Tag: sex work

Homeland Security Helps Nab 80-Year-Old Man for Paying a Sex Worker

Here’s your periodic reminder that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—the agency tasked with safeguarding America from terrorism and other grave threats—is also in the business of policing private sexual acts between adults.

An 80-year-old man was recently arrested in Plattsburgh, New York, as part of an ongoing Homeland Security investigation into potential prostitution at a massage business. He was charged with the misdemeanor crime of patronizing prostitution in the third degree.

The arrest was made by deputies with the Clinton County Sheriff’s Office as they helped Homeland Security Investigations execute a federal search warrant at “an alleged prostitution enterprise operating as a massage parlor,” per a Sheriff’s Office press release. Further information is supposed to be released later by the Buffalo field office of Homeland Security Investigations.

The elderly man may have been a bonus bust in this operation, not the express point of it. But he’s far from the first person facing criminal charges because Homeland Security has decided to take an interest in stopping sex between consenting adults. (Or, one suspects, to police immigration under the auspices of policing sex.)

Homeland Security routinely teams up with local cops to police independent massage businesses, searching for signs of sex. Almost always, the targeted businesses are operated and staffed by Asian women.

The feds say they’re looking for human trafficking. But again and again, we see the flimsiest of evidence employed to justify this suspicion; again and again, we see stings that turn up nothing more than licensing violations or, at worst, prostitution arrests.

The women working at these businesses—the ones Homeland Security claims to be protecting—are often subjected to repeated intimate encounters with local and federal law enforcement officers or their informants (a situation made all the more perverse if authorities really believe these are victims of trafficking). Then they wind up arrested, out of work, and facing fines for prostitution, practicing massage without a license, and so on. They may also find their savings subject to asset forfeiture.

In “Operation Asian Touch,” for instance, Homeland Security agents had at least 17 sexual encounters with women working at Mohave County, Arizona, massage businesses. Afterward, women who agreed to paid sex acts were arrested and had their assets seized.

In the Florida massage parlor stings in which Homeland Security helped nab New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft for solicitation, charges against Kraft and many other men arrested for solicitation were eventually dropped. But women providing massages and sex acts were still prosecuted, with some having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for “soliciting” these men to commit prostitution.

Workers arrested in these stings are often taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

Keep reading

Surreal NCAA Scandal: California Basketball Coach Was Moonlighting in Multiple States as a Pimp

Even in the large, expansive, and sordid history of college sports scandals, this one might be one of the strangest.

According to ESPN, California State University, Bakersfield, has been rocked by a surreal scandal that has overshadowed the fact that the team is dead last in the Big West Conference.

(Which is probably for the best for the Roadrunners, given that they’re 8-22.)

But it doesn’t appear that Cal State Bakersfield’s athletic department will be answering any questions about that putrid record any time soon.

Instead, the department will undoubtedly be peppered with questions about “temporary assistant coach” Kevin Mays.

In August, then-Cal State Bakersfield basketball head coach Rod Barnes received an anonymous email alleging that Mays had been operating as a pimp across four different states.

“FIX IT OR THE WHOLE STAFF WILL FALL,” the tipster, who had identified a woman allegedly being trafficked by Mays, said in the email.

The tipster added that it was a “first warning and a final warning.”

Barnes would forward that email to school officials, which prompted an investigation that would eventually lead to criminal charges being pressed against Mays.

Mays is currently being held without bail as he faces an extensive list of charges — 11 in total — spanning both felonies and misdemeanors.

Among the most serious allegations are felony counts of pimping, along with charges tied to illegal weapons and drug trafficking.

Prosecutors accused him of possessing automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines, as well as methamphetamine and marijuana that authorities say were intended for distribution. Those allegations alone carry significant penalties if proven in court.

In addition, investigators claimed Mays had more than 600 images of child sexual abuse material and distributed obscene content involving a minor.

Despite the damning list of accusations, Mays has entered a plea of not guilty to every charge.

The bizarre scandal unsurprisingly took the sports world by storm.

Keep reading

Colorado Democrats Introduce Bill to Fully Decriminalize Prostitution — Could Make State First in Nation to Legalize Sex Work

Colorado Democrats have officially introduced a bill to fully decriminalize prostitution.

If passed, Senate Bill 26-097 would make Colorado the first state in the entire country to completely remove criminal penalties for buying and selling sex between consenting adults.

If enacted, the legislation would repeal the state criminal offenses of:

  • Prostitution
  • Soliciting for prostitution
  • Patronizing a prostitute
  • Keeping a place of prostitution
  • Pandering related to arranging prostitution

According to the official legislative summary, the bill would statewide decriminalize “commercial sexual activity among consenting adults” and explicitly prevent local governments from passing their own ordinances banning prostitution.

That means cities and counties would be legally barred from criminalizing prostitution even if local officials or voters object.

Lead sponsors of the legislation include:

  • State Sen. Nick Hinrichsen (D-Pueblo)
  • State Sen. Lisa Cutter (D-Jefferson County)
  • Rep. Lorena Garcia (D-Adams County)
  • Rep. Rebekah Stewart (D-Lakewood)

Keep reading

Democrats Choose Supporting LGBT Activists Over Stopping Child Rape

Given a choice between child rape and saying no to the LGBT lobby, California Democrats picked child rape.

