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Britain Seeks to Ban Violent internet Porn They Take It Off, but They Also Put on Suits, Uniforms and Blue Collars 'Porn is to blame' for abuse rise Porn a leap backward for Olympic women BT puts block on child porn sites New York man loses shirt in topless bar Administration wages war on pornography 17-Year-Old Girl Escapes Forced Prostitution RingLas Vegas, stripped: City uncovers profitable trend The French Spar Over Sex: There's A Limit, No? Coalition Wants To Change Hotel Porn Channels Lavish Lifestyle Ends With Prison For Fraud Hustler Magazine's Girls of Afghanistan O.D. May Have Killed 'Wild' Sassoon Heir Ex-Yale Scholar Guilty In Assault, Had Sex With Boy He Was To Mentor Porn-blackmail teacher cops plea Floating Florida sex boat gets 'put out' to sea Skin and sin are in again on the Las Vegas strip Teen placed in jail cell with sex offender Girl Model Sites Crossing Line? Sex trade may lure 325,000 U.S. kids TAXES PAID FOR SEX JAUNT: REPORT GOLD CLUB TRIAL PUTS STARS AT CENTER STAGE Seattle bans 'upskirt' photography Man Accused of Placing Lewd Photos on Cars City Council approves tougher strip-club rules |
Enfield couple convicted of torturing 11-year-old girl 'Horror-porn' indictment thrown out Police: Prostitute reports client in child porn case Holly Jones family to fight child porn Adolescents in Adult City: Often From Elsewhere, and Often Going Nowhere Norway hotel staff want porn ban HIV Cases Shut Down Pornography Film Industry High court bars Internet porn law enforcement US arrests dozens over Internet child porn distribution Hip Hop's Crossover to the Adult Aisle Man Arrested For Allegedly Having Sex With 2-Month-Old Justices Hear Arguments on Internet Pornography Law Hiding in Plain Sight: Parlors lack permits, mar town images Clinton Man Arrested on Child Pornography Charges in NH Dorm Party With Strippers is Focus of Investigation Rewritten Child-Porn Law Approved Feds Bust Russian Strip Ring -Preyed on imported girls Suspect allegedly drugged, raped daughter's pals Officer fired from teaching job for bringing stripper to class Yale fires prof in child porn case Lumley's Arrest Called "Shocker" Shady Past Haunts Strip Club Backers Salem Cops: Lawyer Used Internet to Lure Young Teens for Sex State says worker stole for lovers Cyberporn bids for the mainstream Doctor held in killing of wife; secret life alleged Men Charged With Child Pornography, Underage Sex N.Y. Officers Face Child Porn Charges Internet Sex Performer Tells Her Story Kentucky sex shop owner undergoes conversion |
Britain Seeks to Ban Violent internet Porn Aug 30, 2005 LONDON (AP) - Ever since Jane Longhurst was killed two years ago by a man obsessed with violent Internet pornography, her family has campaigned for the British government to outlaw the viewing of extreme sexual material on the Web. On Tuesday the government agreed, announcing plans - the first, it said, by any Western country - to ban the downloading and possession of violent sexual images. Police and anti-porn campaigners welcomed the proposal but free-speech groups called it censorship, saying there was no proven link between violent imagery and violent behavior. Home Office Minister Paul Goggins said the government felt a duty to prevent cases such as the murder of Longhurst, a 31-year-old teacher strangled by a friend who was obsessed with violent pornography he found on the Internet. "This is material which is extremely offensive to the vast majority of people, and it should have no place in our society," Goggins said. The government's proposals would make it an offense to possess "extreme pornographic material which is graphic and sexually explicit and which contains actual scenes or realistic depictions of serious violence, bestiality or necrophilia." Viewing such material would constitute possession, although the government said it did not plan to prosecute people who accidentally stumbled across the images. Such legislation would be a first for any Western nation, the Home Office said. Those convicted would face up to three years in prison. The Obscene Publications Act already bans publication of images of sexual brutality on the Internet but is all but impossible to enforce unless the material is hosted in Britain . The Internet Watch Foundation, an industry-funded watchdog that encourages Internet users to report illegal content, says almost none of the obscene material it found on the Net was hosted in Britain ; the majority came from the United States . That makes such matters very difficult to investigate, said Metropolitan Police Commander Dave Johnston, who welcomed the government's proposal. Chris Evans of the pressure group Internet Freedom said Internet users "should be able to make up their own minds about what they view." "The idea that you can prevent violent action by banning such images is nonsense," he said. The government's proposal is a long way from becoming law. Interested parties have until Dec. 2 to comment on the plans, which would then have to be drafted into a bill and passed by Parliament before taking effect. |
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'Horror-porn' indictment thrown out By ANDREA CAVANAUGH LOS ANGELES - In a case closely watched by the adult entertainment industry, a federal judge threw out an obscenity indictment against the owners of a Chatsworth company that produced a ''horror-porn'' film. Federal obscenity laws are unconstitutional in the context of the case against Extreme Associates, U.S. District Court Judge Gary L. Lancaster ruled Thursday. Extreme Associates owner Rob Zicari hailed the dismissal as a victory for civil liberties. ''In no way does the court condone pornography -- what they're saying is that adults have the right to view what they want in the privacy of their own home,'' Zicari said. ''It kind of restores my faith in the system. There are still judges that care about our rights and our freedoms and aren't afraid to make controversial decisions.'' Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, said Friday that she may appeal the decision. ''We continue to believe that the federal obscenity statutes are valid and constitutional,'' Buchanan said. The case centered around the film ''Forced Entry,'' a film starring and directed by Zicari's wife, Janet Romano, under the name Lizzie Borden. The company's Web site bills the film as a ''stunningly disturbing look at a serial killer, Satanic rituals, and the depths of human depravity.'' ''It's horror-porn,'' Zicari said. ''At least it has a plot.'' Zicari and Romano were indicted in Pittsburgh in 2003 in what was considered a major test case of federal obscenity laws. They argued that federal obscenity statutes violated their constitutional right to liberty and privacy. Members of the
adult entertainment industry have followed the case closely, viewing
the outcome as a barometer of the anti-obscenity effort pursued by
Attorney General John Ashcroft. The $7 billion adult-film industry
is centered in the San Fernando ''Hopefully, this will encourage the government to leave the adult industry alone,'' said attorney Roger Jon Diamond, who has successfully represented a number of clients in the adult entertainment industry. ''What we want here for American adults is freedom, the same freedom President Bush says he is fighting for in Iraq. It makes no sense to fight for freedom abroad and restrict it here.'' But Bill Margold, who acted in and directed adult films for more than three decades and serves as an activist for the industry, said producers of explicit adult films should use common sense and keep a low profile. ''We've dodged a huge bullet, but this is not a license to go nuts,'' he said. ''Society does not have to have their noses rubbed in our business." |
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A Dirty business The omens are not encouraging. Lukas Moodysson dislikes interviews and hates having his photo taken. And while he is prepared to discuss his new film, he doesn't want to get into that whole rigmarole of defending it and justifying it and, God forbid, explaining it. Stubble-headed in a scarlet hooded top, he slopes into the room like Santa's gloomiest little helper - the one charged with fielding the complaints of the most recalcitrant children. But if Moodysson is difficult, he's got nothing on his latest film. A Hole in My Heart is a slap in the face for the mainstream punters who cherished his 2000 hippie fable Together, and a test of nerve for those who stuck with him through the more bleak and melancholic Lilya 4-Ever. In essence, it documents the shooting of an amateur porn movie, with its director, stud and starlet holed up in an infernal Stockholm apartment while the director's teenage son tends pet earthworms in the room next-door. The drama unfolds in a storm of drunken antics and a crush of gynecological close-ups. It's an audacious tactic. Most portraits of the porn industry try to de-sex their subject matter by affecting a genteel distance. A Hole in My Heart goes the other way, ramming the viewer right up against it. "I decided not to care if it became exploitative," Moodysson says. "I wanted to talk about the sexualization of public spaces, like commercials, and the way porn seeps into everybody's living room, but I didn't want to be a part of it. Then after a while I realized I couldn't draw that line. So the film becomes part of what it's talking about. It is a symptom, not a diagnosis." To illustrate his point, he tells the story of a Swedish couple caught having sex during a screening. Someone in the audience spotted them and complained to the manager. Moodysson gives a smile as bright as December sunshine. "People react very differently to the film. And those reactions are enormously interesting." Lilya 4-Ever had a sacrificial lamb in the form of a Russian teen press-ganged into prostitution. In A Hole in My Heart, the lamb role is taken by Sanna Brading's porn starlet, who dreams of appearing on Big Brother, but winds up menaced by a camera, force-fed on junk food and sodomized by her co-star. The implication is that there's not much difference - both are just part of what the director calls the "pornofication" of western culture. Moodysson agrees, but says: "I realize that the reason I'm a film-maker is that I'm deeply conflicted in my feelings about things. I was obsessed with Big Brother, me and my wife watched it almost every day. I loved and hated it at the same time." And what of porn? Has he watched many skin-flicks in his time? "Well, that depends on who you compare me with. When we were making this film I watched quite a lot of things, but it became too much. I became so ill, and now I feel less interested in porno than I have ever been in my life. It was like an exorcism." The problem, he says, is that he didn't want to make a film that simply stated that pornography was bad, because it would be too easy and he wouldn't believe in it. Moreover, he felt the need to empathize with those who work in the industry, "because nobody cares about them. They are stigmatized by both sides - the feminists and the moral majority. But they have a good reason to be in porno. I think that there are strong links between people who have been abused in the past, and a kindness between hurt, broken people. They take care of each other." He makes it sound like an orphanage. "Yes, that's right," says Moodysson. For a moment he looks positively happy. "I see this film as an orphanage. That's what it is - an orphanage." |
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Police:
Prostitute reports client in child porn case HOLLYWOOD, Florida -- A prostitute turned in a customer after seeing child pornography, including a video of an apparent toddler rape, on the man's home computer, police said. Detective Carlos Negron said police were contacted by the woman on Tuesday, saying that while working at the man's apartment as a prostitute she saw numerous pictures of children who appeared to be between ages 3 and 16 performing sex. The woman told police that it was a disturbing video that showed the rape of a younger child, perhaps no older than 2, that caused her to make the call after she left the apartment, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Negron said Federico Eduardo Amezaga, 29, let investigators search his apartment, where they found numerous photos and videos of children performing sex acts. Officers arrested Amezaga on 15 charges of possessing child pornography and took him to the Broward County Jail, where he was being held Friday in lieu of $150,000 bond. He is being represented
by the Broward County public defender's office, which did not immediately
return messages seeking comment.
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Holly
Jones family to fight child porn
TORONTO - Canada should take the lead in fighting child pornography, the family of Holly Jones said on Thursday. The family of the murdered 10-year-old Toronto girl made the appeal after the man who pleaded guilty to murdering their daughter admitted to habitually consuming child porn on the internet. Michael Briere, 36, admitted the crime on Thursday. He faces an automatic sentence of life in jail with no chance of parole for 25 years. Paul Culver, senior Crown attorney for Toronto, said the Jones case was precedent-setting because it was "one of the few cases where we can say, 'This guy was triggered by images of child pornography.'" Tim Danson, lawyer for the Jones family, announced outside the courthouse that the family members are committing themselves to the fight to eradicate child pornography. "Canada must take the lead for the international community to wipe out [child pornography] on the internet and in Canada," he said in a prepared statement from the family. To that end, the Jones family would present a raft of legal initiatives in the fall called "Holly's Law." Maria Jones, Holly's mother, was too emotional to read the prepared statement and take questions. But she spoke briefly. "I know Holly will make a difference," she said. Holly's father George Stonehouse did not attend because he "feared he would not be able to control himself" when faced with his daughter's murderer, said Danson. Holly disappeared near her west-end Toronto home on May 12, 2003. Parts of her dismembered body were found a day later in Lake Ontario. A statement of facts filed with the court on Thursday gave previously unreleased details about Holly's killing. On the night of May 12, Briere was looking at internet child porn. He left his house, saw Holly walking on the street, grabbed her by the neck and took her back to his apartment. Within about an hour, he had sexually assaulted, strangled and dismembered Holly. Police became suspicious of Briere after he refused a voluntary DNA test. The police managed to obtain his DNA surreptitiously and matched it with samples taken from blood found under Holly's fingernails. "I fully recognize and acknowledge that the crime which I am guilty of is simply the worst kind of crime a person can commit," Briere said in court. click here for: |
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| They
Take It Off, but They Also Put on Suits,
Uniforms and Blue Collars By SARAH KERSHAW Published: June 2, 2004
"A reporter asked me recently, how did I make the transition from dancer to mayor?" said Ms. Jones, now senior vice president for communications and government relations at Harrah's Entertainment Inc. She says she usually forgives such mistaken assumptions. In Las Vegas, after all, asking the former mayor if she has any pole tricks in her repertoire is not quite as crazy as asking Rudolph W. Giuliani if he was a Chippendale dancer before becoming mayor of New York. Reputation and reality are sometimes indistinguishable here. The female body may be second only to the slot machine as the most visible local icon, selling everything and defining the city's lusty aesthetic and anything-goes credo. A local truism - exaggerated, of course - says that women who work here are either making the beds or lying in them. "This is a world of women, and the lines and categories between sex and suburbs, bad girls and good girls, are endlessly blurred," wrote Kathryn Hausbeck, associate professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in a recent essay, "Who Puts the 'Sin' in 'Sin City' Stories?" Dr. Hausbeck, who is writing a book about life and sex work in Nevada's many legal brothels, says that the Las Vegas of 2004 is more eroticized than ever. With blunt sexuality pervading mainstream culture - a trend she calls the pornographication of America - Las Vegas is forced to stay one step ahead, to nurture its notoriety. "There's a really strong argument to be made that the pornographication of everyday life that we see across the country just forces Vegas - Sin City - to keep its reputation going," Dr. Hausbeck said. "To sort of take that extra step, by being a little racier, more extreme." Las Vegas, which experimented in the 1990's with a more "family friendly" identity - with Ms. Jones's enthusiastic support - has come full circle, pushing its adult-playground image to new limits. One need only take stock of the exploding number of strip clubs here, the casinos with topless revues, the racy billboards or the suggestive television spots for Las Vegas's wildly successful marketing campaign that end with the line: "What happens here, stays here." Many women, Ms. Jones included, are not happy with the image: "When you're constantly characterizing women as fluff that that begins, even subconsciously, to be a part of a culture, it impacts how you see women in general." The billboards are at the center of a collision between two Las Vegases: the hedonistic zone where tourists play and the sprawling suburbs beyond it, where families live. A community lobbying campaign to restrict them was fueled late last year by outrage over a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino billboard for a rodeo that showed a woman's legs with underwear near her ankles and the phrase "Get Ready to Buck All Night." The Clark County commissioners unanimously passed a law recently banning new billboards in the ever-expanding unincorporated areas. The Nevada Gaming Commission will hold a hearing on whether the Hard Rock's ads, including one of a woman on a card table with a card in her mouth that reads "there's always a temptation to cheat," discredit the gambling industry. The issue of sexually suggestive ads has heated up in the last months, with the American Civil Liberties Union weighing in in favor of the First Amendment and anti-Sin-City activists promoting "decency in advertising'' with more child-friendly billboards. "We want to take the kids to school or go to the mall without having these images forced on us," said Michael Wixom, a lawyer and a founder of the Main Street Billboard Committee, which has won the support of the Nevada P.T.A., American Mothers Inc. and other groups. "I can turn off the TV. I can turn off the radio. But I can't turn off a 40-foot billboard the size of a semi-truck." There are an estimated 15,000 working exotic dancers, and an additional 35,000 registered with the Clark County sheriff's office (as is required of all dancers), says Andrea Hackett, a dancer and political activist who tried unsuccessfully two years ago to unionize the strippers here. But far more women are working as cocktail waitresses, maids, casino workers, administrative assistants, cabdrivers, construction workers, social workers, small-business owners and veterinarians. A woman, Carol C. Harter, is president of U.N.L.V. , and the president and vice president of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, one of the most powerful labor unions in the country, are women. There are developers and real estate moguls, government officials, politicians and policewomen. Almost since Las Vegas sprung up in the desert 100 years ago, women have played a crucial role in the labor market here, with much higher percentages of women working in Las Vegas than in the rest of the country, said Joanne L. Goodwin, an associate professor of history at the university. The employment rate is still high for women, according to a recent study by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a group based in Washington that analyzed 2000 census data to compare the status of women in the work force in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. And in 2000, Nevada's average annual earnings for women, $32,000, put it in the top third of states. But the study showed that Nevada ranks near the very bottom in percentage of women employed in managerial or professional occupations. It found that 28.2 percent of Nevada women - the figures are similar for Las Vegas - are employed in managerial or professional occupations, compared with 36.2 percent nationwide. That puts Nevada above only Idaho. Patricia Leigh Brown contributed reporting for this article. |
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| Adolescents
in Adult City: Often From Elsewhere, and Often Going Nowhere
By CHARLIE LeDUFF Published: June 1, 2004
