The Teen Pimp

     Montia Marie Parker lived in Maple Grove, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The 18-year-old cheerleader was one of 1,800 students who attended Hopkins High School. In February 2013, she sent a text message to a 16-year-old member of the cheerleading squad asking if the girl was interested in performing sexual acts for money. The Hopkins High School sophomore, who received special education services due to "developmental cognitive delay," had been telling her friends that she needed money.

     In response to the senior cheerleader's query, the 16-year-old, in a return text said yes. She didn't want to engage in sexual intercourse for money, but would perform oral sex for paying clients. Montia Parker asked the girl to send photographs of herself that were "not too nasty but kind of cute." When Parker received the photographs she posted them on Backstage.com, a website that advertised juvenile prostitution.

      Montia Parker, on March 5, 2013, drove the high school sophomore to an apartment building in a nearby community to service a client willing to pay for oral sex. "You're up!" Parker said to her passenger as she pulled up to the address. The 16-year-old entered the building, and when she returned handed Parker $60. The young pimp deposited the money into her bank account.

     The next morning, Montia Parker, identifying herself as her young sex worker's mother, called the school and reported that her "daughter" wasn't feeling well and would staying at home that day. The young pimp drove her novice prostitute that morning to a customer's house in Brooklyn Park. When the teenager met the john he insisted in engaging in sexual intercourse. To the reluctant girl, Parker said, "You'll be fine. I didn't drive up here for nothing. Eventually you will need to have sex." The 16-year-old offered oral sex, but not sexual intercourse. The john refused, and the high school girls departed without a sale.

     The sophomore prostitute's mother noticed changes in her daughter's behavior and learned she skipped school on the pretext phone call. When the mom checked her daughter's cellphone she discovered text messages pertaining to prostitution. She called the police.

     On May 22, 2013,  police officers, on charges of sex trafficking and promoting prostitution, booked Montia Parker into the Hennepin County Jail. The next day the suspected pimp posted her $50,000 bond. If convicted Montia Parker faced a maximum prison sentence of twenty years and a $50,000 fine. She was represented by a lawyer from the county public defender's office.

     On October 2013, Montia Parker pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution. The judge sentenced her to three years in prison.

     While sex trafficking in young girls by adult men is common criminal activity, teenage female pimps are uncommon.

Sirgiorgio Clardy: The Sociopath From Hell

     Sirgiorgio Clardy was bounced from one foster home to another in Portland Oregon because he was a kid no adult could handle. In 2000 when he was thirteen he attacked his foster dad with a baseball bat. Clardy also threatened and attacked teachers, school administrators and classmates. He took brass knuckles to school and once tried to sexually assault a female student.

     By 2013 the 26-year-old Clardy had been convicted of twenty felonies that included crimes such as forcing young women to work as prostitutes, assault and robbery. When police officers arrested him he'd threaten to rape their wives and children. When he wasn't incarcerated, Mr. Clardy made everyone who come into contact with him miserable, including the teenaged girls he forced into prostitution. This brutal pimp had no business living outside of prison walls.

     In the summer of 2012 several 18-year-old prostitutes, against their will, were doing business for Clardy out of the Inn at the Convention Center, a motel on the edge of downtown Portland. During the course of that operation a john tried to leave the motel without paying one of Clardy's prostitutes. Clardy caught the john before he left the motel. The pimp knocked the free-loader off his feet then stomped his face. With the john on the ground bleeding, Clardy took all of his money. It took plastic surgery to repair the damage to the assault victim's face.

     Police officers arrested Clardy shortly after that attack. A Multnomah County prosecutor charged the violent pimp with compelling prostitution, first-degree robbery and second-degree assault. The suspect pleaded not guilty to all charges.

     In the months leading up to Clardy's trial he threatened and spit on several lawyers appointed to represent him. Eventually Judge Kelly Skye, realizing that no lawyer wanted to be near this man, declared that he would have to defend himself with the help of a legal advisor who would not be required to sit next to him in court. After awhile even the legal advisor asked the judge to be relieved from the unsavory assignment.

     In July 2013, not long after Clardy's trial got underway in Portland's Multnomah County Circuit Court, the defendant spit on sheriff's deputies and threatened the judge. The next day deputies rolled the defendant into court handcuffed to a wheelchair. To keep him from spitting on people the defendant's head was covered in a mesh bag. Because Clardy refused to get dressed for trial officers had wrapped him in a suicide smock.

     A few days into the trial, notwithstanding the presence of nine deputy sheriffs, Judge Skye ordered the defendant into another courtroom where he'd watch the proceedings on a video monitor. The judge considered the defendant too disruptive to be physically present at his own trial.

     The jurors concluded Clardy's two-week trial by finding him guilty of all charges. At the sentencing hearing a few days later the prosecutor put Dr. Frank Colistro on the stand. The psychologist, in practice for thirty years, said, "I've evaluated serial murderers, serial rapists and I'm going to tell you very few of those people reached the evaluation scores we're going to talk about here."