A recent New York Times story on Los Angeles’ notorious Figueroa Street revealed the brutal human cost of Democrats’ subservience to the LGBT lobby. Prostitution had always been a problem, but, as the paper reported, “in recent years, the officers had seen the magnitude of child sex trafficking explode.” Girls, some not even teenagers yet, are being abused, beaten, and raped night after night in a miles-long stretch of street ruled by traffickers and known as the Blade.

This expanding evil is the result of deliberate choices by Democrats. There were the pandemic school closures — extended far beyond any evidence or reasonable fears — that left vulnerable children unattended and easy prey for traffickers. There were police budget cuts — in practice, defunding the police means letting those selling children as sex slaves control the streets. And, though the New York Times does not mention it, handing the cartels control of our southern border surely enabled the sex traffickers now selling children in L.A. and elsewhere.

But above all, there was the repeal of “the law allowing the police to arrest women who loitered with the intent to engage in prostitution.” Ostensibly, this was to “prevent profiling of Black, brown and trans women based on how they dressed. But when it was implemented in January 2023, the effect was that uniformed officers could no longer apprehend groups of girls in lingerie on Figueroa, hoping to recover minors among them.” And so it was not long before “every intersection from Gage to Imperial had girls waving and waiting to be rented out, some of them imported by traffickers from Oregon or Texas or Alabama. By the end of 2023, the city attorney had taken to calling Figueroa the Kiddie Stroll because so many of the girls weren’t even 13.”

There were, it turns out, good reasons that it was illegal for girls wearing G-strings, fishnets, and heels to hang around known sex trafficking hubs late at night. As Abigail Shrier reported for City Journal back in 2023, the “anti-loitering statute,” which “had provided the grounds for officers to question women and children whom they suspected might be trapped in a prostitution ring.” It had thereby kept prostitution in general, and child sex slavery in particular, in check by giving police the ability to break up prostitution hot spots.

But this was unacceptable to California Democrats. The New York Times refused to name names, but the man most responsible for the current miles-long market of child prostitutes in Los Angeles is California state Sen. Scott Weiner of San Francisco. Wiener, who is now running for Congress, leads the LGBT faction of the Democrat-dominated California legislature. Shrier recounted some of his other handiwork, which included laws that have “allowed biological male felons to self-ID their way into women’s prisons,” “decriminalized the intentional exposure of a sexual partner to HIV” and “reduced criminal penalties for sex offenders.” He also tried to decriminalize ketamine, often used as a date-rape drug.

Keep reading

Kristi Noem claims 1 in 6 survivors of Lahaina wildfires were forced to trade sexual favors for supplies

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has claimed one in six survivors of the Lahaina wildfires in Hawaii had to trade sexual and other favors to get basic supplies.

The comments were seemingly in reference to a report on female Filipino survivors, which one of the authors called a “gross manipulation” of the report, according to Politico.

At a review meeting for the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday, Noem said, ​​“After the wildfires in Maui, residents voiced concerns that every FEMA employee that they spoke with had different answers.”

“None of them had conversations that resulted in getting assistance that was helpful or any clarity in their situations,” she added. “The situation in Lahaina was so bad that one in six survivors were forced to trade sexual favors, other favors for just basic supplies.”

The study on Filipino female survivors was conducted by Tagnawa, which states that it is a “Filipino feminist disaster response organization” in Hawaii. The review included responses from 70 female Filipino fire survivors and found that 16 percent had engaged in “survival sex in exchange for basic necessities post-disaster,” with “a landlord, an employer, family members, friends and acquaintances.”

Keep reading

Sweden Cracks Down On OnlyFans – Will U.S. Follow Suit?

The X-rated social media platform OnlyFans is experiencing real growth, with revenue, content, and user numbers all on the rise. The site’s over 4 million “creators” sell content – including images, videos, and personalized chats – to more than 300 million subscribers, or “fans.” It’s primarily a sex site, and claims that the platform isn’t powered by porn are usually accompanied by winks and nods to the contrary.

OnlyFans keeps a 20% cut of what users pay, boasting $1.3 billion of revenue in 2023. It’s a lucrative approach to monetizing porn consumption, but the platform just hit a legal roadblock in a seemingly unlikely country.

Sweden, which in 1971 became the second country in the world to formally legalize all forms of pornography, has not been as soft on prostitution. In 1999, the country criminalized the purchase of sex, but not the sale, in efforts to protect vulnerable women from facing stiff legal consequences.

That policy will now apply to the virtual world. As of July 1, Swedes could face up to a year in prison for paying someone for personalized online sexual services, including sexting and video content. The new law also criminalizes promoting or profiting from others who perform sex acts for payment on demand, forcing OnlyFans to pull out of Sweden.

In a country known for libertines more than prudes, the law passed with broad, cross-party support. “The idea is that anyone who buys sexual acts performed remotely should be penalized in the same way as those who buy sexual acts involving physical contact,” said Gunnar Strommer, Sweden’s Justice Minister and a member of the Moderate party.

Keep reading