Now the hotel rooms are full, and people keep moving here to take jobs building and cleaning them. Las Vegas grows at a supersonic rate. But within this growth lie seeds of conflict. Away from the adult fantasy of the Strip, Sin City and its suburbs crawl with children and parents trying to raise them. One in four Las Vegans is a minor. The witch's brew of adolescence in a 24-hour town takes a toll on teenagers here. Consider that Nevada, led by Las Vegas and the suburbs of Clark County, ranks near the bottom for a host of teenage afflictions: violence, drug use, pregnancy, suicide and drop-out rates. The schools are crowded and underfinanced, leading to a churning system that tends to lose track of children. According to the Nevada Department of Education, more than 12 percent of high school students drop out in senior year. Moreover, 36 percent of Clark County students were not enrolled for the entire school year. Who needs high school anyway? teenagers ask. Not when valet parking attendants tell stories about making $100,000 a year. Here, stripping and blackjack dealing are viable career choices. To a teenager, adult life in Las Vegas can look easy. Part of the easy life is acting hard. While the juvenile population increased 20 percent over the last four years, juvenile delinquency increased more than 30 percent, according to a state report. There are more than 150 gangs now, including a growing white supremacist element. All big cities have their problems, city leaders are quick to point out. Children struggle everywhere. But Nevada consistently ranks poorly among states on issues affecting children's well-being, according to "Nevada Kids Count,'' a report by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "Just half of Nevada's residents have lived here more than 11 years," said Dr. R. Keith Schwer, the center's director. "Lots of people coming and going. It has a toll on kids, particularly children." The chaos of growth is one problem. Another is the type of people that growth and opportunity attract. Broken and blended families come for a new life. Second chancers, they are called. "People come here with problems from somewhere else," said Jonathan Vansboskerck, an assistant district attorney who prosecutes juveniles. "Parents work split shifts and kids take their cues from each other. Unsupervised homes, basically." Broken families or traditional ones, it does not seem to matter. Parents often work the swing or graveyard shifts and do not arrive home until well after dark. With so many families from out of state, there are few aunties or grandmothers or cousins to speak of, leaving a tribe of unsupervised teenagers. High school lets out at 1:10 p.m., hours before parents make their long commutes home from the Strip. Teenagers are most likely to have sex when parents are not at home, according to the "Kids First" study, in those afternoon and evening hours when Mom and Dad are working. While there are after-school activities like study hall and sports leagues and 4-H Clubs, there are not enough of them, said Donna Coleman, a former state school board member and executive director of the Children's Advocacy Alliance, a nonprofit group that studies children's issues. "Whatever we're doing, it's not working and we need to do more," Ms. Coleman said. "A lot of the problem is parental responsibility. The influence of the profligate adult life, the lack of a coherent community, no extended family. Who's looking after the children and who's going to pay for it?" For example, Ms. Coleman points out, while schools require a suicide prevention course, there are no suicide prevention programs. The suicide hotline is a toll-free number that routes callers out of state. Then there is the issue of sex for sale. The billboards featuring tacit lesbian sex are everywhere. Sin City is full of men plying convenience stores and bus stations and street corners for lonely, unsupervised girls. The neon draw of the Strip can be hard to resist. "Kids are getting bombarded by the stimulation of today's society, particularly in Las Vegas," said Tom Waite, site director of Girls and Boys Town of Nevada, which counsels and shelters runaways and others. "We're tying to calm the kids down." Parents go to extreme lengths to keep children on the right road. Jannie Poulos, 39, is a daytime bartender at a local tavern on the affluent northwest side of town. On those days that she cannot find a baby sitter, or there are no after-school events, her son comes to the bar and has a soda in the back. "I grew up here and so I know better," she said. "It's the kids from Iowa getting caught up in the moment. If you're going to raise a kid here with these kinds of influences, you have to know what your kid is up to. You have to care about them, basically." |
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| 26 Nov 2004 'Porn is to blame' for abuse rise from scotsman.com PORNOGRAPHIC images in the media, on public transport and on the internet have been blamed for violence against women in Scotland. On the UN international day of action to eliminate violence against
women, the Shadow social justice minister Christine Grahame yesterday cited a report that one in five young men and one in ten women thought that violence against women was acceptable and pointed the finger of blame at the media and entertainment industries. She said: "The violence of pornography is there for all to access whether on the bus, the video, the magazine, the web. "It is here young men and women are subjected to the influences that make them devalue each other's sexuality, contaminating respect for each other as people and cannot be detached from violence in all its forms against women." Ms Grahame welcomed Executive plans to set up an expert committee on tackling violence against women and urged them to include the issue of pornography. With recorded levels of rape and attempted rape at its highest ever
level at 988 in |
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| Tuesday, 27 July, 2004 Norway hotel staff want porn ban Pay-TV porn is causing bad behaviour, say hotel staff The main hotel and restaurant employee union says a growing number of its staff are facing such harassment. It says some guests, often businessmen, call the reception for extras - such as fresh towels - to lure female staff. "It can be very unpleasant to get called to a room to be met by a naked man," said a union official. "Some have found themselves in the presence of men watching X-rated movies and several have been accosted," Eli Ljunggren said. "We have received complaints from a number of our members who have found themselves in very uncomfortable situations while in the rooms," Ms Ljunggren added during an interview on Norway's public radio station, NRK. The Scandinavian country has some of the strictest pornography laws in the world. However, most Norwegian hotels broadcast erotic films for a special fee.
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| Porn
a leap backward for Olympic women
By Stanley Crouch, NY Daily News The whorishness that now passes itself off as female liberation is one of the most unexpected aspects of culture in our time. Were it not true that so much of rap is promoted and accepted as "keeping it real" - with its ongoing illiteracy, gold teeth, misogyny and cultivation of thug and slut images - we might be even more shocked by those female Olympic athletes currently showing off their buff for a buck in Playboy magazine. The point here is that we had to sit and listen - as we should have listened! - to the women of the '70s come out against being reduced to what is rudely called "a rack" or a pair of "gams" or a backside. Women wanted everyone to know that they were more than sex objects made up of idealized measurements and proportions. They had brains. They had souls. All of this, and every other human quality, disappeared in the male obsession with boobs, legs and bums. Yet something very strange has happened along the way. Somehow or other, the male fantasy standards have been usurped by females who claim that dressing and acting like sluts - one up, Madonna, one down, Lil' Kim - is an expression of their power and their freedom from the dictates of men. That has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever floated. Women cannot usurp pornography. It devours all who walk through its doors, chews them up and spits them out in a series of images that help define all women as predictably sexual in certain ways. Souls and brains and independence do not survive in pornography. Hugh Hefner's genius was that he was able to take the position that the girl next door would take her clothes off in front of the camera if you could charm her into it. If charm didn't work, money did. Greenbacks could pull anyone's clothes off. Now the Olympians have proven him right again. It is full proof that we are in a post-shame culture. Embarrassment is now impossible, it seems. I was looking recently at photographs of Alice Coachman, who was the only American female to take home the gold from the 1948 Olympics in London. Coachman was also the first black woman so awarded and had fought her way through racism in her home state of Georgia to stand above her competitors when she received her medal. There is a look of immense dignity in her face, which is not of the past but the future. She will be there when our nation outgrows this moment of self-denigration posing as liberation. Yes, Alice Coachman is waiting. |
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| HIV
Cases Shut Down Pornography Film Industry By Nick Madigan New York Times, April 16, 2004 The nation's
multibillion-dollar pornographic film industry virtually shut itself
down this week after producers learned that at least two X-rated actors
had been infected with the virus that causes AIDS. |
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| BT
puts block on child porn sites
Martin Bright, home affairs editor Sunday June 6, 2004 The Observer British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy. The move, previously thought to be at the limits of technical possibilities of the internet and prohibitively expensive, was given the personal backing of BT chairman Sir Christopher Bland at a board meeting last month after intense pressure from children's charities. Known as Cleanfeed, the project has been developed in consultation with the Home Office and will go live by the end of the month, The Observer can reveal. Other major players in the internet market, such as Energis and Thus, which owns rival Demon Internet, are said to be preparing to block banned sites. Subscribers to British Telecom's internet services such as BTYahoo and BTInternet who attempt to access illegal sites will receive an error message as if the page was unavailable. BT will register the number of attempts but will not be able to record details of those accessing the sites. A list of illegal sites compiled by the Internet Watch Foundation, the industry's watchdog, has been available for some time, but until now there has been no way to prevent people accessing them because most are based outside the UK. The initiative would not have been possible a year ago, but improvements in computer processing speeds means that the company is now able to block websites, offensive pages and even individual images of abuse. The move is the brainchild of John Carr, internet adviser to children's charity NCH, who wrote to Home Office Minister Paul Goggins last July urging action on pedophile websites after a successful campaign to block internet newsgroups (electronic message boards which pedophiles used to share images of children). Goggins approached internet providers last September to ask them to investigate if it would be possible. At first they were resistant, but BT came back to the Home Office last month to announce early tests of Cleanfeed had been successful. Blocking websites is highly controversial and until now has been associated only with oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and China, which have censored sites associated with dissidents. But many in the field of child protection believe that the explosion of pedophile sites justifies the crackdown. 'British Telecom deserve to be congratulated on this bold move,' Carr said. 'I expect every other service provider will now look at what they are doing to see if they can achieve a similar result.' Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail, added: 'You are always caught between the desire to tackle child pornography and freedom of information. But I was fed up with not acting on this and always being told that it was technically impossible.'
BT says it is blocking up to 20,000 attempts each day to access child porn. Its figures provide the first firm evidence of the extent of web paedophilia and BT is targeting the porn with its Clean Feed system. The Internet Watch Foundation called the figures "staggering" and said children were being abused in order to supply the hardcore images. Police officials said the extent of the online porn problem was "extremely disturbing". Illegal images BT said in its first three weeks its new system, which bars access to particular sites, registered nearly 250,000 attempts to view web pages containing images of child pornography. That represents an average of about 10,000 requests each day. Anyone trying to access such a site would be presented with a message reading "Website not found". Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT retail, said the company was blocking access to hundreds of sites which had been identified by the Internet Watch Foundation. But he said BT did not track those trying to log onto the sites or pass their details on to police. And he said the company had no way of telling how many users were navigating to such sites by accident. "We don't know their motives or who does it and honestly we don't want to know," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. A BT spokesman added: "It could be that one dedicated pervert is making hundreds of attempts to get on websites each day." Currently the technology is only blocking BT Retail's 2.5 million internet customers from viewing child porn sites but Mr Danon said the company would make it available to other internet service providers on a non-commercial basis. Home Office minister Paul Goggins said the figures revealed by BT were "deeply shocking" and he said he hoped other service providers would take up the offer of using BT's blocking technology. He told the Today programme: "Every image of a child that appears on the internet is an image of a child that's abused." The BBC's Neil Bennett said even allowing for some people making repeated attempts, it is clear thousands of people are trying to see such material daily. BT is only one of the main service providers in the UK and police leaders are calling on others to block paedophile websites. Websites assessed by the IWF as "illegal to view" under the 1978 Child Protection Act were targeted by BT. The IWF keeps a real-time live database which is updated every time an illegal site is found. At any one time there are thousands of sites on the database.
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| High
court bars Internet porn law enforcement
Ruling sends law down to lower court for trial From Bill Mears
By a 5-4 vote, the high court said 1998 legislation "likely violates the First Amendment." The court ordered parties from both sides to reconsider the issue in a lower-court trial. The ruling gives the Bush administration a chance to prove the law does not violate free-speech rights. The case tested the free-speech rights of adults against the power of Congress to control Internet commerce. The 1998 law, known as the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), never took effect. It would have authorized fines up to $50,000 for the crime of placing material that is "harmful to minors" within the easy reach of children on the Internet, according to The Associated Press. The law also would have required adults to use access codes and or other ways of registering before they could see objectionable material online, according to the AP. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "the government has not shown that the less-restrictive alternatives proposed ... should be disregarded. Those alternatives, indeed, may be more effective" than the law passed by Congress. Kennedy said rapid changes in technology would make filtering software a more effective tool to block access than the more restrictive means laid out in COPA, such as age verification and use of a credit card. He said a new trial would allow fresh discussion of the kinds of technology that could satisfy constitutional concerns. Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with Kennedy. In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that, while the law places some burdens on adults wishing to view adult material, "it significantly helps to achieve a compelling congressional goal, protecting children from exposure to commercial pornography." He was joined by justices Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Scalia. The case marked the third time the high court has considered the issue. A 1996 law was struck down by the justices, and the court balked at allowing a second law from going into effect. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued, saying the law criminalizes free speech. The ACLU applauded the ruling. "There are many less restrictive ways to protect children without sacrificing communication intended for adults," said Ann Beeson, the ACLU attorney who argued before the Court. "By upholding the order stopping Attorney General Ashcroft from enforcing this questionable federal law, the Court has made it safe for artists, sex educators, and web publishers to communicate with adults about sexuality without risking jail time." The case is Ashcroft v. ACLU , case no. 03-0218. The case was the last of nearly 80 cases decided in a busy court term that ended Tuesday with no announcements that any of the nine justices would retire, according to the AP.
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Hear Arguments on Internet Pornography Law By John Schwartz The New York Times/March 3, 2004 WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday about Internet pornography, one of the most vexing issues at the intersection of technology and First Amendment rights. Neither side got a free ride from the justices in the discussion of the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that makes it illegal for commercial Web sites to make available to children 16 and under material that is not necessarily obscene but could be considered "harmful to minors" under a complex, three-part formula in the law. Just minutes into his argument, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson was interrupted by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who asked why the government was fighting for new laws when it was not enforcing the old ones. "There are very few prosecutions, and there's all kinds of stuff out there," Justice O'Connor said. Mr. Olson said the Bush administration was stepping up its prosecution of pornography cases in the online and offline world and had issued 21 indictments in the last two years. Regulation of Internet pornography is urgently needed, Mr. Olson said, because "it's causing irreparable injury to our most important resource - our children." The materials are "as available to children as a television remote," he said, and turn up when youngsters make the most innocuous searches. He argued that the world of online pornography was exploding, and said that typing the words "free porn" on a search engine produced 6,230,000 sites. "I did this this weekend," he said. When asked whether all of the sites could be considered obscene, he said, "I didn't have enough time to go through all of those sites," drawing laughs from justices and spectators. At another point, Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked for specific examples of Web sites that were not pornographic but could run afoul of the law's prohibitions. Justice Breyer said that he looked at examples provided by the American Civil Liberties Union in its legal brief and could not find one that fell that into that middle ground. Ann Beeson, a lawyer for the civil liberties union, cited examples that included "lesbian and gay pleasure" and "the pleasure of sex outdoors," and the works of a sex columnist, Susie Bright. But the discussion moved on without growing more explicit, and decorum was preserved. Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act in 1998 after the court struck down its first major effort to restrict pornography in cyberspace, the Communications Decency Act, which Congress passed in 1996. That law, which would have made it a crime to provide "indecent" material to minors online, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1997. In passing the Child Online Protection Act, Congress was trying to produce a law narrower in scope than its first try, Mr. Olson said. The new law prohibits commercial Web sites from publishing material "harmful to minors" unless the site can show that it has made good faith efforts - requiring a credit card, for example - to keep out all Web surfers younger than 17. Violators could be fined as much as $50,000 and spend six months in jail, with higher penalties for repeat offenders. The civil liberties union challenged the law in federal court and was joined by a broad coalition of Web sites, booksellers and civil liberties organizations, as well as online stores like Condomania and online publications like Salon, which discuss sex frankly. The oral arguments on Tuesday were the second time the justices have taken up this law. In a ruling last term, they reversed a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which had declared the law unconstitutional. The appeals court said that the law's reliance on "community standards" would mean, in practice, that the most tolerant communities would still be held to "the decency standards of the most puritanical communities." The Supreme Court said that the lower court should not have declared the law unconstitutional based on a finding of only that single major flaw. The Third Circuit reviewed the case again and, last March, found multiple grounds for declaring the act unconstitutional. In the arguments on Tuesday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked whether people who were entitled to view the Web sites would be reluctant to do so because of the government's requirement that the sites verify age by getting credit cards or other identification. "The whole world can know about it if I put in my credit card number," Justice Ginsburg said. Mr. Olson replied that the law included provisions that make abuse of the data illegal. Ms. Beeson argued that there were less restrictive alternatives to the pornography law: parents could now take matters into their own hands by using Internet filtering software and configuring it to reflect their own values. Congress already requires that schools and libraries use filters. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia seemed skeptical of that argument, however, and both noted that the civil liberties union had opposed the library filtering bill. Mr. Olson also noted that a number of Web sites gave step-by-step instructions on defeating the technology. Still, Ms. Beeson said in closing, Congress has gone too far in restricting online speech. "The government can't burn down the house to roast the pig," she said.