     According to the forensic psychologist, Mr. Clardy was in the 100th percentile of the narcissistic psychopath scale. "People like Mr. Clardy," the doctor said, "are born bad. It's not something we can fix. That's why we have prisons."

      The prosecutor put Dr. Colistro on the stand to counter the defendant's claim he heard voices and wanted to kill himself. Dr. Colistro testified that Clardy exemplified the textbook case of an anti-social psychopath, a man who thought he was smarter, more attractive and better than anyone else. According to Dr. Colistro, Sirgiorgio Clardy was not mentally ill. He was evil.

     Judge Judy Skye, based upon Sirgiorgio Claudy's violent past, criminal record, courtroom behavior and psychological evaluation declared him a "dangerous offender". People so designated, if given the chance, would offend again. As someone beyond the reach of rehabilitation, Judge Skye sentenced Clardy to 100 years in prison with no chance of parole until he served 36 years. Clardy, upon hearing his sentence, swore at the judge and threatened the deputy sheriffs.

     In January 2014, from his cell at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, Clardy, through a handwritten, three-page complaint, filed a $100 million civil suit against, among others, Phil Knight, the chairman of the Nike Company. Clardy based his tort claim on the theory that Nike, on each shoe, does not provide a label that warns users that stomping a person's face while wearing this Nike product could cause serious injury to the stomped person. As a result of the defendant's omission the plaintiff experienced "great mental suffering".

     Clardy's lawsuit, the product of sociopathy in the extreme, was dismissed by a judge on October 2, 2014. 

The Abernathy/Walker Sex Trade Case

     On February 5, 2003 a judge sentenced 20-year-old Rasul Abernathy, a resident of Coatesville, a Philadelphia suburb in eastern Pennsylvania, to three to ten years for selling drugs. He began serving his time at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania. Two months later prison authorities transferred Abernathy to SCI-Greenburg, a Westmoreland County facility east of Pittsburgh in the southwestern part of the state.

     On March 28, 2005, after serving slightly more than two years behind bars, Rasul Abernathy was granted parole. He returned to the Philadelphia area. After twenty months of freedom Mr. Abernathy violated the conditions of his parole and landed back at SCI-Chester. Prison administrators, on February 6, 2007, transferred him back to the state prison in Greensburg.

     On January 28, 2008, 29-year-old Postauntaramin Walker, a resident of North Versailles, a community outside of Pittsburgh, began working as a corrections officer at SCI-Greensburg. That's where she met inmate Rasul Abernathy. Upon his parole on September 24, 2008 Rasul Abernathy moved in with the prison guard.

      Mr. Abernathy, in June 2012, encountered a 16-year-old girl who had run away from a western Pennsylvania juvenile facility. The girl accepted his invitation to live with him and Postauntaramin Walker. Walker was still employed as a prison guard at SCI-Greensburg. She knew the girl was wanted by the authorities.

     A month after taking the runaway in, Abernathy and Walker turned the girl out as a teen prostitute. They posted online ads featuring provocative photographs of the young sex worker. To ease the girls's anxiety over turning tricks, her ex-con and corrections officer handlers kept her supplied with marijuana, alcohol and pain pills. Abernathy set the young prostitute's fees and took care of the business end of the vice operation. When the girl refused to cooperate her handlers beat her.

     In October 2012 the girl reached out to a former counselor she liked. She told the counselor about her life as an involuntary prostitute, but out of fear did not identify her captors. The counselor notified the authorities. A short time later the police picked the girl up and placed her back into the juvenile facility.

     Five months after re-entering the juvenile detention center the girl escaped. She called Rasul Walker who welcomed her back into the sex trade. A few weeks after the young prostitute and her pimps were re-united in North Versailles, prison authorities transferred Walker across the state to SCI-Chester. Abernathy, Walker and their young sex worker moved into an apartment in Coatesville outside of Philadelphia.

     In March 2013, one of Abernathy's ex-con acquaintances raped the young prostitute. Instead of punishing the rapist, Abernathy shrugged off the assault by calling it a "learning experience." The incident motivated the teen to run off and return to the Pittsburgh area. A few weeks later she was back in the juvenile facility where she spilled the beans, this time identifying Abernathy and Walker as her pimps.

     Back in the Philadelphia area, Abernathy and Walker were busy pimping out a 17-year-old male prostitute.

     In November 2013, realizing that her career as a Pennsylvania corrections officer was about to end, Walker quit showing up for work at SCI-Chester.

     In January 2014 a federal grand jury sitting in Philadelphia indicted Abernathy and Walker on charges of child sex trafficking and conspiring to engage in sex trafficking. The indictment pertained to the exploitation of the runaway girl. (The defendants' use of the internet to promote their sex trade made the offense federal.)

