich auch nicht geil, aber es geht mir auch nicht schlecht.”
For Maya, the attraction is economic. She says that in Romania she might earn only 500 euros a month, too little for the life she wants. According to the figures cited in the Die Zeit report, average net income in Romania is 1,100 euros a month, about half the average in other EU states. Maya says she wants a house and a car.
The contrast between the two women is stark. Omari grew up protected from financial insecurity, with a sports car appearing as a gift from her father. Maya has spent years selling sexual services to support herself while her family remains hundreds of kilometres away.
Late that Friday, the club’s “Tanzevent” begins. The women gather around the pole-dancing area, hoping to attract customers. Maya has had only one customer after three and a half hours. Omari, meanwhile, stands behind the bar and selects the music on her phone.
The evening remains quiet. After two performances, the dancing ends. Omari retreats briefly to her office because of back pain before returning to patrol the club. Maya heads back towards one of the rooms with an older customer.
After the entrance fee, she is still five euros in the red.
The final image captures the distance between Omari’s former occupation and her new one. Once, she patrolled Vienna in uniform, carrying the authority of the state. Now she walks through a private business, checking saunas, food, disinfectant and emergency systems, while insisting that the women’s transactions with customers are not her responsibility. Her concealed panic button, she says, is there to summon security if a sex worker needs help.
For Omari, these procedures are evidence that her workplace is legitimate and safe. For Die Zeit, her story exposes a more complicated transition: from police officer to manager of a brothel, from enforcing rules to operating within an industry whose boundaries between independence, economic necessity and vulnerability are not always easy to establish.
At 22, Omari has already crossed that boundary herself. Her justification is straightforward: she believes she is running a normal business and providing protection. But the women entering her office, negotiating prices and waiting for customers inhabit a very different economic reality. Their experiences, as presented by Die Zeit, show why the transformation from “Blaulicht” to “Rotlicht” cannot be understood simply as a change of employment. It is also a story about the unequal circumstances that shape the choices available to those working inside the club.