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Man Arrested
For Allegedly Having Sex With 2-Month-Old; SACRAMENTO -- An El Dorado Hills man is being held without bond on federal child pornography charges after agents on Monday said they seized images from his home showing him performing sexual acts with his 2-month-old daughter. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents said the girl is one of the youngest sexual assault victims they have ever encountered. Larry Michael Jeffs, 41, was arrested at his home Thursday after the agents said they found explicit video images showing him engaging in sexual acts with the infant, who is now 8 months old. Jeffs is alleged to have distributed the images over the Internet, where they were recovered during a child pornography investigation in Detroit. The agents said they traced the images to Jeffs' e-mail. Federal agents and the agents with the California Department of Justice Sexual Predator Apprehension Team raided Jeffs' home and seized computer equipment, a digital camera, and infant's clothing and bedding. A 41-year-old El Dorado Hills man was arrested on distribution of child pornography charges after policemen seized video from his home showing he engaged in sexual acts with his daughter who was only 2-months-old. Officers believe the infant is one of the youngest sexual assault victims they have ever encountered. Larry Michael Jeffs was charged of engaging in sexual acts with his infant child, now 8-months old. Jeffs also placed computer images of himself molesting the child in the Internet, where they were detected during Operation Predator. Agents traced images recovered during an ongoing investigation in Detroit to Jeffs' e-mail. Jeffs is currently being held at the Sacramento County Jail. If convicted, pedophile faces a maximum sentence for distributing child pornography and production of child pornography involving a parent of 50 years in prison. Police seized computer equipment, a digital camera, and infant's clothing and bedding during search in Jeff's home. Jeffs' attorney did not contest the prosecutor's request that he be held without bail, as a danger to the community and a flight risk.
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Hop's Crossover to the Adult Aisle The New York Times/ March 7, 2004 By Martin Edlund For the boisterous Atlanta-based rappers Lil John and the East Side Boyz, Dec. 10 was the crowning night of what had already been a triumphant year. Their album "Kings of Crunk" had been certified platinum; their song "Get Low" was in heavy rotation on MTV and commercial radio. That evening, at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, they collected three Billboard Music Awards, including one for R&B/hip-hop group of the year. But the rappers didn't linger over their victory. Instead, they skipped the after-parties and rushed upstairs to their suite to film a graphic girl-on-girl sex scene for their new porn video, "Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz American Sex Series," which was released last month through adult video stores and the Internet. "It's not softcore porn," Lil Jon said by telephone from Atlanta. "It's some real XXX." Hip-hop has lately taken a turn toward the bourgeois, with prominent rappers renouncing violence, embracing philanthropy and donning pinstripe suits. But in deliberate defiance of this newfound respectability, some top acts have begun to pursue a less-than-wholesome sideline: commercial pornography. Pop music has always pushed sexual boundaries, of course, and rap has never shied away from gleefully smutty lyrics. But now, some stars are moving beyond raunchy rhetoric into actual pornographic matter, with graphic videos, explicit cable TV shows and hip-hop-themed girlie magazines. 50 Cent, whose "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " was the best-selling album of 2003, was at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas in January to promote a deal with a company called Digital Sin. The result, to be released later this year, will be an "interactive sex DVD," titled "Groupie Luv," featuring 50 Cent and the rap group G-Unit that will allow the viewer to select partners, sexual positions, camera angles, even the dispositions of the women ("naughty" or "nice"). The newly launched music-meets-porn magazine Fish 'n' Grits gives rappers and and porn stars equal play in its pages. (The rapper Method Man shares the inaugural cover with the adult film star Solveig.) And in January, Playboy TV introduced a new hip-hop-themed series - the first of several planned for this year - called "Buckwild." The show features mainstream stars like OutKast, Snoop Dogg, Nelly and Busta Rhymes cavorting with a frisky troupe of women called the Buckwild Girls, who seem to fall out of their clothes whenever a camera approaches. "It was inevitable," said Ken (Buckwild) Francis, the creator, producer and host of the series. "Hip-hop is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. If you don't do it, you're going to miss the boat." The first mainstream rapper to do a feature-length commercial porn video was Snoop Dogg, whose "Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle" was distributed through Hustler Video in 2001. Set in his Los Angeles home, it featured sex scenes interspersed with lip-synched performances of 11 previously unreleased songs. (Like other rappers who dabble in porn, Snoop Dogg does not actually have sex on camera; instead, he plays master of ceremonies, presiding over the festivities.) In an industry where a video that sells 4,000 copies is considered a runaway hit, "Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle" sold somewhere "in the hundreds of thousands," according to Larry Flynt, president of Larry Flynt Publications, which owns Hustler Video. It was named the top-selling tape of 2001 by the porn trade publication Adult Video News and was the first hardcore video ever listed on the Billboard music video sales chart. "It's been very lucrative for Snoop and us," said Mr. Flynt. The sequel, "Snoop Dogg's Hustlaz: Diary of a Pimp," was named top-selling tape of 2003. For the porn industry, hip-hop fans are an attractive new market. "The fresh music brings people who are primarily fans of hip-hop to the adult genre," said Christian Mann, president of Video Team, the company which co-produced and distributed the Lil Jon video. "We get a lot of customers that we might not otherwise get." Camille Evans, a publisher and editor of Fish 'n' Grits, said: "We've been using sex to sell music for years. Now we're just flipping it to have music sell sex." The economics of porn make it a lucrative prospect for rappers. A video like Lil Jon's can be done "on a very meager production budget of maybe $50,000," Mr. Mann said. Marquee rappers tend to undertake these projects as partners, rather than hired help, so if the video does well they get paid twice: once as talent (about $1 for every copy sold in the case of Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz), and then again as investors. (Lil Jon is a major stakeholder in Legacy DVD Works, which was co-producer of the video and will receive 50 percent of the profits from it.) The video retails for just over $20; if it sells 100,000 copies, that's a million-dollar profit, according to Mr. Mann. Sales of cable, Internet and foreign distribution rights can contribute 20 percent more, he said. Even if a video doesn't set sales records, it can add a helpful dash of danger and erotic adventurism to a rapper's image. One common scenario is to depict the rapper as a pimp presiding over a stable of beautiful women. The pimp is a stock figure in hip-hop iconography, an attractive rebel, full of street savvy and sexual charm. When it comes to hip-hop porn, he also solves a vexing casting issue: how to give rappers the appearance of sexual prowess without actually showing them having sex. In "Snoop Dogg's Hustlaz: Diary of a Pimp," Snoop peacocks in outrageous outfits and seduces a prudish journalist into his employ. But when it comes time for sex, Snoop passes the honors off to someone else - or, more often, to several other people. Ice-T's 2003 porn video, "Pimpin' 101," takes a similar tack. As the host, Ice-T leads the viewer through a step-by-step mock lesson in how to be a pimp, including primers on various kinds of women. (Oddly, Ice-T is a regular on the highly rated NBC television series "Law and Order: S.V.U.," on which he plays a detective who investigates sex crimes.) Another common conceit for these videos is a behind-the-scenes look at the "real" life of a rap superstar. Lil Jon's "American Sex Series" lets fans follow him to the strip club and into the hotel suite. "Your fans want to hang out with you," said Lil Jon. "When you watch this movie, if you're a guy, you feel like you're hanging out with us and wilding out with some girls." According to Brian Leach, vice president in the urban music division of Lil Jon's label, TVT Records, the porn video appeals particularly to Lil Jon's core audience of "hard, aggressive, crunk, edgy youth," as Mr. Leach puts it. These are fans who might feel alienated by Lil Jon's recent Top 40 success. (He produced and appears in four songs in the top 50 on last week's Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, including Usher's "Yeah!," which has been No. 1 for two weeks running.) "You have this audience that's wondering if he's still theirs," Mr. Leach said. "These videos say, `I still belong to you.' " However, they may distance him from everyone else. In mainstream pop music, it's hard to know where titillation ends and smut begins (often, it's just a few inches of cloth that separate a Rolling Stone magazine photo from a Playboy-type one). As Janet Jackson's recent Super Bowl misstep proved, even mock sexuality can be difficult to reconcile with commercial standards and tastes. In the past, rappers like Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew and Too Short have dabbled in porn. But these acts never appealed to a particularly broad audience. Today, some of the biggest names in the business are involved. Artists like Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent and Lil Jon are fixtures on MTV; in fact, the network is even developing a Lil Jon cartoon. Of course, many of these acts' fans are teenagers. Mr. Mann, of Video Team, recalls hearing Lil Jon's "Get Low" played over the loudspeakers during halftime at his 10-year-old son's football game. "The little cheerleaders had actually made up cheers to the tune," he said. Mr. Mann and Lil Jon both insist that their video won't be marketed to underage consumers. But that attitude may be willfully naïve. In an age when teenagers scour search engines and file-sharing networks, snapping up anything they can find by their favorite rap stars, the wall between adult and youth entertainment is irreparably porous. Mr. Leach of TVT Records, Lil Jon's label, recognizes that the majority of Lil Jon fans are "kids who come from homes that are a little more conservative." But far from discouraging Lil Jon's porn venture, TVT is planning to put out its own racy Lil Jon DVD, titled "Too Crunk for TV," which will feature nude girls in the style of the enormously successful "Girls Gone Wild" video series. Another issue for these rappers is whether their porn projects will jeopardize their even-more-lucrative corporate endorsement deals. Snoop Dogg has recently appeared in television commercials for Nokia and AOL, and in November, Reebok released an enormously successful 50 Cent sneaker called the G6. In 2002, Pepsi pulled ads featuring the rapper Ludacris after Fox News's Bill O'Reilly chastised the company for promoting a "thug rapper" whose songs contain sexually explicit lyrics. Now Mr. O'Reilly has criticized Reebok for partnering with 50 Cent: "They don't care what he says on his records, and they don't care that he's marketing porn and drugs and all that other stuff," Mr. O'Reilly said on a recent episode of his show "The O'Reilly Factor." "They're liking his selling shoes." Since then, 50 Cent has quietly distanced himself from the porn project. The original press release announcing the deal characterized it as a partnership between Digital Sin and 50 Cent. A revised release, put out by 50 Cent's management after the "O'Reilly Factor" broadcast, billed it instead as a collaboration between Digital Sin and Lloyd Banks, one of 50 Cent's partners in the rap group G-Unit. 50 Cent's name appears only in the final sentence of the release, which states that he and G-Unit "won't be engaged in any sexual behavior but may make general appearances." For rappers who want to be involved in pornography, the decision may come down, in the end, to a simple matter of opportunity cost. "Our core consumers are minors, so we're not driving it that way," said 50 Cent's manager, Chris Lighty. "We're in the business of selling clothing and sneakers. We're going to have a $100 million business by the end of this year. This isn't something we're jeopardizing."
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U.S. arrests dozens over Internet child porn distribution Friday, May 14, 2004 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Dozens of people have been arrested in connection with an ongoing federal crackdown on the distribution of child pornography sent over the Internet using peer-to-peer file sharing applications, federal law enforcement sources said Friday. Attorney General John Ashcroft and officials from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday announced the results of the latest enforcement actions which have taken place throughout the United States in recent days. Officials said cybercrime task forces have been targeting distributors of pornographic images on the file sharing networks which have been used by young, potentially vulnerable audiences, who primarily have used the peer to peer applications to share music. In some cases predators have used the technology to try to lure victims for sex, an official said. Federal law enforcement officials said the attorney general will highlight the ongoing problem in part to help alert parents of the continuing danger of pornography targeted at minors on the Internet. "The problem is not new, but it's growing. It's huge," said one federal official. Undercover FBI and ICE cybercrime investigators have been actively combating the many thousands of perpetrators engaged in pushing the pornography, officials said. One 19-year-old youth recently arrested and convicted told authorities he started using peer-to-peer applications to share music, but later moved on to sending and receiving images and movies of child pornography. Interagency task forces of federal, state and local law enforcement officials have been formed to fight what they say is a growing threat to children.