     FBI agents arrested Abernathy and the former state corrections officer in Philadelphia shortly after the indictment. Two months later, the same grand jury charged Abernathy, 32, and Walker, 34, with forcing the 17-year-boy into the sex trade. The defendants also faced state charges of kidnapping, promoting prostitution, assault and other offenses related to the corruption of minors.

     Postauntaramin Walker and Rasul Abernathy, after pleading guilty to kidnapping and promoting prostitution in January 2015, were each sentenced to ten years in federal prison.

Persecuting Robert Kraft: The Asia Day Spa Case

     Robert Kraft, a Harvard Business School graduate and paper products tycoon worth about $6.6 billion, purchased the NFL's Boston Patriots franchise in 1994 for $176 million. In New England Mr. Kraft and his team were loved, everywhere else they were not. He was probably the highest profile team owner in the league. What happened to him in 2019 made him known even to people who don't follow professional football.

      On February 22, 2019 the chief of the Jupiter, Florida Police Department held a press conference to announce the results of a 6-month prostitution sting involving a local massage parlor called Asia Day Spa.

     According to the Asia Day Spa's website the spa offered a "variety of massage modalities" that included services that cost patrons $59 for a half-hour and $79 for a full hour.

     Several female employees of the spa had been charged with prostitution. Twenty-five suspected johns had been charged as well. These men were charged with soliciting another to commit prostitution, a misdemeanor that carried, for the first time offender, up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. That was not big news. That was not the real reason the chief of police called a press conference.

     The big news, the bombshell, was that Robert Kraft was one of the johns caught up in the vice dragnet. According to the chief of police the 78-year-old visited the spa on two occasions in January 2019. He allegedly was recorded on hidden police surveillance cameras engaging in sexual activity with two Asia Day Spa employees.

     Robert Kraft when he was in Florida lived in a double apartment in a luxury waterfront development he owned in Palm Beach. According to the police report he made the two 35 -minute trips to Jupiter in a chauffeur driven car.

     A spokesperson for Mr. Kraft told reporters that "We categorically deny that Mr. Kraft engaged in any illegal activity."

     On May 9, 2019 Palm Beach County Judge Joseph Marx sealed more than 100 hours of Asia Day Spa police video recordings, including footage allegedly depicting Robert Kraft's sexual activities. The judge wrote: "Defendants are guaranteed a fair and impartial trial by jury, and not a trial by community or in the press."

     Judge Marx, on May 20, 2019, decided that prosecutors in the Asia Day Spa case could not use the video recordings of Robert Kraft and the others as evidence at their trials. The judge ruled the "dragnet" videos violated the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of lawful spa customers.

     On December 28, 2019 Florida's attorney general asked for a three-judge appellate panel to reverse the lower court's exclusion of the Asia Day Spa videos. The attorney general argued that without hidden surveillance cameras prostitution sting operations would be impossible. Without this evidence the state had no case.

     Robert Kraft issued a statement that in part read: "I know I have hurt and disappointed my family, my close friends, my co-workers, our fans and many others who rightfully hold me to a higher standard."

     Every year in the United States, undercover vice cops arrest roughly 7, 500 men for patronizing adult prostitutes. They do this at a time when jurisdictions like the state of California have essentially legalized retail theft, the public use of heroin and parole violation. Prosecutors in several big cities do not prosecute people for breaking into cars, robbery, possession of heroin and resisting arrest.

     In September 2020 the prosecutor dropped the charges against Robert Kraft and the other alleged johns.

     Lei Wang, the manager of the Asia Day Spa pleaded guilty in December 2020 to one count of soliciting another to commit prostitution. The 41-year-old was sentenced to one year probation and fined $5,000. Three other female spa employees pleaded guilty to misdemeanor offenses and received probation. 

     Prosecuting men who patronize prostitutes, in a nation overwhelmed with serious crime, is an outlandish waste of law enforcement resources. Nothing destroys faith in a criminal justice system more than selective and heavy-handed law enforcement.  

The Zumba Prostitution Case

     Alexis Wright co-owned and operated Purd Vida, a fitness studio in downtown Kennebunk, a seashore town of 10,000 25 miles south of Portland, Maine. The 29-year-old Wright taught Zumba, an arduous Latin inspired dance-workout in rented space above a hair salon and flower store. The studio operated across the street from where Wright's business partner, 57-year-old Mark Strong Sr. sold insurance and worked as a private investigator. The pair opened Purd Vida in early 2010 and in two years grossed about $150,000.

     In September 2011 someone tipped off the local police that some of Wright's male Zumba students were getting more than a good dance workout. According to the informant (or informants) these clients were paying the instructor for sex and there were a lot of these customers. The idea of a house of prostitution operating in this quaint upscale community was, for the media and those with a taste for the prurient, a scandal made in heaven.

