US Navy officer Timothy Davis found not guilty of raping prostitute in Sydney brothel

AAP
November 23, 2009 4:26PM

A US sailor cleared today of raping a prostitute in a Sydney brothel is “looking forward” to returning to California.

While Petty Officer Timothy Davis had admitted using a “lockdown manoeuvre” to pin the woman to the bed, he denied forcing himself on her, saying he had only wanted his money back.

The 25-year-old had pleaded not guilty to having sexual intercourse without consent, aggravated by causing the woman actual bodily harm.

A Few Questions for Belle de Jour, Call Girl and Scientist

November 20, 2009, 1:30 pm
By RYAN HAGEN

In 2003, a young American woman in London studying for her PhD. ran into money trouble. To support herself while writing her thesis, she joined an escort service. Under the assumed name Belle de Jour, she started to blog her experiences. That blog led to a series of successful, jaunty memoirs beginning with 2005’s The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl. The books were adapted for television in the U.K. (where she is portrayed by Billie Piper) and later in the U.S. All the while, as Belle de Jour garnered more attention — and criticism, for portraying prostitution as a glamorous career choice — the woman behind Belle de Jour struggled to keep her anonymity. This month, as an ex-boyfriend threatened to blow her cover, Belle approached one of her critics, the London journalist India Knight of the Sunday Times, to reveal her identity. That resulted in an article, published Nov. 15, outing her as Dr. Brooke Magnanti, 34, a neurotoxicologist at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. This week, she agreed to answer a few questions for the Freakonomics blog, about her work as a call girl and as a scientist.

Sex and Soccer: The World Cup vice trade

October 16, 2009 — Updated 1701 GMT (0101 HKT)
By Chris Murphy
For CNN

(CNN) — The beginning of the World Cup in South Africa next June kicks-off a festival of football on the pitch, but there are a wealth of issues for the host country to tackle off the field too.

Up to half-a-million fans are expected to visit for the tournament and a string of sparkling new stadiums and hotels have sprung up to accommodate them.

But that influx of supporters also brings with it a danger of an explosion in the sex trade and the threat of increased trafficking to service demand.

A similar flood of vice business was forecast leading up to the previous World Cup, in Germany in 2006, especially as prostitution had been legalized in the country.

RI: Full House OKs ban on indoor prostitution

11:29 AM EDT on Thursday, October 29, 2009
Lynn Arditi, Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill to outlaw indoor prostitution Wednesday night, paving the way for a final debate on the Senate floor Thursday.

The bill’s passage followed an hour of impassioned debate from both sides of the issue. Supporters said the bill would provide the police with the tools they need to conduct sting operations at brothels where, they said, pimps and sex-traffickers degrade and enslave women and children. Opponents argued that it would harm vulnerable women, drive prostitution underground and cost the financially strapped state more money by sending women to prison. .

Ignored by society, Afghan dancing boys suffer centuries-old tradition

By Atia Abawi, CNN
October 27, 2009 — Updated 1721 GMT (0121 HKT)

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — A young boy dressed in women’s clothing, his face caked in make-up, dances the night away for a crowd of men.

The bells on his feet chime away, mimicking the entertainment and sexual appeal of female dancers. But there is no mistaking his pubescent body and face as he concentrates, focusing on every step in order to please his master and his master’s guests.

This all played out in a video that CNN obtained from a person involved in the parties.

The boy is but one youth among many throughout the country forced into an age-old underground tradition known as “bacha bazi,” or “boy play,” in which young boys are taken from their families, made to dance and used as sex slaves by powerful men. The number of boys involved is unknown — the practice has been going on for centuries, in a country where such practices are overshadowed by conflict and war.

For Runaways, Sex Buys Survival

Running in the Shadows
October 27, 2009
By IAN URBINA

ASHLAND, Ore. — She ran away from her group home in Medford, Ore., and spent weeks sleeping in parks and under bridges. Finally, Nicole Clark, 14 years old, grew so desperate that she accepted a young man’s offer of a place to stay. The price would come later.

They had sex, and he soon became her boyfriend. Then one day he threatened to kick her out if she did not have sex with several of his friends in exchange for money.

She agreed, fearing she had no choice. “Where was I going to go?” said Nicole, now 17 and living here, just down the Interstate from Medford. That first exchange of money for sex led to a downward spiral of prostitution that lasted for 14 months, until she escaped last year from a pimp who she said often locked her in his garage apartment for months.

Prostitution in Georgian London: Harlot’s progress

Oct 15th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital. By Dan Cruickshank. Random House: 688 pages; £25. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

"Connoisseurs" by Thomas Rowlandson

AS MANY as one in five young women were prostitutes in 18th-century London. The Covent Garden that tourists frequent today was the centre of a vast sex trade strewn across hundreds of brothels and so-called coffee houses. Fornication in public was common and even children were routinely treated for venereal disease. A German visitor observed a nation that had overstepped all others “in immorality and addiction to debauchery”.

English society expected, even encouraged, men to pay for sex. Prejudice barred women from all but menial jobs. Prostitution at least offered financial independence: a typical harlot could earn in a month what a tradesman or clerk would earn in a year. For a few beautiful and savvy women, the gamble paid off. Lavinia Fenton, a child prostitute, married a duke. But most prostitutes were destined for disease, despair and early death.

Press Release: More Than 50 Children Rescued During Operation Cross Country IV

For Immediate Release
October 26, 2009
Washington D.C., FBI National Press Office (202) 324-3691

Over the past 72 hours, the FBI, its local and state law enforcement partners, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) concluded Operation Cross Country IV, a three-day national enforcement action as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative. The operation included enforcement actions in 36 cities across 30 FBI divisions around the country and led to the recovery of 52 children who were being victimized through prostitution. Additionally, nearly 700 others, including 60 pimps, were arrested on state and local charges.

“Child prostitution continues to be a significant problem in our country, as evidenced by the number of children rescued through the continued efforts of our crimes against children task forces,” said Kevin Perkins, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “There is no work more important than protecting America’s children and freeing them from the cycle of victimization. Through our strategic partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, we are able to make a difference.”

Internet fuels virtual subculture for sex trade, study finds

Published: Oct. 21, 2009 E-mail Editor

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Internet has spawned a virtual subculture of “johns” who share information electronically about prostitution, potentially making them harder to catch, according to a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University criminologist.

The research by MSU’s Thomas Holt and Kristie Blevins of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte challenges the common perception that sex customers act alone and do not interact for fear of reprisal or scorn. The study appears in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Thai Sex Workers: APNSW Press Release for French Press

APNSW responds to the Mitterand story:

It has come to our attention that there is still continuing debate around the issue of the French Culture Minister,
Frédéric Mitterrand, and his admission that he paid for sex with male sex workers in Thailand. We have seen attacks on him from both the left and the right of French politics- attacks which we see as both homophobic and anti-sex worker.

Worse we see the racist, orientalist views of the elites on both sides of French politics who construct Thai sex workers as somehow “backward” and unable to choose what we do. In Thailand all male sex workers are referred to by the term “Nong” which means boy. We are not duped under age boys forced into “sexual slavery.” We are people in a poor country exercising our choices to live and earn money to support ourselves, our family and our country.