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Administration
wages war on pornography WASHINGTON - Lam Nguyen's job is to sit for hours in a chilly, quiet room devoid of any color but gray and look at pornography. This job, which Nguyen does earnestly from 9 to 5, surrounded by a half-dozen other "computer forensic specialists" like him, has become the focal point of the Justice Department's operation to rid the world of porn. In this field office in Washington, 32 prosecutors, investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years. Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in guestrooms of major hotel chains. Department officials say they will send "ripples" through an industry that has proliferated on the Internet and grown into an estimated $10 billion-a-year colossus profiting Fortune 500 corporations such as Comcast, which offers hard-core movies on a pay-per-view channel. The Justice Department recently hired Bruce Taylor, who was instrumental in a handful of convictions obtained over the past year and unsuccessfully represented the state in a 1981 case, Larry Flynt vs. Ohio. Flynt, who recently opened a Hustler nightclub in Baltimore, says everyone in the business is wary, making sure their taxes are paid and the "talent" is over 18. He says he's ready for a rematch, especially with Taylor. "Everyone's concerned," Flynt said in an interview. "We deal in plain old vanilla sex. Nothing really outrageous. But who knows, they may want a big target like myself." A recent episode of Showtime's Family Business, a reality show about Adam Glasser, an adult film director and entrepreneur in California, had him worrying about shipping his material to states more apt to prosecute. It also featured him organizing a pornographic Internet telethon to raise money for targets of prosecution. Drew Oosterbaan, chief of the division in charge of obscenity prosecutions at the Justice Department, says officials are trying to send a message and halt an industry they see as growing increasingly "lawless." "We want to do everything we can to deter this conduct" by producers and consumers, Oosterbaan said. "Nothing is off the table as far as content." Money and friends It is unclear, though, just how the American public and major corporations that make money from pornography will accept the perspective of the Justice Department and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Any move against mainstream pornography could affect large telephone companies offering broadband Internet service or the dozens of national credit card companies providing payment services to pornographic Web sites. Cable television, meanwhile, which has found late-night lineups with "adult programming" highly profitable, is unlikely to budge, and such companies have powerful friends. Brian Roberts , the CEO of Comcast, which offers "hard-core" porn on the Hot Network channel (at $11.99 per film in Baltimore), was co-chair of Philadelphia 2000, the host committee that brought the Republican National Convention to Philadelphia. In February, the Bush campaign honored Comcast President Stephen Burke with "Ranger" status, for agreeing to raise at least $200,000 for the president's re-election effort. Comcast's executive vice president, David Cohen, has close ties to Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Tim Fitzpatrick, the spokesman for Comcast at its corporate headquarters in Philadelphia, declined to comment on the cable network's adult programming. But officials at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which Roberts used to chair, said adult programming is legal, relies on subscription services for access and has been upheld by the courts for years. "Good luck turning back that clock," said Paul Rodriguez, a spokesman for the association. Ashcroft vs. consent In a speech in 2002, Ashcroft made it clear that the Justice Department intends to try. He said pornography "invades our homes persistently though the mail, phone, VCR, cable TV and the Internet," and has "strewn its victims from coast to coast." Given the millions of dollars Americans are spending each month on adult cable television, Internet sites and magazines and videos, many may see themselves not as victims but as consumers, with an expectation of rights, choices and privacy. Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance, and has fought unrelenting criticism that he has trod roughshod on civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is taking on the porn industry at a time when many experts say Americans are wary about government intrusion into their lives. The Bush administration is eager to shore up its conservative base with this issue. Ashcroft held private meetings with conservative groups a year and a half ago to assure them that anti-porn efforts are a priority. But administration critics and First Amendment rights attorneys warn that the initiative could smack of Big Brother, and that targeting such a broad range of readily available materials could backfire. "They are miscalculating the pulse of the community," said attorney Paul Cambria, who has gone head to head with Taylor in cases dating to the 1970s. "I think a lot of adults would say this is not what they had in mind, spending millions of dollars and the time of the courts and FBI agents and postal inspectors and prosecutors investigating what consenting adults are doing and watching." The law itself rests on the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Miller vs. California, which held that something is "obscene" only if an average person applying contemporary community standards finds it patently offensive. But until now, it hasn't been prosecuted at the federal level for more than 10 years. Since the last time he faced Taylor, Flynt's empire has grown into a multimillion-dollar corporation with a large, almost conservative-looking headquarters in California, where he and executives in dark suits oversee the company's dozens of men's clubs, sex stores and more than 30 magazines. "He's basically crusaded against everything I've fought for for the past 30 years," Flynt said. "This is for consenting adults. They have the right to view what they want to in the privacy of their own home. And even if they don't enjoy these materials, they still don't want to be looking over their neighbors' shoulders." Cases and results Taylor, who has been involved in the prosecution of more than 700 pornography cases since the 1970s, including at the Justice Department in the late 1980s and early '90s, declined to be interviewed. But he did talk to reporters for the PBS program Frontline in 2001, when he was president of the National Law Center for Children and Families, an anti-porn group. "Just about everything on the Internet and almost everything in the video stores and everything in the adult bookstores is still prosecutable illegal obscenity," he said. "Some of the cable versions of porno movies are prosecutable. Once it becomes obvious that this really is a federal felony instead of just a form of entertainment or investment, then legitimate companies, to stay legitimate, are going to have to distance themselves from it." The Justice Department pursued obscenity cases vigorously in the 1970s and '80s, prosecuting not necessarily the worst offenders in terms of extreme material, but those it viewed as most responsible for pornography's proliferation. Oosterbaan said the department is employing much the same strategy this time, targeting not only some of the most egregious hard-core porn but also more conventional material, in an effort "to be as effective as possible." "I can't possibly put it all away," he said. "Results are what we want." The strategy in the 1980s resulted in a lot of extreme pornography - dealing in urination, violence or bestiality - going underground. Today, with the Internet, international producers and a substantial market, industry officials say there is no underground. Obscenity cases came to a standstill under Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton's attorney general, who focused on child pornography, which is considered child abuse and comes under different criminal statutes. The ensuing years saw an explosion of porn, so much so that critics say that Americans' tolerance for sexually explicit material rivals that of Europeans. That tolerance could prove to be the obscenity division's biggest obstacle. Americans are used to seeing sex, experts say, in the movies, in their e-mail inboxes and on popular cable shows such as HBO's Sex and the City. There is no real gauge of just how obscene a jury will find pornographic material. The majority of defendants indicted in federal courts over the past year have taken plea agreements when faced with the weight and resources of the Justice Department. More than 50 other federal investigations are under way. In 2001, though, one interesting case emerged from St. Charles County, Mo., the heart of Ashcroft's conservative Missouri base. First Amendment lawyer Cambria defended a video store there against state charges that it was renting two obscene videotapes that depicted group sex, anal sex and sex with objects. Cambria won, convincing a jury of 12 women, all between the ages of 40 and 60, that the tapes had educational value and helped reduce inhibitions. They reached the verdict in less than three hours. The department's most closely watched case involves "extreme" porn producer Rob Zicari and his North Hollywood company Extreme Associates. The prolific Zicari is charged with selling five allegedly obscene videotapes, which he now markets as the "Federal Five," that depict simulated rapes and murder. Almost reveling in the charges, Zicari's Web site says, "The most controversial company in porn today! Guess what? Controversy ... sells!" The case hangs on a strategic move by the Justice Department that could make or break hundreds of future cases. Instead of bringing charges in Hollywood, where Zicari easily defeated a local obscenity ordinance recently in a jury trial, department officials ordered his tapes from Pittsburgh, Pa., and charged him there, hoping for a jury pool less porn-friendly. Industry lawyers and top executives contend that the courts should rule that because the tapes were ordered on the Internet, the "community standard" demanded by the law should be the standard of the whole community of the World Wide Web. The Internet is filled with ample evidence of even more hard-core or offensive material from abroad, they say, and someone in Pittsburgh should not be able to determine what someone in Hollywood can order. Either way, Nguyen, father of a 2-year-old girl, and his co-workers spend their days scouring the Internet for the most obscene material, following leads sent in by citizens and tracking pornographers operating under different names. The job wears on them all, day after day, so much so that the obscenity division has recently set up in-house counseling for them to talk about what they're seeing and how it is affecting them. "This stuff isn't the easiest to deal with," Nguyen said recently while at his computer. "But I think we're going after the bad guys and we're making a difference, and that's what makes it worthwhile."
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New
York man loses shirt in topless bar
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Mitchell Blaser, 53, said the management at the Scores club had added bogus charges to his American Express bill, which he claimed should have been in the region of 2,000 dollars. Blaser's lawyer, Leonard Zack, said the club had mistakenly banked on the idea that his client -- the chief financial officer of Swiss Re's American unit -- would be too embarrassed to pursue the matter in court. "It's a swindle, and they probably do it to a lot of people who don't want to do anything," Zack told the Daily News. Scores spokesman Lonnie Hanover insisted Blaser had "partied like a rock star" with two of his friends. The final credit card bill included 16,000 dollars for five bottles of Clos de Mesnil champagne, 7,000 dollars for table dances and stripper tips, 1,000 dollars for food and other drinks, and a 4,000-dollar staff tip. "If you want to live like Colin Farrell, you have to pay for it," Hanover told the New York Post. "The 28,000-dollar bill is totally legitimate." In his lawsuit, Blaser
claimed Scores security personnel had intimidated him into signing
a bill for 8,615 dollars. Days later, he said, he discovered that
his credit card had been charged three more times.
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Hiding in Plain Sight: Parlors lack permits, mar town images Tara York, New Haven Register. June 2, 2003 Shrouded behind curtains and tinted windows, secretive and often illegal "spas" are creeping from the backstreets to Main Street. They're on Route 1 in Milford or in a storefront just a stones' throw from a town hall. It's all part of what a growing number of law enforcement and local officials say is a disturbing trend - the mainstreaming of the illegal sex industry. Illegal massage parlors in Milford and neighboring towns have long been the subjects of murmuring by city residents who believe they are actually a front for a sex business or other illegal activity. "It dulls the morals of society," said Jack Fowler, a former Milford alderman who is still active in town politics. "When someone asks how to get to your house, you don't want to say, 'Well, make a right at the porn shop.' It destroys home values, property values." In March 2002, the Yo Yo Salon massage parlor on Linden Avenue in Stratford was shut down after police said a masseuse offered sex to an undercover officer. In August 2002, the Royal One spa on Route 1 in Milford was closed after police said a masseuse offered an undercover cop sex for money. Milford officials and residents say the spas and other businesses suggestive of sex are marring the city's image and they are in a perpetual fight to close the establishments. The spas are not legitimate therapeutic massage businesses. "They are a little dark," said Linda Stock, Milford zoning-enforcement officer, who has toured a fair share of the illegal businesses. The massage parlors are only one segment of an unrelenting sex industry that Milford officials have a history of fending off. Residents have unsuccessfully tried to fight several adult stores that call Milford home, including Erotic Empire. City planning officials are brainstorming ways to close loopholes in zoning laws and ordinances that allow sex-related businesses to open there. Some say it's an uphill battle. Police and zoning officials can't invest all their resources in the effort, and entrepreneurs in the sex-driven business world are determined. "It's a battle that should be fought," said Tom Huebner of Milford. back to top
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17-Year-Old
Girl Escapes Forced Prostitution Ring CLEVELAND, OHIO, Jan.16, 2003 A 17-year-old Cleveland girl, kidnapped
downtown, described four days of fear and sexual abuse by "Mr.
Daddy," a Chicago man who ran a teenage prostitution ring in
four states. |
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Clinton
Man Arrested on Child Pornography Charges in NH Clinton Recorder (CT) May 10, 2003 By Stan Fisher Joseph Aurora, a freelance bowling and tennis instructor, said he loves to take his hot-rodded Pontiac GTO to car shows to inspire in kids an interest that could become a lifelong hobby or career. The hot car and the relationships made as a bowling instructor also were devices police say Aurora used, in conjunction with the internet, to seduce and film countless young boys in sexual encounters. The 42-year-old Clinton man was arrested Friday, May 2 by New Hampshire police as he awaited a 14-year-old boy he believed he had met over the Internet and was preparing to film in a Keene motel, police said. The boy instead was a Keene detective, part of an Internet sting operation that has resulted in the arrest of 330 people in 46 states and 15 countries on child sex and pornography charges since its inception in 1996. While the Keene detectives were arresting Aurora at the motel, Clinton police raided his Clinton home, carrying away his computer and what they say are hundreds of videotapes with explicit footage of unsuspecting young boys. Aurora's vast collection of videotapes and computer disks may represent a decade of sexual episodes with countless numbers of children, police believe. Over the past six weeks of the joint police investigation, Aurora had been sending child pornography to the undercover officer masquerading as a teenager and asking to meet for "very specific types of sex, " Keene police Detective James McLaughlin said. Aurora came to New Hampshire to meet the boy in a Keene motel room that he equipped with video equipment to record the encounter. back to top |
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Dorm Party
With Strippers is Focus of Investigation Danbury, CT- Officials at Western Connecticut State University are looking into a dormitory party that featured female strippers. "They were naked with little high heel shoes on," Holly Szymanski, 18, a freshman told the Republican-American. Szymanski was among 100 people who attended the party in Newbury Hall's first-floor multi-purpose room Thursday. "This is not something we sanction," G. Koryoe Anim-Wright, public relations director, said Monday. "There's nothing educational about a striptease act," Paul A. Bryant, dean of student affairs, said. Students said party organizers charged $5 at the door for men to get into the party. Women were admitted for free. |
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Las Vegas,
stripped: City uncovers profitable trend By Kitty Bean Yancey USA TODAY Sin City is about to show more skin. A lot of it. The 71,000 square foot Sapphire Gentlemen's Club, billed as the world's largest strip club, is due to open December 13 in Las Vegas. The latest in a growing number of upscale take-it-off emporiums in the popular destination, Sapphire boasts four stages (one an elevated glass showcase) and 13 "skyboxes" affording a bird's-eye view of the action and a setting for private lap dance. Up to 800 strippers may undulate on busy nights. The aim: to lure neophytes as well as nudie-show regulars as the city returns to its decadent roots. The $30 million complex - to be unveiled with a splashy party at which David Spade, Tommy Lee, Carmen Electra and other stars are due - boasts marble bathrooms, lavish décor and a steakhouse. "From my research, this is the most money put into a strip club," says Las Vegas Weekly reporter Damon Hodge. "When you walk into the lobby, it will feels like a Four Seasons hotel," declares Peter Feinstein, a Sapphire managing partner. Sapphire, where entry costs $20, is the newest in "an absolute flood" of chichi bump-and-grind clubs in Las Vegas, says Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor. The newsletter's website lists 24 options for ogling topless dancers (still fewer than Portland - Editor). Behind the trend, he says, are more convention visitors (4.1 million delegates in 2001) and Las Vegas' shift from emphasizing wholesome family fun - going back to the whole sexy thing.the place to party and be uninhibited." "People come to Las Vegas for adult entertainment," says Dolores Eliades, a Sapphire managing partner. During the city's '90s drive to forge a family-friendly image, "casino revenue dropped and so did upscale dining," says Lenny Butcher, a 28-year Las Vegas resident and ombudsman for www.LasVegas.com. "Finally, (local powers-that-be) said."We're an adult playground and who are we trying to kid?" The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority does not actively promote strip clubs. But plainspoken Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman applauds Sapphire and its ilk. "We like to have the biggest and best of everything. We keep reinventing ourself, and it's exciting," he says. "People can leave their cares and woes behind here and not have their neighbors sticking their noses in their business." |
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Rewritten
Child-Porn Law Approved From USA Today The House Judiciary subcommittee on crime approved a rewritten child-pornography law designed to overcome Supreme Court objections to an earlier measure that banned computer simulations of children having sex. The measure also would make it easier to prosecute "sex tourists" who travel abroad to have sex with children. Last month, the court struck down parts of the 1995 Child Pornography Prevention Act as too broad and violating First Amendment free-speech rights. The proposed measure would prohibit the production, distribution and possession of any visual depictions, real or virtual, of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. It also would create broader definitions of offenses to prohibit offers to sell or provide child pornography and efforts to obtain child pornography. |
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The French
Spar Over Sex: There's A Limit, No?
By Elaine Sciolino - The New York Times - Paris, Oct. 12 Suddenly, France is seized with whether to wage war - not against Iraq, but against sex. A country that has long cherished eroticism and abhorred censorship is struggling with issues like how much hard-core pornography to allow on television and whether to permit pedophiliac acts in its novels. Although prostitution itself is not illegal in France, a court in Bordeaux convicted four male clients of "sexual exhibitionism" this week, the first time a French court has punished the customers themselves. The men were caught in a police sweep of a red-light area in the southwest city while in their cars at night. The prostitutes were convicted on the same charge. All this perceived repression of the sexual spirit prompted several hundred feminists, gays and prostitutes to take to the streets in the center of Paris this week to denounce what they called "the return to moral order." The new moralistic wave coincides with the election of the center-right government of President Jacques Chirac. The alliance behind Mr. Chirac won parliamentary elections in June on a platform that pledged a return to law and order, amid news reports of an increase in violent sex crimes, particularly gang rapes in the lower-class suburbs of Paris, and of pedophilia. "We are at a cultural turning point in French society," said Christine Boutin, a right-wing deputy in the National Assembly who is leading a campaign for a ban on pornography on television. "Our children are paying for the libertarian freedom that we experimented with in the era after May '68. This is not about censorship. It's about limits." The move to ban sex on television comes when more French parents, like parents in many parts of the world, are too busy to police their children's activities and are desperately searching for anyone, even the state, to intervene. A poll last month found that 64 percent of the respondents favored a ban on pornography on broadcast and cable channels. Some 76 percent of women and 51 percent of men backed a ban. Other unsettling factors in the debate are reports of a rise in gang rapes by teenage boys and the breakup of pedophilia rings that are sometimes also involved in the distribution of child pornography. Some French psychologists and sociologists believe that boys are acting out the scenes they witness in pornographic films. "These films portray women as objects and men as studs," said Monique Dagnaud, a sociologist with a national research center. "They boys learn the language, the sexual positions and re-enact them with dramatic consequences." |
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Coalition Wants
To Change Hotel Porn Channels By Kitty Bean Yancey - USA Today A group that helped pull the plug on explicit adult moview at three Cincinnati-area hotels met Monday in Washington, D.C., with 14 other grass-roots organizations in hopes of X-ing out such entertainment at lodgings nationwide. "We're going to put on a full-court press...to educate people that hotels are distributing hard-core pornography," says Phil Burress, president of the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, one of the groups in the coalition. Burress says the coalition will urge Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Justice Department to crack down on hotel porn, which often is distributed across state lines. A Justice Department spokeswoman says the department "is committed to enforcement of federal obscenity laws." Hotel room pay-per-view offerings have become more graphic in recent years, showing close-ups of all manner of sex acts, Burress says. The pro-family groups say kids can access many hotel skinflicks at the click of the button. Across the country, perhaps unknowingly, "hotels are breaking the law. A lot of the material they sell opens them up to prosecution," says Bruce Taylor, a former prosecutor and now president of the non-profit National Law Center for Children and Families. Hotel chains say it's a matter of choice. "We understand that there's a level of sensitivity and different feelings about this subject matter," says Roger Conner, a Marriott spokesman. "We provide a wide range of choices, and anyone can block (adult entertainment). No one has to see it." But many guests are choosing the racy stuff. "It's a major business in the U.S. hotel market - approximately $500 million a year," says Leonard Sabal, president of Cabil Corp., which helps hotels bill for in-room entertainment. Typically, 50% to 60% of pay-per-view hotel sales involve adult products. Explicitness has increased "because the customers want it." |
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Feds
Bust Russian Strip Ring
-Preyed on imported girls
August 28, 2002 New York Daily News By Mike Claffey A Brooklyn couple was charged yesterday with luring naive young Russian women into the country - and forcing them to perform as strippers in New Jersey nudie bars. The husband and wife - along with a third suspect - allegedly promised the women high-paying jobs as dancers and fancy apartments in America. But, once the women were here, they were forced to hand over their earnings - sometimes as much as $1,200 a week - for taking off their clothes at seedy clubs, according to federal prosecutors in New Jersey. Authorities said the suspects boasted of ties to the Russian Mafia and threatened that the women's families in Russia would be harmed if they didn't give up the money. "This is nothing more than a modern form of slavery," said New Jersey U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie. "These women were brought to this country under false pretenses and forced to dance in nude bars under threat of violence to themselves and their families in Russia." The accused ringleader, Lev Trakhtenberg, 38, of 20th Ave. in Brooklyn, made numerous trips to Russia and lured at least 30 dancers here with promises of the American dream, authorities said. The feds said the sex ring lied repeatedly on visa applications, claiming the women were members of "internationally recognized or culturally unique...Russian show groups." Once the women arrived, their passports and return tickets were confiscated. Then they were put to work and forced to pay the couple $1,200 a week. One victim who griped about the payments told the feds that (suspect Sergey) Malchikov told her "that since she had no passport and no one in the United States, he could kill her and no one would ever know," the authorities said. The three suspects are charged with conspiracy, forced labor, trafficking in forced labor and extortion. They face up to 20 years in prison on the top count. |
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Lavish
Lifestyle Ends With Prison For Fraud |
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| Hustler
Magazine's Girls of Afghanistan January 5, 2002 -- Porn potentate Larry Flynt was in federal court yesterday fighting for his Hustler magazine's right to get a firsthand look at the Afghanistan front - and he didn't mean just battlegrounds. "Who knows, maybe we'll give them the girls of Afghanistan," Flynt said. Flynt's lawyer asked federal Judge Paul Friedman to order the Pentagon to let Hustler cover troops on combat missions. |
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| O.D.