     On February 14, 2012 officers with the Kennebunk Police Department, the Maine State Police and the Drug Enforcement Agency, armed with a search warrant raided Purd Vida. The officers seized a hard drive that contained 100 hours of video-recorded sex acts featuring Wright, her business partner Mark Strong, Sr. and dozens of local men who may or may not have also been learning how to do the Zumba. Some of the taped sex sessions had porn film-like titles. Members of the police raiding party also walked off with boxes of business records which included a list of 150 sex clients. In Wright's office the cops found a massage table and a video camera sitting on a tripod.

     In July 2012 the police arrested Mark Strong Sr. on 59 misdemeanor counts of operating a house of prostitution. The York County prosecutor began issuing summons to men on Wright's client list which meant they would eventually have to appear in court to answer misdemeanor charges of engaging the services of a prostitute. (These court appearances would be matters of public record.)

     According to officials familiar with the Purd Vida investigation some of Wright's clients were lawyers, cops, accountants, local politicians, businessmen, firefighters and a local TV personality.

     On October 9, 2012 following their indictments, Alexis Wright and Mark Strong Sr. were arraigned in a district court. Mr. Wright was charged with 106 misdemeanor counts of accepting money for sex and invasion of privacy. (The taped tricks had been secretly recorded.) Both defendants were released on their own recognizance after pleading not guilty to all charges.

     Stephen Schwartz, the attorney representing two of the alleged johns who had received summons, filed a motion to stop the authorities from releasing the 150 names on Wright's client list.

     Laura Dolce, the editor of the York County Coast Star promised to publish the names on the so-called "list of shame." In justifying the decision to publicize the list, Dolce said this to a CNN correspondent: "Many in the community would prefer we not print the names at all. There are people in this community who had their names dragged through the mud for months because people believed they are on the list. We also believe that printing the names of those charged with engaging a prostitute is the fair thing to do...to help set the record straight, and put to rest the ugly rumors that continue to circulate throughout town." (Publishing the names would also sell a lot of newspapers.)

     After the district court judge denied attorney Schwartz's motion to suppress Alex Wright's client list, the attorney appealed the ruling to the Supreme Judicial Court. In speaking to reporters, attorney Schwartz said, "We believe very strongly that their names ought not be released. The mere releasing of their names will have devastating consequences in a case in which the government, we believe, will have a difficult time proving. We fully expect that they [Wright and Strong] won't be convicted, but the damage is done once the horse is out of the barn."

     On October 16, 2012 the judge cleared the way for the authorities to release the names, addresses and ages of 21 suspected johns who have been issued summons to appear in court on December 5, 2012. Their ages ranged from 34 to 65, and all but two were from Maine. One was from Boston and the other New Hampshire. One of the men accused of paying to have sex with Alexis Wright was 58-year-old James Soule, the former mayor of South Portland, Maine.

     Mark Strong Sr., Wright's business partner, issued a statement in which he said, "I never had sex with [Wright] for money. The charges against me are untrue. I will be vindicated in a jury trial."

     In March 2013, following his conviction on 13 counts of prostitution, Judge Nancy Mills sentenced Mark Strong Sr. to 20 days in jail and a $3,000 fine. The judge sentenced Alexis Wright, on twenty counts of prostitution, to ten months in the York County Jail. She was released after serving six months of her sentence.

     In the course of the scandal 21 names on the infamous client list were released to the public. None of the johns were prosecuted in connection with the case.

Natasha Vanwasshenova: The Perils of Prostitution

     On November 23, 2010 Jonathan Hood, a resident of Rochester, Michigan, called a Dearborn escort service and requested a hooker and $80 worth of heroin. The 38-year-old John, in the midst of a divorce, was under the influence of alcohol and heroin when 28-year-old Natasha Vanwasshenova arrived at Hood's suburban Detroit home with the requested drug.

     After consuming more heroin and booze Mr. Hood and the prostitute soaked in his hot tub for 30 minutes after which he took a cold shower. While having sex with Vanwasshenova shortly thereafter, Mr. Hood died. After she called 911 Natasha Vanwasshenova tried to revive Mr. Hood then waited for the EMS personnel and the police.

      The forensic pathologist with the Oakland County Medical Examiner's office who performed the autopsy ruled that Jonathan Hood had died of a heroin overdose. The forensic pathologist noted that Mr. Hood had an enlarged heart and significant blockage in one of his arteries.

     Since according to this forensic pathologist Vanwasshenova's heroin killed Mr. Hood, a local prosecutor charged her with delivering a drug that caused the user's death. Arrested on this criminal homicide offense, Vanwasshenova if found guilty faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.

     Sitting in her Oakland County jail cell Vanwasshenova must have wondered how having sex with a 38-year-old man had killed him and why she was being held responsible for his death. Heroin, while not good for you was not arsenic. Had she known the authorities would charge her for causing her trick's demise she might not have stuck around for the police.