May Have Killed 'Wild' Sassoon Heir By ED NEWTON January 5, 2002 -- LOS ANGELES The troubled wild child of celebrity hairdresser Vidal Sassoon was buried yesterday while the coroner eyed her mysterious New Year's death as a possible drug overdose. Catya "Cat" Sassoon, at 33 the oldest of Sassoon's four children and the mother of three of her own, died at a Hollywood Hills mansion where she and her husband, Joseph Meyer, attended a New Year's Eve bash. Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said there was a call for help from 3345 Ledgewood Drive at 9:11 a.m. Tuesday. "Sadly, she was beyond our help," and was declared dead at 9:20 a.m., he said. A spokeswoman for the LAPD told a British news service: "As far as I am aware, it was an overdose, but the coroner's office is dealing with it now." Publicist Hilly Elkins insisted Sassoon had left the party with Meyer after complaining she felt woozy, and died in her sleep at home. The leggy model-turned-actress had a
history of high blood pressure, Elkins claimed, adding that family
members are convinced her death was "associated with a heart attack."
She was buried yesterday afternoon at Sassoon began burning the candle at both ends in her early teens, quitting Beverly Hills HS at 14, briefly marrying film student Luca Scalisi at 15, and making her first film alongside actors James Spader and Robert Downey Jr. at 16. But the 5-foot-8, 117-pound beauty abruptly moved to New York before she turned 17 and signed on as a model with the Prestige Agency, winding up on the covers of Seventeen and Bride magazines. In 1985, Rolling Stone wrote that the breast-enhanced junior model "defines the word nubile," and a tattoo on her buttock earned her a feature in Playboy. But there was a price: she was a junkie by 21. She made a string of films in the '80s, mostly soft porn, and did nude modeling in the '90s. She is survived by her husband, twin daughters, a son, her parents and siblings. |
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Ex-Yale Scholar
Guilty In Assault,
Had Sex With Boy He
Was To Mentor January 5, 2002 By JANICE D'ARCY, Hartford Courant NEW HAVEN -- Former Yale Professor Antonio Lasaga pleaded no contest in court Friday to charges that he sexually assaulted a young boy he was supposed to mentor and teach about trust. He is to be taken into custody at the end of this month and is facing more than 100 years in prison. Lasaga's no-contest plea came as part of an agreement with state prosecutors just as his criminal trial was to begin in Superior Court. It effectively ended his three-year legal fight to stay out of prison, since he also agreed Friday to drop his challenge to his earlier conviction in federal court. Lasaga, 52, had been charged with sexually abusing the boy and using him in pornographic videotapes over a five-year period. The former Yale faculty member was supposed to be serving as the child's mentor in a program run by the city schools. Court documents say the child was chosen to participate in the program because family turmoil made it difficult for him to trust adults. |
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Porn-blackmail
teacher cops plea
--NYPOST A disgraced former Catholic-school teacher in Westchester County landed four months in jail yesterday for blackmailing a student into making a porno video of himself. Frank Bauer, 30, of the Bronx, who had been teacher art at Salesian HS in New Rochelle, used the Internet to trick a 15-year-old student at the school into thinking Bauer was a woman, then blackmailing him. |
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Floating
Florida sex boat gets 'put out' to sea. --NYPOST by Malcolm Balfour MIAMI -- A 130-foot luxury party boat was evicted from its prime slip at Miami's Bayfront Park after the owners of the mooring discovered the boat cruise features "All Nude Live Entertainment!" and 40 of Florida's most beatiful exotic dancers. "We had no idea that the slip would be leased to a floating strip club," said Jay Constanz, director of Bayfront Park, an upscale tourist shopping plaza on Biscayne Bay that subleased one of its boat slips to the controversial Sir W party boat. Constanz said he received a request from the gambling ship Princesa Casino to sublease a slip to Sir W. "They showed us a letter from Sir W indicating their vessel would be used for dinner and dancing -- but we never dreamed it would be that kind of dancing." |
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Skin and sin are in again on the Las Vegas strip
Forget family. The bosom is now the bottom line. USA Today February 15, 2002 By Gene Sloan LAS VEGAS - The glimmering curtains at the La Femme Theater sweep open, revealing 12 anatomically perfect young women standing rigidly at attention. Like female versions of the guards at Buckingham Palace, they wear tall black hats and military-style boots, and they stare ahead, unflinchingly. Unlike the guards, however, they don't wear much of anything else. Rounding out the "uniform": black garters, black stockings and metal-studded neck collars with leather straps dangling between their naked breasts. The straps connect to large white tassels, the kind the Buckingham Palace guards wear above their Scottish tartans, that rests ever-so-strategically between their legs. Never before has so much skin been seen at a casino on the Strip. Remember all that talk about the new "family-friendly" Las Vegas? After nearly a decade of more-or-less behaving, the Las Vegas casinos are rediscovering their naughtier sides with a new wave of shows, nightclubs and bars aimed squarely at an adult-only crowd. In short, sin is back. "We pretended to be a family destination," says Gamal Aziz, the president of MGM Grand, which opened an entire theme park next to its casino in 1993. "The (core) gambling market had gotten to a point of stagnation, and it was just another way to expand." Alas, the family-friendly rhetoric "really backfired," he says. Sitting in his modest office, one level above the world's largest casino floor, Aziz expalins that the town's die-hard gambling customers and other fun seekers who saw Las Vegas as a place to cut loose "definitely did not want to compete with the strollers." Families, meanwhile, were lukewarm to the idea of visiting a town where a walk down the main boulevard means running a gantlet of hawkers passing out brochures for hookers (despite the fact that prostitution is illegal). So now, MGM, which closed its failing theme park last year, and its neighbors on the Strip are returning to what Curtis calls the "tried and true" formula: gambling, drinking and sex. "People come to Las Vegas for one thing: to party," says veteran casino owner George Maloof. In part, the Strip's renewed adult focus is a reaction to the growth of adult-oriented "gentleman's clubs" that are located off the Strip and have been pulling ever more tourists - and their money - away from the casinos. The phenomenon has exploded over the past decade as Las Vegas has morphed from a gamblers-only haven into a major convention town. Conventioneers, Curtis says, are notorious for two things: "not gambling and going to strip bars." As a resulr, casinos are losing out. "The $20 that was going into the slot machine is now going into the stripper's pocket," says Wayne Bernath, a public relations executive who has worked her for years. Even on a typical Saturday night, there now are 1,000 girls stripping at the major clubs in Las Vegas, estimates Brad Keiller, a partner a 3-year-old Spearmint Rhino, an upscale gentleman's club that caters to conventioneers. "My top girls in here might make $1,000 or even $2,000 a night (in tips)," he boasts. Collectively, he reckons, the clubs and their dancers pull in $150 million a year. "I'm sure the casinos are concerned because they're losing some of the discretionary spending." |
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Teen placed in jail cell with sex offender
Associated Press November 21, 2001 ANDERSON, Ind. (AP) -- A 17-year-old boy said he was sexually assaulted after authorities at the Madison County Detention Center locked him in the same cell as a 32-year-old sex offender. Authorities charged Larry Garmon of Alexandria on Tuesday with two counts of criminal deviate conduct stemming from the alleged assault. The boy, who was being held on a misdemeanor charge of possession of a handgun, told authorities he awoke to find Garmon pinning his arms and performing a sex act on him. Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings told The Herald Bulletin he was surprised the teen was not segregated from the adult population. He said the only time an offender under 18 can be immediately placed in the jail instead of the juvenile detention center is when there is a firearms charge pending. Jail Commander Andy Williams said Garmon and the teen-ager were housed in the same cell block because they were enrolled in General Equivalency Diploma classes. Shortly before the new charges were filed, Garmon was convicted in Madison Superior Court on child pornography charges that resulted when police checking his home for parole violations in April found pornographic images of men and boys stored on his computer. Garmon had been released on probation from prison in Kansas last year after serving nine years of a 20-year sentence for aggravated criminal sodomy on an 8-year-old boy, the newspaper said. |
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| Girl
Model Sites Crossing Line? By Julia Scheeres, from Wired News July 23, 2001 Amber seems like a typical 11-year-old girl who loves horses and hates chores. Her website shows her hugging a stuffed white rabbit and playing dress-up. But her site also contains photographs that are only available to dues-paying members. For $25 a month, "Lil' Amber" fans can ogle pictures of the little girl coyly hiking up her miniskirt or posing in a bikini on a faux bearskin rug. For $50, they can purchase a video of Amber "dancing and running around" in outfits that leave little to the imagination. The money goes to her college fund, the site says. Lil' Amber is one of several websites featuring "models" as young as 9 owned by Webe Web Corporation, an Internet hosting company in Florida. A list of the sites is available at Child Super Models. Watchdog groups say the sites smack of pornography, but Webe Web argues that the sites constitute a perfectly legal enterprise. "This is definitely not kiddie porn in any form," said Webe Web spokesman Evan Gordon. "None of our sites have naked children." Gordon said that the child modeling sites were inspired by a birthday party thrown for a friend's 9-year-old daughter. Pictures of the Spice Girls-themed party were posted on the Internet, and within a week they were getting 20,000 page views a day, he said. "We decided to see if there was a market for this and there was," Gordon said. The company started charging access to the site, which morphed into Jessithekid.com. Members can browse photos of a little blonde girl practicing yoga in a white leotard or strutting down a homemade runway in swimsuits. The site also sells videos of a coifed Jessi engaged in childish pursuits such as baking cookies or carving a pumpkin. It proved to be a successful business model. Soon, other parents were contacting Webe Web to enlist their daughters. Gordon said he had no idea why someone would shell out $25 a month to browse pictures of little girls in bikinis. "That's something you'd need to ask a psychology professor," he said. Mitchell Earleywine, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, responded: "Beats the hell out of me. I'm really at a loss why anyone would pay to look at these photos." Earleywine said that men who are attracted
to children tend to exhibit poor social skills and confusion on how
dating works. But there's one thing Webe Web is sure about: The girl model sites are profitable. "Many of these girls are making more money than their parents make," Gordon said, adding that while the company has been accused of exploiting children, he has no reservations about the sites. "If you had a cute dog that I could put up on the Web and make money off of, I'd do that too," he said. Webe Web also runs another business: hardcore porn sites, including Home From School. (The site www.homefromschool.com was taken down soon after an interview with Webe Web.) Gordon said he was "irked" by a question of whether the company's child-modeling sites and porn sites were related and insisted there was no crossover between the company's two lines of business. The images on sites such as Lil' Amber fall into a murky legal area, said Parry Aftab, a lawyer and the director of Cyberangels, an Internet safety and education group. "This is utterly and absolutely distasteful, and I think it would invoke child abuse, but it's probably not illegal," said Aftab. While the law explicitly prohibits images of minors engaged in real or simulated sex, it also forbids depictions of children designed to elicit sexual arousal. In a landmark 1995 case, a Pennsylvania man was sentenced to jail for possessing videotapes of young girls posing provocatively in skimpy clothing. It was the first such conviction dealing with this issue in which the genitals were not exposed. Meanwhile, controversial photographer Jock Sturges continues to sell photographs of nude children despite an FBI raid, pickets by angry mobs and a grand jury investigation. Sturges, reached by e-mail at a photo shoot in France, looked over the Webe Web sites and concluded that their purpose was less than innocent. "Whatever any of these websites original intent might have been, it is pretty clear that they have been (put) up for an audience with pedophilic leanings," Sturges wrote. Some of the Webe Web images certainly push the arousal envelope, Aftab said. Consider Tiffany Teen Model, where for $75, customers can purchase a video of the 13-year-old and a friend cavorting in thong underwear. "The girls model for each other, do each other's hair. You know. Girlie things. :)," states a description of the video. The FBI, which declined to be interviewed for this story, is having a hard time keeping tabs on all the could-be child porn that is distributed over the Internet. The number of cases opened by the agency's Innocent Images National Initiative jumped 1,264 percent between 1996 and 2000, according to the FBI's website. Groups such as Cyberangels and Pedowatch have picked up the slack by enlisting thousands of volunteers across the globe to scan the Internet for lurid images of children. "It's getting harder for pedophiles to function on the Internet," said Julie Posey, the director of Pedowatch. "These (girl-model) sites may be their way of getting around the law. "Why else would someone pay to see kids in their underwear?" she asked. The mother of "Jessi The Kid" insists her daughter's site is geared toward other children, and that her daughter enjoys planning the themes for the photo and video shoots. "There's so much smut on the Internet, we're completely on the opposite end of that," said the mother, who refused to give her name, referring to herself instead as "Jessi's mommy." She said she didn't know who was buying pictures and videos of her daughter because she had no face-to-face interaction with customers. She said the site is profitable. "Let's just say that from her portion of the earnings, she could apply for medical school right now and not have to take out a loan," she said. But while Webe Web and Jessi's mother say they don't know what their demographic is, a quick peek at the girls' virtual fan clubs make it quite clear: men with nicknames such as "Cum ta Poppa." At one of Amber's fan clubs, "humberthaze" writes: "We only get glimpses of her potential when she does a bit of 'bump and g,' but then she quickly relapses into something awkward and childish. Sometimes you can hear the photographer get excited when she gives us what we/he want(s). She'll do a little killer wiggle and we hear him say quickly, 'What was that?' or 'Do that again!!!'" Another complained: "She's gotten too developed for my taste, I doubt I'll be an Amber fan anymore." The Webe Web sites are also featured on several adult search engines and pedophile links. Jessi's mother said she was "amazed"
to learn that her daughter's website was linked on Fresh Petals, a
forum dedicated to people attracted to "If they enjoy looking at a kid baking cookies in a video and find that arousing, that's their own sickness, not ours," she said. |
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| Sex
trade may lure 325,000 U.S. kids By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY WASHINGTON - An estimated 325,000 U.S. children age 17 or younger are prostitutes, performers in pornographic videos or have otherwise fallen victim to "commercial sexual exploitation," University of Pennsylvania researchers will report Monday. Their 3-year, $400,000 study is based on research in 17 cities. The work includes interviews with 200 child victims, most already in the legal system, and more than 800 state, federal and local officials. Experts on juvenile law say it is the deepest investigation yet into the extent of the problem. There are 72 million children age 17 or younger in the USA. "The depth of the problem almost took my breath away at times," says Richard Estes, a professor of social work at Penn and one of the report's co-authors. Among the findings: The largest group, about 122,000, is made up of children who have run away from home and turned to prostitution or pornography to get money for food or drugs. The second-largest group, about 73,000, is made up of children who live at home and are used by family or friends in exchange for money, food, drugs or other benefits. The third-largest group, about 52,000, is made up of "throwaway" children who have been abandoned by parents or guardians and turned to the sex trade to survive. About 90% of the children are born in the USA. The research by Estes and Neil Weiner of Penn's Center for the Study of Youth Policy was funded by grants from the Department of Justice, the W.T. Grant Foundation, the Fund for Nonviolence and Penn's Research Foundation. Previously, there were few estimates of the number of children involved in the nation's illegal commercial sex trade. "This looks like it's the most comprehensive study yet," says Eva Klain of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law. Among the new report's recommendations: That a federal agency or task force be responsible for protecting children from exploitation. That law enforcement agencies focus more on arresting the exploiters - pimps, traffickers and customers - than the children. That penalties for sexual crimes against children be increased significantly. |
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| Three stories
from the New York Post, Tuesday, August 7, 2001
DWI COP'S STRIP CLUB BINGE
Alleged DWI killer cop Joseph Gray spent at least five hours at a topless bar in Brooklyn before getting behind the wheel of his car and mowing down a pregnant mom, her son and sister, police sources said yesterday. Gray left the Wild Wild West strip club - which is supposed to be off-limits to 72nd Precinct cops like himself - early Saturday evening, several hours before he was to head to work at the station house in Sunset Park just blocks away, sources said. But before he made it, he allegedly blew a red light and plowed into eight-months pregnant Maria Herrera, 24, her 4-year-old son, Andy, and her sister, Dilcia Pena, 16, as they were crossing Third Avenue at 46th Street around 9:45 p.m., killing all three. Herrera's fetus was delivered by emergency C-section. The baby later died. TAXES
PAID FOR SEX JAUNT: REPORT Two South Jersey Port Corporation directors allegedly spent hundreds of dollars on randy romps through the strip joints of Veracruz, Mexico, during a five-day convention - at taxpayers' expense. Now, John Clark and Robert Workman, who spent $743 at the wild New Fantasy bar, where sex is for sale, are under investigation by the New Jersey attorney general. On an expense claim, Clark allegedly asserted the $743 was for dinner and drinks with Workman and members of the Pennsylvania Port Authority. However, The Courier-Post of Cherry Hill reported that (the clubs visited) don't serve dinner. The two directors, who serve unpaid, attended the American Association of Port Authorities annual convention in October. After submitting their expenses, checks totaling nearly $2000 were issued without approval from the agency's board of directors. Workman received $812.87, while Clark got $1,104, plus another $360 for a round of golf, the paper said. In addition, Workman allegedly spent another $210 at the New Fantasy. One of the more attractive picket lines will be set up at City Hall tomorrow when dancers from Manhattan's leading "gentlemen's clubs" will peacefully protest (with their bras ON) outside the City Planning Commission meeting that is to consider Mayor Rudy's push to exile topless establishments from the center of town. (The community boards involved want the clubs to stay - they say they're less of a nuisance than drug-infested dance venues.) The girls will be sticking up for their First Amendment rights and also their right to work. They reckon topless dancing is just as legitimate a way to break into showbiz as waiting on tables. In fact, a couple of the charmers from Club VIP have won speaking roles on "The Sopranos" next season. |
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| Playboy Enterprises
started the mainstream adult-entertainment business when Hefner launched
the magazine in 1953
Playboy
Goes XXX Two days after Playboy Enterprises announced it was buying three X-rated cable movie channels- a dramatic departure from the company's soft-core image- Hugh Hefner hosted an Independence Day gathering at his mansion in Los Angeles. Fireworks burst overhead as Playmates sashayed on roller skates across the tennis court, which the magazine's 75-year-old founder had turned into a rink for the occasion. Hef was in his element, and the market's reaction to the week's news gave him one more reason to celebrate: Playboy shares had climbed 30 percent. Lounging in his pajamas the afternoon after his party, he told NEWSWEEK: We're getting a standing ovation from Wall Street. It's BEEN A WHILE since Playboy shareholders had any cause for celebration. The company's stock price had lost almost two thirds of its value last year, before it began rebounding slightly in recent weeks. In the first quarter of 2001, Playboy Enterprises reported a loss of almost $12 million. The empire's flagship magazine has seen its circulation fall significantly from its peak in the 1970s. As the tech bubble burst, last year the company postponed a spin-off of its Playboy.com Web site. And the company's profitable entertainment division, which operates Playboy's soft-core movie channels, has been losing market share recently to more explicit pay-per-view offerings. There are so many alternatives that are down and dirty, says Jack Trout, a Greenwich, Conn.-based marketing strategist. They should have done this a while ago. But given its soft-core origins, Playboy has long been reluctant to go all the way. The company essentially started the mainstream adult-entertainment business when Hefner launched the magazine in 1953. The first issue, 44 pages with a nude centerfold of Marilyn Monroe, sold 50,000 copies. Over the next 48 years the company extended the brand- known for its bunny logo, girl next door models and playful attitude toward sexuality- into almost every possible incarnation, from casinos to key chains. But it wasn't until Hef's driven daughter, Christie, took over as president in 1982 that the company really got serious. Christie closed Playboy's nightclubs, streamlined the company's staff to cut costs and reorganized Playboy's licensing strategy away from kitschy trinkets and toward classier apparel. In recent years she also led the brand's march into cable TV and cyberspace. Playboy is optimistic about its Web prospects. Though the company's online division lost $25 million last year, revenues increased by 50 percent and Playboy says it expects the group to turn a profit next year. Playboy's CyberClub subscriptions, which sell for about $7 a month, continue to grow. Earlier this year the company launched Playboy SportsBook, an online gambling site based in Gibraltar and intended for foreign bettors. And it also introduced SpiceTV.com, the companion Web site to what will become Playboy's harder-core cable channels. Playboy's management is hoping the company's latest aggressive moves on TV and the Web are enough to return it to profitability. Despite the new advanced strategies, until recently the market had been moving away from Playboy. With the introduction of more-advanced satellite cable systems in the 1990s, operators quickly discovered that viewers preferred more explicit programming to Playboy's tamer fare. Last year viewers spent $465 million on adult pay-per-view alone, and Hefner, who says he's never had any problem with hard-core porn, admits that in retrospect he wishes Playboy had branched out into more-risqué programming a couple of years ago. He claims Christie was more reluctant to move into hard core. She's a strong feminist, says Hefner. Christie came out of a time frame and sensibility that had a strong anti-sexual element. But eventually, says Hef, She came around. If you don't update what you're doing to meet the marketplace, you'll be like the dodo bird- a footnote in history. Christie Hefner was on vacation in Colorado and unavailable for comment on the controversial acquisition, but her spokesperson says she agrees it's the right decision to make. Of course, Playboy's not so eager for its enduring legacy to be hard-core porn. The new channels will be operated under its Spice Entertainment network, which Playboy bought in 1999, to differentiate the channels from the less-revealing Playboy brand. The move will further bolster the company's entertainment division, already Playboy's most profitable segment. We're putting our stake in the soil, said Jeff Jenest, the Spice network's general manager. We want Spice to stand for the most satisfying level of adult entertainment. That certainly would be a satisfying development for Playboy's shareholders. |
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GOLD CLUB TRIAL
PUTS STARS AT CENTER STAGE By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY Atlanta--Who'll be next? That's what everyone here is asking. Which high-profile sports star, Hollywood celebrity, or head of state will be linked to the Gold Club, the glitzy Buckhead strip joint at the center of a federal racketeering trial. Several superstar athletes, movie actors and even the King of Sweden are alleged to have visited the swank flesh palace, which prosecutors say is linked to a New York crime family. The pace of the trial is likely to pick up in the coming weeks. Assistant US Attorney Art Leach has said he will call several athletes to testify about their visits to the club. The government alleges that Steve Kaplan, owner of the Gold Club since 1994, and six co-defendants were part of a criminal enterprise that diverted money to the Gambino crime family for protection, fraudulently overcharged customers' credit cards, and engaged in loan sharking. The indictment accuses Kaplan of pimping dancers to athletes and celebrities to enhance the club's image. On numerous occasions, it alleges, Kaplan paid Gold Club dancers to visit hotels - including hotels in August, GA, and Charleston, SC - to have sex with professional athletes. During the trial, prosecutors attempted to link Kaplan to the Gambino family, to Gambino boss John J. Gotti and to his son, John A. Gotti. If convicted, Kaplan could face up to 40 years in prison. Kaplan's attorney, Steve Sadow...denies that prostitution occurred or that Kaplan paid protection money to organized crime. US District Judge Willis Hunt has sealed the names of celebrities and athletes who prosecutors say had sex with dancers. The Gold Club features full nudity, which is legal here. It is one of the nation's most profitable strip clubs. Sadow has said it grossed $20 million last year. |
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Suspect allegedly
drugged, raped daughter's pals Boston Herald, June 3, 2001 by Dave Wedge Northbridge, MA --- A retired Marine who allegedly slipped "date rape" drugs to his teen daughter's slumber party pals and filmed himself raping the girls has been on the lam since his daughter turned over tapes of the disturbing attacks, police said. "He gave them some kind of drug that would knock them unconscious and he would rape and sexually abuse them while he videotaped," Northbridge Police Chief Thomas Melia said of 48-year-old Peter Gagnon. "The victims did not know what happened to them." Gagnon, a cab driver for a Grafton company, allegedly repeatedly raped six different girls, ages 10 to 14, over the past six month. He fled May 19 - the day his 14-year-old daughter went to police with a gray metal strongbox containing nine tapes of the alleged sex crimes, court papers show. Police wouldn't say if his daughter is one of the victims. Gagnon was questioned in Mississippi for similar allegations and was still on the loose last night. "These were very offensive types of acts," said Melia, who viewed the tapes. "These girls were all friends with Mr. Gagnon's daughter. Sometime prior to the acts, they were drugged." Melia said the tapes depict Gagnon, in plain view of the camera, having sex with the clearly unconscious girls. Police are unsure exactly what type of drugs the girls were given but suspect they were one of the so-called "date rape" drugs. Last week, police searched his condo, which he shared with his daughter, and seized a Panasonic camcorder, a Nikon camera, film, two videotapes, a computer and disks, court papers show. Melia said it's unknown if any of the tapes were broadcast on the Internet or if Gagnon may have been showing or selling them. He faces 38 charges, including 20 counts of rape, 14 counts of rape of a child under 14, and four counts of rape of a child 14 or over. Follow-up article: Rape suspect had custody
of girl despite allegations A Northbridge cabbie accused of drugging his daughter's slumber party friends and filming himself raping them was given custody of his daughter by a Mississippi court, despite allegations by his ex- wife of "violent" abuse, records show. Peter M. Gagnon, a 48-year-old retired Marine who was still on the lam last night, won custody in 1996 of his then-10-year-old daughter, even though his ex-wife, Concepcion Gagnon, had a restraining order against him and claimed he abused her and the girl. " (Concepcion Gagnon) was forced to leave the marital domicile because of the violent and dangerous actions of (Peter Gagnon) toward her and (their daughter)," Mississippi court papers obtained by the Herald allege. Northbridge police say Gagnon slipped drugs to his daughter's friends at sleepovers and then raped them. The victims, ages 10-14, were assaulted multiple times over the past six months but had no recollection of the attacks, police said. Police suspect Gagnon may have used so-called "date rape" drugs. Gagnon's daughter, now 14, turned over a box May 19 containing nine tapes of her father raping the unconscious girls in their Whitinsville condo, police say. Gagnon, who faces 38 sex charges, fled that day and a nationwide search was launched. Police last night said they had no new leads. In a June 1997 divorce settlement, a Mississippi court gave Gagnon permanent custody of his daughter because the girl's mother, who worked at a Biloxi, Miss., casino, moved in with another man and violated a visitation agreement. The couple, who were married for 13 years, filed for bankruptcy in 1996 and lived in Ocean Springs, Miss. The girl, who is their only child, moved from her mother's Mississippi home to live with her father about six months ago. A year before the divorce, a judge gave Concepcion Gagnon permanent custody after she alleged her husband "emotionally, psychologically and mentally abused" and "stalked" her. The state Department of Social Services in Pascagoula, Miss., refused comment yesterday on whether they investigated the family. Ocean Springs, Miss., police say Gagnon was a suspect in a child neglect and indecent exposure case but was never charged. |
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Officer
fired from teaching job for bringing stripper to class By Associated Press, 03/23/01 BROCKTON -- A Whitman police sergeant has been fired from his teaching job at Massasoit Community College for having a woman perform a strip tease in class. Sgt. Glenn Pearson taught a criminology course last semester, and brought the woman in to participate in a role-playing exercise about the variety of calls police respond to, students said. Students said the woman stripped down to a G-string and straddled a male student during the class. "(He) brought her in for an educational role play," student April Cabrera told the Patriot Ledger of Quincy. "She took off her clothes, but as far as I know, we were all adults in that class." Pearson has been a Whitman officer since 1990, and was named Officer of the Year by Mothers against Drunk Driving in 1992. He was fired from his teaching post Thursday after college officials confirmed he had brought the stripper to class. "As far as we know, there has never been a blemish on his record. We had received glowing reports," Wayne Perkins, chairman of the school's board of trustees, told the Enterprise of Brockton. "His classes were very popular." Still, Perkins said, having a woman strip in class crossed the line. "We will absolutely not tolerate that," he said. In the course description, students were told that they would examine "patterns and evolution of criminal behavior, the social forces involved and development of the individual criminal; administration of criminal justice, laws, courts, police and prisons." Other guest speakers who had visited the class included state Treasurer Shannon O'Brien and Plymouth County District Attorney Michael Sullivan. Students said they were disappointed Pearson would not be returning to teach again. "I don't know what the big deal is," Cabrera said. "I learned something from it. It wasn't completely pointless." |
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Yale fires prof in child
porn case Mark Zaretsky, Register Staff March 19, 2001 NEW HAVEN - Yale has fired Professor Antonio Lasaga, who confessed to downloading thousands of child pornography images. Lasaga is appealing the decision to the Yale Corporation. "Last month I informed Professor Antonio Lasaga that I have accepted the recommendation of the University Tribunal Panel to revoke his status as a tenured professor and to terminate his employment at the university," Yale President Richard C. Levin said. "Professor Lasaga has notified me that he is exercising his right to appeal my decision to the Yale Corporation." Lasaga's firing will not take effect while the Yale Corporation's review is pending, Levin said. Levin's action came on Feb. 20, following a Jan. 24 recommendation by the Yale disciplinary tribunal, Levin said. Lasaga's lawyer, New Haven attorney William F. Dow III, could not be contacted Sunday night. Lasaga is the first Yale faculty member the University Tribunal Panel has ever recommended firing. In fact, the Lasaga case marks the first time the five-member tribunal, a university-wide disciplinary panel created to address the most serious allegations of misconduct by Yale students or faculty, has ever had to meet since forming in 1969, said Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy. Lasaga, 51, pleaded guilty in February 2000 to downloading 200,000 child pornography images and making two pornographic videotapes that allegedly show him molesting a 13-year-old boy he was to have mentored through a New Haven Board of Education program. His criminal case is still pending, however, and his sentencing is on hold while the judge in his case awaits a decision by a U.S. appeals court on a case that raises similar issues before deciding whether to drop one of the charges against Lasaga. Prosecutors must prove that alleged criminal activity crossed state lines for crimes to be considered federal offenses. They have presented evidence that Lasaga's alleged computer downloads came from outside Connecticut and the videotapes were manufactured out of state. Lasaga appealed the videotape charge on grounds similar to those in the case under appeal. If U.S. District Judge Alvin A. Thompson does not drop the charge, Lasaga is expected to serve 11 to 14 years in federal prison. Lasaga has been under house arrest, wearing a monitoring device in his Cheshire home, since being released after three weeks in a federal prison on Sept. 1, 1999. He is able to leave his house only with government permission to go to church, for health matters and to meet with his attorney, Dow has said. Conroy declined further comment beyond what was in a two-paragraph statement from Levin. Lasaga previously resigned his position as master of Yale's Saybrook College. He has been on leave from his duties as a geology professor since soon after the FBI arrested him on Nov. 19, 1998. He is charged with two counts of sexual assault. Conroy would not say whether Lasaga has been on paid or unpaid leave, saying, "That's between him and his employer." |
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The
new me - My life as a sexy cover girl in California makes me realize