     Vanwasshenova's court appointed attorney Charles Toby, when he read the autopsy report, wondered why the forensic pathologist hadn't taken Mr. Hood's enlarged heart and blocked artery into consideration in the cause of death ruling. With that in mind attorney Toby asked Dr. Kirit Patel, the Chief Cardiologist at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, to review the autopsy. Dr. Patel, after reading the police and autopsy reports, concluded that Jonathan Hood had died of "acute coronary thrombosis," not a heroin overdose. His weak heart had failed under the stress of the drug, booze, hot tub, cold shower and sex.

     In light of Dr. Patel's post-mortem analysis the local prosecutor reduced the charge against Vanwasshenova to delivering a controlled substance. Oakland County medical examiner Dr. Ljubisa Dragovic amended Mr. Hood's cause of death to heart attack.

     In May 2012, after spending 14 months in the county jail, Natasha Vanwasshenova pleaded guilty to the drug delivery charge. She also apologized to Mr. Hood's relatives who were in the courtroom. Judge Leo Bowan sentenced her to two years probation and ordered her released from custody.

     Attorney Charles Toby, noting that his client had been in jail for 14 months on a minor drug crime, objected to the probated sentence. If Vanwasshenova returned to prostitution she would violate the terms of her probation, and if caught could end up serving the rest of her drug delivery sentence behind bars. Perhaps her experience with Mr. Hood would point Vanwasshenova, the mother of four, in another direction, career-wise.

The Mother Pimp

     In April 2012, a tipster called the Nebraska State Patrol to report a woman he had met on Craigslist. According to the informant, she had sent him sexually graphic photographs of her 14-year-old daughter. For a price, this woman offered to make the girl available for sex.

     On April 26, an undercover state officer, posing as a potential John, arranged to meet the 35-year-old mother of three at a motel in Kearney, Nebraska. Michelle Randall, accompanied by her 14-year-old daughter, offered to sell herself for $150, and/or the girl for $200. The officer flashed his badge and arrested the mother. A child protection agent took custody of the teen.

     The arresting officer took Randall to the Buffalo County Jail where she was held on $250,000 bail under charges of soliciting the sexual assault of a child and possession of child pornography.

     Police and child protection personnel went to Randall's home near Minden, Nebraska where they found the suspect's other two daughters, ages 7 and 9, alone in the filthy house. The girls were placed into foster care.

     When questioned by the police, Michelle Randall admitted allowing her 41-year-old boyfriend, over a period of 14 months, to have sex with her teenage daughter and her seven year old. She also named some of the men who had paid to have sex with the girls.

     Over the next few weeks Nebraska police officers arrested seven men, including the boyfriend, who had paid to have sex with the 14-year-old one or more times. Three of these men had sexually molested the seven-year-old sister. They were all charged with sexual assault.

     A Columbus, Nebraska man, 37-year-old Donald Grafe, had sex with the 14-year-old at a Lincoln truck stop. The other arrestees included Logan Roepke, a 22-year-old man from McCook, Nebraska; 38-year-old Alexander Rahe from Omaha; 41-year-old Shad Chandler from Lincoln; and Brian McCarthy, 25, also from Lincoln. Brian McCarthy had pornographic images of the 14-year-old on his cellphone.

     In November 2012, Michelle Randall pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit first-degree sexual assault of a child and two counts of possession of child pornography. The judge sentenced the mother pimp to 92 to 120 years in prison.

     In January 2013, Shad Chandler from Lincoln, Nebraska, pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child. Three months later the judge sentenced him to 15 to 45 years behind bars. The other patrons of child prostitution pleaded guilty and received similar sentences. In 2013, police officers arrested three more men accused of having sex with the 14-year-old girl. These men were eventually convicted and sentenced to long prison terms.  

Feminists Debate Prostitution

     Feminists across Western Europe are sounding the alarm. Prostitution, they claim, has become today's "white slavery," which ever more women from Bulgaria and Romania, Africa and Asia, being forced, tricked or seduced into selling their bodies.

     But in so doing, these activists are creating a schism in the [feminist] movement, between those who see prostitution as another form of male oppression and those who see it as a possible means of female empowerment.

     Much of the debate is centered in Germany, where prostitution is legal. As a result, the German author Alice Schwarzer said, the country has become…"a paradise for johns from all over the Continent," who come in busloads to frequent the new "mega-brothels" in Cologne, Munich or Berlin.

     And, indeed, prostitution is big business in Germany. In bordellos along the borders with France and Poland, countries where prostitution is illegal, groups of visitors are often offered flat-rate packages. Though exact numbers are rare, experts estimate that there are as many as 400,000 prostitutes in Germany, serving more than a million clients and churning out a hefty revenue of 15 billion euros a year. 

   [In 2020, there were more prostitutes per capita in Germany than any country on the continent. Prostitution was also legal in Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Hungary and Lativa.]