that I belong in a Texas suburb. By Elizabeth Grant Oct. 11, 2000 | I, Elizabeth Grant, reinvented myself. If nature painted our human comedy using chromosomes, I used a scalpel. Or, I should say, I let other, more experienced hands wield that blade of cosmetic transformation: I merely paid them money. In this way I cheated my genetic legacy -- which had dealt me a very poor hand -- and surgically and painfully constructed one of the most photographed cover girl and centerfold models of the 1990s. I created a goddess. From Playboy to Juggs, I have appeared in bathtubs and on bedspreads, recumbent, shamelessly naked. Magazines bearing my image have been used as currency in regions as remote as Nepal and Siberia. Members of Arabian royalty have offered me hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single month of my sexual favors, and men of varying degrees of fame in the celebrity firmament have issued proposals, both honorable and profane. Yet for years I was nothing more than a morbidly shy fat girl from Texas. So many particulars of my physical appearance left me in tears: My hair was more mouse-colored than brown. My teeth, despite years of humiliating corrective headgear, still had a gap in the middle. (No, it didn't make me look a thing like Lauren Hutton.) My weight, 165 pounds on a 5-foot-4 frame, was stratospheric. My bust line wasn't keeping pace with my waistline; and my facial structure was a thin pale disk, with no remarkable features except a well-shaped mouth. All told, it was enough to keep me out of the pool in the summer and out of the prom in the fall. And although I wasn't exactly a tormentable object to the boys at my high school (most of whom were strapping Texas stallions whose weekend sexual exploits with the cheerleading squad were common knowledge by noon on Monday), I was -- perhaps worse -- largely ignored. Not even a "pretty" fat girl, I clutched my textbooks to my flat chest and walked the halls unnoticed. During gym class, unable to stand even a minute with those half-naked, size 5, perfect little Barbie-doll bodies, I hid in the bathroom stall to change my clothes. My high school career was one of nail-biting misery and chocolate cupcakes -- cupcakes that I bought off campus and consumed voraciously once I reached the privacy of my bedroom. Despite this inauspicious beginning, I always knew I could re-create myself. I knew that, if given a chance (not to mention $15,000), I could deconstruct what shabby work the gods had wrought and build myself a temple of flesh and silicone, a place where men were sure to worship. For once in my life I wanted to be gorgeously, irresistibly sexy. And I wanted power: I wanted the power to say "yes" or "no" as I pleased, to select from among a baker's dozen of handsome, affluent eligible men. So at 18 I decided to reshuffle the deck. I started, naturally, with my makeup. Realizing I was neither objective nor knowledgeable, I put myself at the mercy of a makeup artist, a sweet lady who worked at a high-end department store near my school. She reeked of scotch, but her eye was good and she gave me sound advice on how to camouflage my many imperfections. The results were pleasing. I could pass by reflective surfaces without wincing. Already I was starting to perceive subtle differences in the ways both men and women addressed me. Men were more alert, more attentive; women, more wary. Not that I cared a bit what other women thought. Secretly I had always hated them for their smug superiority. I then performed chemical wizardry on my hair. I decided for obvious reasons to go blond. I didn't want to be just any blond, mind you, but the kind of light, Scandinavian blond who turns heads in baseball stadiums and lights up dark corners in tiny downtown restaurants and looks so achingly provocative leaning against black satin pillows. My longtime hairdresser (a friend of my mother's) flatly refused to comply with my wishes. "You're too young," she would say to me. "You'll have to double-process the rest of your life." Being 18, I thought, "Ah, to hell with you," and went elsewhere. The change just one bottle of peroxide made in my life was nothing short of miraculous. Still chubby, I was now getting dates from men who never would have looked at me before. My long blond hair was to certain men what a red flag is to a Spanish bull, and I made the most of the advantage. I curled it, teased it, shellacked it with premium hairsprays. I dyed my pubic hair to match. Somehow I had pulled myself out of the garden of wallflowers. I was now a minor object of desire. But -- ever the glutton for punishment -- I moved out of my parents' house (my mother, especially, was starting to voice strong objections to my appearance) and shared my new quarters with one of the Houston Oilers' cheerleaders, a girl named Tiffany. Tiffany wasn't human. She had naturally blond hair and naturally straight teeth and a naturally bubbly, vacuous personality. Her bedroom was immaculate and perfectly appointed. Littering her bedspread were a hundred stuffed bears, which the hundred men who courted her brought as fuzzy offerings on a hundred Saturday night dates. I was never a Saturday night date. I was a Wednesday or Thursday night date. I was a "call at the last minute," "hey, I'll bring over a pizza" night date. Consequently, I was obsessed with Tiffany. I studied her. To my everlasting shame, I peeked in her diary and was thrilled to discover not only that her improbably pert breasts were compliments of Dow Chemical but that she was pregnant and didn't know who the father was. It was gratifying to find that even beautiful girls had problems. In the end, the flip chart of handsome suitors ringing the doorbell for Tiffany proved too much for even me to bear. I moved into a ratty efficiency apartment, socked away half of everything I earned as a secretary and shut my ears to the rambunctious lovemaking of the couple next door. Three hours a day of weight training and aerobics will kick-start the most sluggish of metabolisms, and I was relentless. Rain or snow or PMS, I aerobicized 40 pounds off my body, and for the first time when I looked in the mirror I liked what I saw. I spent $5,000 of my slave-labor wages packing my pectoral cavities with implants the size of a small African country. Six months later I enlisted the surgeon's art to enhance my cheekbones and my chin. At long last I had arrived. Like Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" born aloft on a half-shell, I floated above the plain, book-smart nobody that I was, and became -- in a word -- gorgeous. To say that ours is a superficial world is an understatement. Here I was, the same girl who read Herman Melville for her own amusement, now winning bikini contests and wet T-shirt contests. I dated famous football players, bank presidents, a former Mr. Olympia. My amazing new proportions made my continuing residence in corporate America impossible, so with my last $40 in hand, I plucked up my courage, bought a rhinestone G-string and headed for the one avenue open to women such as I had become: upscale strip clubs. This proved to be the ultimate contest of "Who's the fairest of them all?" Here I competed with the most beautiful, surgery-addicted women in America. These women had been playing the game far longer than I had. They put ground glass in my high heels and told the visiting celebrities and oil-monied magnates who frequented the club that I looked damn good for someone who'd had three kids. It was a cutthroat business, as mercenary as any beauty pageant. Descending center stage with a G-string full of large bills was a victory missed by no one. In a single evening I made enough money to get six of my teeth veneered. My triumph was now complete. If I flew an airline and the ticket agent happened to be a heterosexual male (who was not also a Bible-college candidate), I was bumped up to first-class. Waiters and restaurant managers regularly comped my checks. Wearing very short shorts and a skintight midriff top, I attended a huge Fourth of July celebration downtown one weekend. A week later I read in the "In Search Of" section of the city's paper that a Playboy talent scout was looking for a woman he'd seen at that event whose description I knew could only fit me. It was amazing, an E ticket to heaven. I had a rich, handsome, attentive boyfriend, a closetful of size 5 jeans and enough silicone to bomb Pearl Harbor. I was Rocky Balboa with breast implants. The world treated me better, thought better of me because I looked like a toothpick with big hair and two wads of gum attached. To my credit (perhaps!) I was never arrogant. Now I do not hesitate to proclaim my former beauty because it was not me people found beautiful -- it was the glittering, artificial creature I had created. The power, once I had it, I never used cruelly or destructively. If anything, I was kinder and more considerate of others. I always remembered my previous self. But if I was the cherished darling of men, women treated me disdainfully. They snickered and pointed and made shockingly rude remarks. They called me a "slut" to my face; several even hauled off and slapped their boyfriends for giving me a second look. One weekend I was mortified to see, as I went down the boardwalk, diners at the seaside restaurants -- men, women and children -- stand on their tables and cheer as I walked by. It was not a compliment. Often I was harassed to tears. If I attracted the notice of good-looking, powerful men, I also attracted the notice of psychos. One broke into my apartment, stole my underwear and helped himself to several of the photos in my modeling portfolio. He made my life a living hell, threatening to kill me if I didn't agree to become "his girl." The problem only resolved itself when I moved to Malibu, Calif. More terrifying still were the aggressive sexual advances made by the cop who came to my apartment after I filed a report. In California I achieved the pinnacle of my success: cover girl and centerfold of a huge number of men's magazines. It soon became apparent, however, that if I wanted to segue my notoriety into an acting career I would have to dispense sexual favors in the right places. During dinner at Spago with an eminent film director, I was instructed repeatedly to get up and walk across the restaurant so he could enjoy the mayhem, the gasps of astonishment, the slack-jawed amazement as I went by, humiliated. Later he suggested I blow him in the limousine. This was not an isolated incident. Many roles I auditioned for or got called back for involved an ultimatum. And my own agent made it abundantly clear that he was no longer interested in representing me unless I complied with his sexual wishes, some of which included his Labrador retriever. I declined. My first and entirely foolish ambition to finally be the prettiest, sexiest and most popular girl had savagely backfired. The very men whose notice I once craved were now exploiting me, manipulating me, using strong-arm tactics to weasel me into bed -- where, once satiated, they would surely have kicked me down the stairs for the next young hottie who attracted their notice. So successful had I been in eradicating the former Elizabeth Grant that no one could see me anymore. Their view was obstructed by my behemoth breasts. I realized that in Hollywood at least, pretty women are a recreational commodity -- like drugs. Everybody wants you. And unless you're unbelievably lucky or willing to sleep your way up a movie studio roster, you wind up like a Heidi Fleiss girl. Or old. Or married to some coke-snorting rock star who cheats on you, beats you up and then trades you in when you turn 30. With no regrets, I turned my back on Hollywood. I had grossly misrepresented myself. The persona I'd created offered the promise of mindless sex; the Elizabeth I was inside did not -- at least not to those who simply wanted to add my name to their address book. So I packed up the U-Haul and headed back to Texas, my native land. I toned down my makeup and my hair color, dressed more conservatively and -- lo and behold -- found someone to love me whom I could love back. Now I am quite content to live the retired suburban lifestyle I once found so repugnant. I have a loving husband and two remarkable children. The days of misguided vanity and the insatiable need for male approval are not only well behind me but the subjects of humorous reflection. Oddly enough, to discover who I was I had to first wear a disguise. Masked, I went into the marketplace, but I found that the wine and the music were not enough to keep me there. I returned -- more naked, perhaps, than I ever had been in a magazine. |
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Lumley's Arrest Called "Shocker" The Suburbanite, November 22, 2000 By Patricia W. Stinson HAWORTH, NJ-News of the arrest of one of Haworth's most respected borough officials for child pornography and drugs has shocked the town. Neighbors and borough officials were reluctant to talk about the arrest of James Lumley, who was also vice principal at Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan when he was charged with child pornography and drug possession Nov. 16. Lumley, 53, is a councilman and the borough's police commissioner, as well as an educator in the Northern Valley regional system. According to the Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Patricia Baglivi, Lumley was accused of viewing child pornography on his computer at the high school since September 1998. "It wasn't a one-time thing, it took place over two years. It's fair to say that there was a substantial amount of child pornography on his computer," said Baglivi. Lumley, who was named Demarest's Teacher of the Year in 1989, is married with three children and has lived (in Haworth) for 23 years. He has been an educator since 1968 and a vice principal since 1990. He was charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, endangering the welfare of a child by possessing child pornography and official misconduct. |
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Shady Past Haunts Strip
Club Backers Boston Herald, November 30, 2000 by Jack Sullivan and Laurel J. Sweet The management team for a proposed strip club in Chinatown has a checkered history with other adult clubs it runs and has ties to investors with criminal and Mob connections, according to a Herald review of records. The management group is led by William Deyesso of Norwell, whose companies own Centerfolds strip joints in Worcester, Oxford, Rhode Island and Florida and is trying to open a club in Amesbury despite fierce opposition. Earlier this year, Deyesso and his partner, Richard McCabe of Whitman, sold 47 shares of the Oxford Centerfolds at $10,000 per share to seven investors, including a former Middlesex deputy sheriff indicted in the John McGonigle kickback scandal and the son-in-law of reputed Mob boss Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi. Deyesso also was a partner of a group that opened an American sports bar in the Ukraine city of Kiev and in 1996 he pled guilty to trying to conceal $27,000 in cash and lying to U.S. Customs officers as he returned from a trip to Russia two years earlier. According to a "fact sheet" put out by Centerfolds, "The management team has an unblemished record in the operation of adult entertainment facilities in Oxford and Worcester." But records from the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission show PJD Entertainment, which operates the Worcester Centerfolds and is owned by Deyesso and McCabe, had its liquor license suspended in 1998 for four violations, including changing owners without approval by the state or city. In addition, the club was cited by ABCC investigator Keith J. Keady for operating the licensed premises without an approved manager and unlawful selling, exposing, storing and keeping alcoholic beverages for sale. In February of this year, the ABCC sent the Worcester Centerfolds a letter stating that at least four people convicted of drunken driving in the prior six months had admitted to having been served their last drink at Centerfolds. State law also requires licensees and stockholders to be of "good character." According to records filed with the Oxford Board of Selectmen and the ABCC, Deyesso and McCabe sold 15 percent of the club's stock for $150,000 to Albert J. Benedetti of Walpole, who is married to Flemmi's daughter. State records show that Benedetti, who has no criminal record, was one of the officers of the infamous Marconi Club in Dorchester, which Flemmi reportedly owned. The club was shut down after three employees were convicted of conspiracy to run a brothel. |
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Salem
Cops: Lawyer Used Internet to Lure Young Teens for Sex Boston Herald, December 1, 2000 By Jessica Heslam and Franci Richardson A Revere attorney's booze-filled sexual rendezvous with young girls he befriended through e-mails ended Wednesday when he arrived at a Salem house thinking he was meeting a 13-year old girl - and encountered a battery of police officers instead, police said. Clifford T. LeBlanc, 33, was arrested by Salem police when he showed up for the encounter with a backpack full of whiskey coolers, a bottle of vodka and a pornographic videotape, police said. "He would befriend them over the Internet, meet them on occasions in Salem and drive them around in his vehicle," said Salem Detective Michael Andreas. "He would give them the alcohol and there was some sexual contact." LeBlanc, a tax counsel at Taxware International in Salem, is accused of raping one girl, sexually assaulting a second, and coming "very close" to sexually assaulting a third, police said. He is charged with two counts of statutory child rape, 19 counts of indecent assault and battery on a person under 14 and numerous counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. |
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State says worker stole
for lovers
INDIANAPOLIS - David Alan Scott, an accountant with the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, was charged with stealing at least $680,000 from the agency, in the biggest government embezzlement case in the state's history. Prosecutors said Scott, 36, used the money to finance breast implants for a stripper he met through an escort service, and a fur coat and car for another lover. Investigators say he created phony child support accounts, used them to pay his lovers, and then erased the evidence. Scott, who earned $26,287 a year, pleaded not guilty Friday. (AP) |
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Cyberporn bids for the mainstream By Mike Brunker MSNBC LAS VEGAS, Aug. 9 - THOUGH STILL FEW in number, executives like Kreloff are changing the parameters of cyberporn, which by most estimates already is a $1 billion-plus-a-year industry. By bringing new legitimacy to what already is one of the most profitable sectors of e-commerce, they believe they can quickly blast the virtual flesh trade far beyond its current orbit. Their willingness to dive into a stigmatized business that is beset by legal and political uncertainties can be attributed to one thing ÷ the advent of broadband technology, which allows people to download and watch video on computers. Offering the discreet delivery of high-quality adult video into the homes of millions of new potential viewers, broadband is the Holy Grail of the adult industry, according to Kreloff and others in the broadband race. Broadband video allows consumers to avoid the potential embarrassment of "renting an adult video at a record store where your neighbor's teen-age son may be working," said the 38-year-old Kreloff, whose Boulder, Colo.-based company distributes both hard-core porn and softer adult content via the Internet and six 24-hour pay-per-view television channels broadcast over satellite and cable. PRIVACY FOR SALE "When it comes to broadband, all of a sudden we can reach every consumer who wants to buy adult content," said Bill Asher, president of Vivid Entertainment Group, the leading creator of adult videos and a company intent on being a major Internet player. "For that reason, it's going to make a lot of sense for companies like ours · to invest heavily in this business now." Cyberporn an inherently risky business Kreloff's company, New Frontier Media, sought to secure a position atop the interconnected pyramid of 30,000 to 40,000 adult Web sites by acquiring leading cyberporn player Interactive Gallery in October 1999 in exchange for stock. The company now owns more than 1,300 adult-related Internet domains that funnel traffic to 27 e-commerce sites selling sexually explicit photos and video. TAKING THE PUBLIC ROUTE