Mirian Lau, The New York Times, December 29, 2013 

The Aging Prostitute

For prostitutes, the ages of 16 to 22 are the most sexually attractive ages, and precocious 14-year-olds can readily look 17 or 18. The value of prostitutes for attracting customers declines quickly into the late twenties. Many prostitutes do not yet show the effects of drug abuse and a fast life by 21, but then the tendency to show their age accelerates. The younger ones attract more pickups, leaving the older ones to linger and to act more overtly to attract customers. Indeed, many younger prostitutes can do business simply by sitting on a bench acting unpretentious.

Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998

Massage Parlor Arrests

     The massage parlor has come to be regarded as a type of illegal brothel and is often located within the neighborhood shopping district. Massage parlors are usually relatively inconspicuous. There's not much publicity or advertisement, and the outer facade of the building is not very ostentatious or enticing to the casual shopper. Frequently, these massage parlors advertise through small classified ads in local papers.

     Police employ a method called "the duken" to close down massage parlors. The duken entails having a plainclothes police detective accost an unsuspecting customer about to enter the parlor. The officer will say something like, "We know who you are and what you are doing here, would you like your wife to find out about it?" Out of fear, the patron will introduce the officer to the employees of the massage parlor as a friend who wishes their services.

     Once the detective gains entry, he plays the part of the customer coming in for the first time. The detective cannot carry a gun, identification cards, handcuffs or any object that would make the owner or employees of the massage parlor suspicious. Like the other patrons the officer then receives a massage.

     Smart prostitution houses always tell their clients to go into a room, remove all their clothes, and wait for their girl. This is because most police departments will not allow their officers to remove their underwear when investigating houses of prostitution. And of course these prostitutes know this.

     At no time may the detective suggest anything of a sexual nature to the masseuse. There must only be solicitation on the woman's part. The masseuse might attempt to sexually arouse the client while massaging him, but at this point there is no cause for arrest. As an enticement to get involved in sexual intercourse or oral sex many of these massage parlors will have televisions showing X-rated movies. Only after the masseuse suggest sexual intercourse or oral sex and states a monetary fee is she liable for arrest. At this time the vice officer may make an arrest even though no sexual intercourse or oral sex took place. Massage parlors usually employ only a few women as masseuses. Approximately two women do the massaging and soliciting. Their ages range from the mid-twenties to the mid-forties.

Mauro V. Corvasce and Joseph R. Paglino, Modus Operandi, 1995 

Prostitution Is Here to Stay

Although there are social harms beyond private immorality in commercialized sex--spread of venereal disease, exploitation of the young, and the affront of public solicitation, for example--the blunt use of the criminal prohibition has proven ineffective and costly. Prostitution has flourished in all civilizations; indeed, few institutions have proven as hardy. The inevitable conditions of social life unfailingly produce the supply to meet the ever-present demand…There are limits to the degree of discouragement which the criminal law can properly exercise towards a woman who has deliberately decided to live her life in this way, or a man who has deliberately chosen to use her services.

Sanford H. Kadish, "Overcriminalization" in The Criminal in Society, Leon Radzinowicz and Marvin
Wolfgang, Editors, 1971

The House-Call Hooker Robbery Case

     On May 1, 2013, a home-alone 14-year-old in Prospect Heights, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, decided to avail himself of the services of a prostitute. (The kid must have been watching that old Tom Cruise movie.) Since he wasn't old enough to drive, the hooker would have to come to him. Through a website designed for sexual hookups, the adventurous youngster arranged to have  23-year-old Dareka Brooks, a prostitute from Milwaukee, come to his house.

     The moment the hooker strolled into the suburban home, she took charge. She ordered the excited kid to go into his bedroom and take off his pants. As the hapless kid sat on his bed anticipating the real-life version of his wildest fantasies, Brooks walked into the room and introduced him to the reality of her world. She sprayed his face with pepper juice, grabbed his iPad and piggy bank, and left.

     The stunned, ripped-off underage John could have avoided the wrath of his parents by lying about his lost iPad and piggy bank. Instead, he called the police with a description of the prostitute and her car.

     A detective "pinged" the victim's iPad after Brooks turned it on. This allowed the investigator to track the hooker to a motel in Elk Grove Village ten miles from Prospect Heights. Officers arrested Brooks at the motel where they recovered the kid's iPad and his piggy bank.

     After being charged with armed robbery, a judge ordered Dareka Brooks held on $10,000 bond.

      On June 17, 2014, in exchange for her guilty plea, the judge sentenced Dareka Brooks to five years in prison. 

Honeymoons And Hookers Don't Mix

     Between May 8 and 11, 2013, Florida undercover officers with the Polk County Sheriff's Office ran a prostitution sting involving an online ad aimed at prospective Johns. The operation resulted in the arrests of 92 men. One of the suspects caught in the web was a 45-year-old youth minister. Another unlikely catch involved a young man who was on his honeymoon.