THE PROFIT MOTIF " If there was some doubt about the veracity of such claims, the arrival of publicly held companies in the adult sector is putting them to rest. New Frontier Media, for example, reported income before taxes of $5.2 million on $48 million in revenue ÷ $30 million of which was derived from the Internet, according to Kreloff ÷ in the fiscal year ending March 31. Kreloff said he expects the company to nearly triple its pretax earnings this year on revenue of about $75 million. At least some members of the investment community are taking notice: Security and Exchange Commission documents show that more than 16 percent of the company's stock is owned by institutional investors, including members of the Oppenheimer and Vanguard mutual fund families. Another indication of how profitable some top adult Web sites are is found in a July 10 news release by Rick's Cabaret, which said it had agreed to acquire the domain name "XXXpassword.com" from Voice Media for 700,000 shares of stock and up to $1.3 million in cash if earnings benchmarks are achieved over six years. The statement said the Web site had generated more than $3 million in gross revenue in the 11 months ending on May 31. TRAFFIC-SHARING VORTEX Chief among them is the byzantine structure of the industry: Virtually every adult site ÷ whether operated by a Webmaster with a single home page or a company with thousands of domains ÷ is connected in a vast traffic-sharing vortex. In most cases, the smaller portal sites redirect potential customers to "pay sites" operated by big companies with large libraries of content. Those big players, in turn, pay small operators for any sales that result from the traffic that they directed to them. Even the estimated 12 to 20 big players in Internet porn swap traffic through a combination of click-through banner ads or "mouse-trapping" techniques that open additional browser windows featuring the content of their business rivals. This system is the result of a marketing strategy developed in the early days of cyberporn, said Frederick S. Lane III, a Vermont attorney and author of the newly published book "Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age." "There's a sense that if someoneis looking for sexual materials on a particular subject, they are more likely to spend money online if the pool of those materials is perceived to be bigger," he said. "And by and large I think people are finding that that's true." That interconnectivity was the primary reason Kreloff and other major cyberporn players attended a recent adult entertainment expo in Las Vegas. HANDSHAKE DEALS OVER DRINKS Most of the traffic-sharing relationships are the result of handshake agreements reached at these informal gatherings, which generally occur at night and are more like frat parties than business meetings. The Las Vegas gathering was no exception, lasting from 10 p.m. until 8 a.m. and involving the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol. "There is no other business that I've been in that I actually socialized with my competition," said Cybererotica's Silverstein. "And the friendship and camaraderie are really a big part of what I like about it." But some say the congenial relationships are being tested by the broadband race. "For a while it was a manna where everyone could graze, but now there will be a rapid evolution so there's a survival of the fittest in the next few years," said Scott Maslow, who with his four partners built Pornication into the leading provider of interactive video before agreeing to sell out to NuWeb Solutions. He said most of the other dozen or so big players in online porn are weighing buyout offers similar to the one his company accepted from NuWeb Solutions, or are examining the possibility of merging with competitors. "Rich people go where the money is, so it was only a matter of time until morality got thrown out the window," the 26-year-old former electrician said of the shifting landscape. Still, he said, he and his partners were glad that the bigger players waited to make their moves. OPPORTUNITY KNOCKED The new competition will force veteran porn players to make some difficult decisions. Danni Ashe, who apparently owns the distinction of being the first woman to establish a major adult Web site by virtue of her creation of Danni's Hard Drive in 1995, is one operator who plans to try to go head to head with her public competition: The former stripper and nude model has built an all-digital production and broadcasting facility to create video for her soft-core site. "This business is so close to my heart · it's like my child," Ashe, 32, said when asked whether she might be willing to leave the business. "I want to nurture it and I want to see it grow." Ashe said recently that she expects her 42-employee company to turn a profit of about $7 million this year The Cyber Entertainment Network of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on the other hand, plans to leverage a licensing deal with international porn publisher Private Media of Barcelona, Spain, to procure broadband content, said chief executive Joe Elkind. 'WOULD YOU SELL BROADWAY?' "That's small-time thinking," he said of fellow operators who are doing so. "Unless you have to, would you sell Broadway in Monopoly?" But many who follow the industry say the pressures on privately held companies will only increase if their public counterparts succeed in persuading Wall Street that they are worthy vehicles for investment. And Lane, the author, says he has little doubt that will happen if the new cyberporn leaders can successfully police themselves and "get away from the fraudulent and even criminal aspects that have dogged (the industry)" ÷ such as overbilling of credit cards and misleading offers of "free" trials. "When folks are increasingly casting about for Internet businesses that are actually making money ... at some point you have to step back and say, 'These folks are doing it and you can either invest in them or learn from how they are doing it,'" he said. "The learning part doesn't seem to have occurred very much, so it would seem to me that leaves the investing." Mark Kreloff appears to move effortlessly between two worlds: one where he and his employees work to harness broadband technology and pioneer e-commerce techniques, and another in which "teen hard-core," and "fetish dungeons" are the coin of the realm. Such professional elasticity is a necessity for the president and CEO of New Frontier Media, one of just a few publicly traded companies delivering pornography over the Internet. |
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Honor triggers huff over Hef By Debbie Howlett USA TODAY CHICAGO -- Over the objections of feminists and two female aldermen, the city on Tuesday named a key street corner for Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Native son Hefner arrived in his own style at the unveiling of the street sign on Michigan Avenue, near the Drake Hotel. Traffic came to a halt as he emerged from a black limousine with his current inamoratas, buxom twins Sandy and Mandy Bentley, who wore pink cowboy hats and diamond chokers. ''This controversy reminds me of the old days,'' Hefner said. ''We live still in curious times that remain very puritanical.'' The dispute erupted Monday at what was to be a routine meeting of the City Council's transportation committee. Michelle Dempsey of the Commission on the Status of Women in Illinois stepped forward, calling Hefner a ''high-class pimp . . . the biggest pornographer in our country.'' The opposition caused the committee to balk at the resolution honoring Hefner. But the bill's sponsor, Alderman Burton Natarus, merely took the measure to the finance committee on Tuesday for approval. That panel passed the resolution. The full City Council is expected to give its final approval today. The city has honored nearly 900 people -- from the rock group Chicago to Princess Diana to Mother Teresa -- by lending their names to city streets. Few such honors have been opposed; none generated as much controversy as the Hefner resolution. Natarus -- who said he reads Playboy only during monthly visits to the barbershop -- thought Hefner was a natural choice. ''This is a successful businessman from Chicago,'' he said. Born and reared on the city's south side, Hefner began publishing Playboy here in 1953. In 1960, he opened the first Playboy Club just steps from the corner being named for him. He has since made Playboy Enterprises Inc. into a worldwide, multimedia enterprise. ''He is the Walt Disney of sex,'' biographer Bill Zehme told the Chicago Sun-Times. But many remain resolutely opposed to the action. The Council of Catholic Women said it was improper to honor the Playboy founder. Alderman Carrie Austin continued her complaints even after the meeting. ''He made his money exploiting women,'' she said. Julie Fehrenbacher, 43, who passed by the unveiling, said the street sign was too much. ''I object to the sexism and the Barbie-doll images,'' she said. But the 74-year-old Hefner, flanked by the twins, dismissed his critics. ''Anybody who calls Playboy pornography,'' he said, ''is living in another century.'' |
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Doctor
held in killing of wife; secret life alleged
DEDHAM - A secret name and a secret life involving pornography and prostitutes may have driven renowned allergist Dr. Dirk K. Greineder to stab his wife of 31 years to death near their Wellesley home last October, Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating said yesterday. Greineder, who along with his three children had long maintained his innocence while under intense scrutiny from investigators, was taken from his Brookline practice in handcuffs and charged with his wife's murder yesterday, ending four months of mystery after the body of Mabel C. ''May'' Greineder was found stabbed to death Halloween Day near Morse's Pond in Wellesley. It was a crime that stunned the comfortable, upscale community, and the indictment by a Norfolk County grand jury heightened that shock - as did the revelations that came with it. Greineder, 59, used the pseudonym of Thomas Young, Keating said, in an active secret life that was intensely focused on pornography and prostitutes. Meanwhile, Keating added, there was a growing rift between him and his 58-year-old wife. ''There were some difficulties and there was some strain'' between the couple, Keating said. ''There was obviously a strain in the relationship, a difficult relationship.'' |
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Men Charged With Child Pornography, Underage Sex Jul 11, 2002 -- A Mechanicsville, MD man took nude pictures of a 15-year-old girl last month and showed them to a 34-year-old friend who then had sex with her two weeks ago, the St. Mary's County sheriff's office alleged this week. On Monday, sheriff's detectives arrested John R. Thompson, 41, and charged him with child pornography. Thompson's friend, Kim C. Bond, was charged with third-degree sex offense. Bond was released on his own recognizance and Thompson paid $5,500 bail. Sheriff's detectives said the photos were taken at Thompson's residence on King Drive in Mechanicsville sometime last month. The girl, who lives in another county, had gone to see Thompson with her 19-year-old sister, detectives said. According to charging documents, Thompson took frontal nude photographs of the girl and her sister. On June 28, Thompson showed the photos to Bond, a Mechanicsville resident. Thompson then allowed Bond to see the girl in person, and Bond had consensual sex with her, according to charging documents. "It was an offering from Thompson to Bond," said Sgt. Daniel Alioto of the St. Mary's County sheriff's office. Detectives became aware of the incidents Sunday when the girl's sister made a complaint. When interviewed that day by detectives, police say Thompson admitted to taking the photographs of the girl, but told them he had since destroyed them. Bond admitted having sex with the girl, according to charging documents. When contacted by phone, Thompson, an employee of a St. Mary's lumber company, referred all questions about the incident to his lawyer, Dave Chapman. Chapman did not return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday afternoon. No one answered calls to the telephone number Bond listed in court documents. Thompson also was charged with violations of Maryland's gun laws. When detectives searched his residence looking for the photographs, they found a handgun Thompson illegally purchased from a dealer at a farmers market in Charlotte Hall, according to charging documents. Thompson had defaced the serial number of the gun so it was unreadable, police said. Detectives said their investigation into Thompson and Bond is continuing in St. Mary's and Charles counties. "There are going to be additional charges," said Lt. John Horne of the St. Mary's Countysheriff's office. |
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N.Y. Officers Face Child Porn Charges NEW YORK, Jul 09, 2002 -- A West Point Army sergeant, two former city police officers and a retired Yonkers firefighter were among 10 people charged with possessing child pornography, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. The charges were contained in indictments brought by prosecutors in Manhattan and Brooklyn as part of a continuing nationwide crackdown on child pornography dubbed "Operation Candyman." Earlier arrests in the investigation were announced this year by Attorney General John Ashcroft. |
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Internet Sex Performer Tells Her Story
- The job takes a toll on your outside life
In the Sex Trade Trenches-The Internet Underground July 23, 2001 by MSNBC "Natalia," a bleached-blonde woman who says she is a 20-year-old college graduate, is one of the most popular performers. Take-home pay? Twenty dollars an hour, she says, without benefits, for performing eight hours a day, four to five days a week. She's assisted by staff in a "control" room who type in responses to online chatters and bark commands to performers. Speaking to a reporter before beginning a shift, Natalia complained of feeling ill. But she was upbeat about her job. "This is who I am." she said. "Believe it or not, it helps my self-esteem." But many callers, she added, were crude, asking, in one instance, that performers simulate dying. They declined. Natalia also said that recent appearances in adult movies ruined a marriage. "I am a performer on the Internet. Customers can interact with a person in the control room and they in turn interact with me and tell me what they would like to do. There are some strange people out there and we get them all. Most people don't expect you to be educated and well spoken. They expect a brainless little Barbie doll that they can play with movable parts you know. It's a totally different side of people just like it's a completely different side of us. This is a different side of me that if you saw me on the street you'd have no idea I did this. It's been a great way to work flexible hours and make a lot of money and pay for my school. Nobody at school knows. My family doesn't know. My close friends know. It's really hard being in this type industry to find somebody that's going to respect you, be your partner and respect you for what you do here. Who's going to want a wife or girlfriend that masturbates live on the Internet for other men to watch? It's kind of a lot to ask of somebody." |
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Ohio State University ripped up its faculty and staff directory over
a decidedly unacademic offer inside.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- |
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Kentucky sex shop owner undergoes conversion, switches to selling
Bibles; old merchandise burned By Roger Alford, Associated Press, 11/27/2002 PUTNEY, Ky. (AP) In this mountain community comprised largely of conservative Christians, Michael Braithwaite was a novelty. Braithwaite owned a sex shop that sold vibrators, leather goods and other porn paraphernalia, but he now sells Bibles after he underwent a religious conversion. ''Morally, I couldn't sell it any longer,'' he said. Neighbors have embraced the change, helping Braithwaite restock his 5-year-old store with Christian merchandise and buying groceries for him, his wife and daughter until his new business begins to turn a profit. He dropped the old name, Love World, and now calls his store Mike's Place. He covered the formerly bright red outer walls with a fresh coat of white paint. Braithwaite, with tears pooling in his eyes, said God persuaded him to close the shop, burn $10,000 worth of sex toys and open the bookstore. A pile of ashes in his parking lot is all that remains of his former inventory. Some of his former customers have been shocked to walk into the building to find a shelf of Bibles where unmentionables used to be displayed. ''When the Lord gets a hold of you, you make some changes,'' said Braithwaite, who now greets new customers by giving them Christian tracts, and quoting Scripture. Braithwaite underwent his conversion last month during a prayer meeting and was baptized a few days later. ''This shows that the Lord loves and wants to save everybody,'' said Shaun Aslinger, a Harlan evangelist, "even the man who runs the adult novelty store.'' |
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Pee Wee Herman actor charged CNN - November 16, 2002 LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Actor Paul Reubens was charged Friday with one misdemeanor count of possessing material depicting children engaged in sexual conduct, a spokesman for the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office said. Reubens' attorney, Blair Berk, said the charge, which stems from artwork seized from Reubens' Hollywood Hills home last year, "is simply untrue and without merit." "Mr. Reubens has never at any time knowingly possessed any artwork from his extensive vintage and antique art collection even remotely related to anything improper," Berk said in a statement. "When all the facts come out, it will be clear he did not commit any crime." Reubens, best known for his character Pee Wee Herman, turned himself in late Friday afternoon at an undisclosed LosAngeles Police Department facility, and bail was set at $20,000, police said. If convicted, he could face up to a year in jail and a fine of $2,500, said Matt Littman, a spokesman for the city attorney. He said Reubens is being charged with "possession of material depicting children under the ages of 18 engaging in sexual conduct as defined under California law." A publicist for the actor described the material in question as photographs. In 1991, Reubens pleaded no contest to charges of indecent exposure after being arrested at a Florida adult movie theater where authorities said he was masturbating. back to top |
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Seattle bans 'upskirt' photography December 12, 2002 SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- Voyeurs will no longer be free to take pictures or film up women's skirts in Seattle now that the city council has unanimously passed an ordinance to close a loophole that previously made such acts legal. The new law was introduced because the state Supreme Court ruled in September that video peeping underneath clothing was legal when it overturned the conviction of two men who had filmed up women's skirts without their knowledge. The state said then that voyeurism laws did not apply if "upskirt" photography took place in public areas without a "reasonable expectation of privacy." The new ordinance states that "recording or transmitting images of another person's intimate areas" in a public place without their consent would result in a fine of up to $5,000 or up to one year in jail.
DEMS REJECT
HUSTLER'S $EX CHEX
October 04, 2005
Enfield couple convicted of torturing 11-year-old
girl Prosecutor Herbert Carlson Jr. said Skinner sexually abused the girl in the summer of 2002 and January 2003 and forced her to watch pornographic movies. He said Stewart beat the girl and punished her by shaving her head and scrubbing her body raw in a shower. Skinner was convicted of two counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count of impairing the morals of a child. He faces five to 10 years in prison followed by up to 13 years of special parole. Stewart was convicted of risk of injury to a minor and is to be sentenced to three years in prison on Monday. Skinner and Stewart pleaded to the charges under the Alford Doctrine, which allows defendants to not admit guilt but concede that the state has enough evidence to win a conviction. Under his plea agreement, Skinner will be required to either accept
responsibility for raping the girl or pass a polygraph exam clearing
him before he could be released on parole. |
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