     A 21-year-old Chicago area groom named Mohammed Ahmed was on his honeymoon in Orlando, Florida. After showing up at the place where he hoped to engage the prostitute, Ahmed was arrested by the cops running the sting. When Ahmed didn't return to his honeymoon suite at the Omni Orlando Resort at Championsgate, his bride called the police and reported him missing.

     As it turned out, the newlywed was only missing from his bride. The authorities knew exactly where he was--sitting in the Polk County Jail facing charges of prostitution solicitation and possession of marijuana. The realization that her husband tried to hire a hooker just hours after the wedding ceremony must rank near the top of the honeymoon-from-hell list.

     Because I believe that police officers should be spending their time and resources on more serious crimes, I am not a fan of prostitution stings. But in Ahmed's case, the Polk County Sheriff's Office did Mr. Ahmed's bride a huge favor. If she didn't treat his prostitution arrest as an indication of what life would be like with this husband, she had only herself to blame.

Legalizing Prostitution

Prohibiting something doesn't make it go away. Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it's run illegally by dirtbags who are criminals. If it's legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything the worker gets, and it would be far better.

Jesse Ventura, ex-pro wrestler and former governor of Minnesota 

The Stigmata of Prostitution

Their faces go before their time, their skin coarsens, their speech turns foul until at last it is true to say they are almost completely de-womanized in every gentle aspect of that word. This, like the mark of Cain on the brow of the murderer, is the stigmata of prostitution which none can escape.

John Gosling, head of Scotland Yard's vice squad in the 1950s, in The Book of Criminal Quotations, J.P. Bean, editor, 2003 

Winston Churchill on Who's a Prostitute

Sir Winston Churchill supposedly asked Lady Astor whether she would sleep with him for five million pounds. She said she supposed she would. Then he asked whether she would sleep with him for only five pounds. She answered,"What do you think I am?" His response was, "We've already established that; we're merely haggling over price."

Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998 

Condom Possession As Evidence Against Prostitutes

     One of the key justifications for the criminalization of prostitution is public health, to curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDs. In New York City alone the government spends $1 million a year distributing free condoms with this very purpose in mind.

     Every year, New York City vice officers make 2,500 prostitution arrests. In a few cases, the fact that the sex trade suspect possessed more condoms than what is considered customary has been used as evidence of prostitution.

     Among sex workers, rumor has it that cops will arrest anyone in possession of more than three condoms. While there is not a three-condom rule, a lot of prostitutes no longer carry them in fear of being incriminated by this evidence. What can a prostitute say when the vice officer asks, "What are you doing with all of those condoms?"

     The New York City Department of Health conducted a study in 2010 that revealed that a third of the city's hookers didn't carry condoms as a measure to avoid incriminating themselves.

     Since more than 90 percent of prostitution arrests lead to plea bargained sentences, vice officers rarely need to make their cases using this type of evidence. In suburban New York's Nassau County, District Attorney Kathleen Rice has said that the evidentiary value of condoms does not outweigh the negative public health effect associated with the use of this prosecutorial technique. According to this prosecutor, "condom evidence is rarely of any value to a prosecution. If you need condom possession so badly in a case against a trafficker, you don't have a good case." Prosecutors in San Francisco and in Brooklyn, New York no longer use excessive condom possession as evidence in prostitution cases.

     In 2013, the New York State Assembly passed a bill banning the introduction of condom possession into evidence at sex trafficking trials. A supporter of this first-of-its-kind legislation, Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, told a reporter with the New York Times that "Sex workers are not a politically appealing constituency to most lawmakers."  (It's perhaps a bit ironic that politicians, who are whores themselves, aren't more attuned to the needs of these constituents.) 

Teen Pimp Arrested For High School Prostitution Ring

     In the summer of 2014, 17-year-old Alexa Nicole De Armas, a Venice High School student in Sarasota, Florida, came up with a scheme to recruit other high school girls to offer sex for money and alcohol. De Armas and an accomplice planned to charge $50 to $70 for oral sex and $100 for intercourse with a virgin. The prostitutes, under the plan, would keep 40 percent of what they earned. De Armas wanted the money for narcotics.

     In a Facebook exchange between De Armas and the accomplice, De Armas wrote: Why pimp out old hoes when I have fresh young hoes I can give up for money? As long as I'm getting paid I'm trafficking all these bitches."

     In August 2014, the high school pimp allegedly arranged for John Michael Mosher, a 21-year-old restaurant dishwasher from Nokomis, Florida, to have paid sex with a 15-year-old girl. The encounter allegedly took place in a community pool shed in a Nokomis park. When the girl told Mosher that she did not want to have sex with him, he allegedly forced himself on her. The John gave De Armas $40 and a bottle of booze for the sexual act.

     In October 2014, four female students at Venice High School reported to school officials that Alexa Nicole De Armas had tried to recruit them as sex workers.

     Vice detectives, on Friday November 21, 2014, arrested De Armas on the felony charge of human trafficking of a person younger than 18. That day police officers also took John Michael Mosher into custody in Nokomis, Florida. Mosher faced the felony charge of sexual battery of a juvenile.

     De Armas and Mosher were placed into the Sarasota County Jail without bond. Police told local reporters that other arrests in this case were forthcoming. 

Prostitutes and Cops: Freebies Are Legal in Hawaii

     You don't have to be a hardcore libertarian to question the wisdom of arresting and prosecuting adult prostitutes. Aside from cases involving the trafficking of underage sex slaves, this form of crime fighting is a waste of limited law enforcement manpower. Moreover, this type of vice control fosters police corruption and unprofessional behavior.

     The criminalization of prostitution has affected law enforcement more than it has altered the oldest profession in the world. A recent study conducted by a professor at the University of Chicago and a professor from Columbia University revealed that a prostitute is taken into custody once every 450 tricks, and only one in ten of these arrests leads to more than a few days in jail. That doesn't mean, however, that police officers aren't bothering whores. One in every 30 tricks a prostitute performs is a freebie with a cop as payment for not being arrested. According to this study, a prostitute is much more likely to have sex with an on-duty police officer than to be arrested by one. The law enforcement freebie is simply a cost prostitutes pay to stay out of jail.

     A former Massachusetts police officer pleaded guilty in 2013 to extorting sex from prostitutes he threatened to arrest. In August of that year, a passerby called 911 in Portland, Oregon when she saw a 50-year-old detective having sex with a prostitute in a vacant lot. The authorities threw the prostitute into jail but merely cited the detective for the minor offenses of patronizing a prostitute and indecent exposure. The cop was suspended without pay.

     In West Sacramento, California, an officer was convicted of raping prostitutes in his police car. All over the country hookers who refuse to cooperate are raped by cops. A vast majority of these crimes go unreported. This is another price prostitutes pay for selling themselves for sex. While it's a rough business, there has never been a shortage of hookers. It's a matter of supply and demand, pure capitalism. Cops demand their cut which is often in the form of free sex.

     In Hawaii, vice cops are allowed by law to have sex with prostitutes in order to make their cases. This incredibly stupid law was intended to solve the so-called "cop check" problem involving hookers who employ tactics to identify undercover cops to avoid arrest. Apparently in Honolulu vice cops are too stupid or lazy to pull off prostitution stings without going all the way. Vice cops in every other state have managed to get the job done without dropping their pants.

     Recently a bill that would nullify the legal exemption that allows cops to commit what for civilians is a crime, passed the state's House of Representatives. The measure is being argued in the Senate.

     Under Hawaii's vice law exemption, cops not only get free sex, they get it under the banner of crime fighting. It's amazing what these crime fighting warriors are willing to sacrifice on our behalf.

     The Hawaiian vice exemption encourages police behavior that in every other state is considered unprofessional and illegal. Moreover, it couldn't be good for marriage and other domestic relationships. Johnny, what does your dad do for a living? He arrests whores he has had sex with. Are they hiring down at the Honolulu PD?

     The existence of taxpayer paid sex for Hawaiian vice cops is yet another reminder that you can never underestimate the stupidity of some legislators and police administrators.
   
     

Sex Trafficking at the Super Bowl

     Big public events that attract tens of thousands of people also draw criminals such as thieves, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Many of the hookers are teenage women, runaways forced into the sex trade. For police administrators big events are law enforcement and security headaches. If crime is prevented, no big deal. If something goes wrong, there's hell to pay. For law enforcement, events like the Super Bowl are no-win propositions.

     The Super Bowl presents an enormous challenge to law enforcement practitioners. While the first concern is terrorism, there is also the problem of crime. On February 2, 2014, the annual Super Bowl extravaganza will be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the home of the NFL's New Jersey Giants. The proximity of this venue to New York City will make it an attractive base of operation for a small army of flesh traffickers.

     Danielle Douglas, an anti-prostitution activist has said that the "Super Bowl is a huge arena for sex trafficking--men are coming to the event to have sex with women, men and/or children." For the past several years in New Jersey, police agencies have been waging a losing battle against pimps who keep young prostitutes on drugs and in conditions of involuntary servitude.

      Early in 2013, the New Jersey legislature strengthened the state's human trafficking law. But in August of that year, a federal judge struck down the portion of the legislation that applied to criminalizing the placing of commercial sex ads online. According to the judge, that section of New Jersey's law conflicted with federal sex trafficking legislation. New Jersey's attorney general has appealed the federal ruling.

     In anticipation of this year's big game, New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman created a Super Bowl task force to deal with the expected wave of pimps and their sex slaves. Police officers assigned to Super Bowl detail are being trained to look for young women who seem frightened, or bear signs of physical abuse. Also receiving this training are hospitality workers and airport employees.

     The state is publishing public information ads profiling exploited sex trade victims, and law enforcement hotlines have been put into operation. It's doubtful, however, than these measures will make much of a dent in the annual Super Bowl sex business.