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Prosecutors Focus on Pimps and Clients, Instead of Prostitutes
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Men accused of soliciting prostitutes were taken to be arraigned in Manhattan on Monday. A law has increased penalties for convicted clients: one year in jail, instead of 90 days. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times
It was not exactly a run-of-the-mill prostitution case: the men accused as ringleaders were a father and his son, a pimp team coercing women to push their trade like traveling sex saleswomen, handing out business cards at hotels and strip clubs.
The women were branded, tattooed with the pimps’ monikers, Mr. Vee for the father and King Koby for the son, Manhattan prosecutors said. One woman was even tattooed with a bar code.
But what makes the case noteworthy is not how the operation was run, but how the men are being prosecuted. The Manhattan district attorney’s office is employing a sex trafficking charge, added to the New York State penal code five years ago, that is helping to redefine how law enforcement agencies approach organized prostitution.
In a stark departure from decades of such prosecutions, the women who were working as prostitutes are not facing criminal charges but are instead being treated as their pimps’ victims, and offered services to help them build new lives.
Under the old charges, pimps typically faced up to 15 years in prison for promoting prostitution with an adult. The newer sex trafficking charge carries a maximum sentence of 25 years. Also under the new law, the customers who pay adult prostitutes for sex face up to one year in jail, up from 90 days.
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On Monday, 14 men, including a physician, an owner of an online ticket sales company and a concierge for a film-production company, were arraigned on charges of patronizing a prostitute. Most were offered a chance to plead guilty to disorderly conduct, a violation; two accepted the plea offer.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said his office had embraced the new approach, long advocated by those who see brutal oppression of women as the defining component of the commercial sex trade.
“They basically live as slaves of the pimps,” Mr. Vance said. “These are sad cases. These are women who need help.”
A federal law that went into effect in 2000 cracked down on sex trafficking. But in general, someone must be moved across state borders for the purpose of prostitution before federal prosecutors have jurisdiction.
The law that Albany passed in 2007 has no such limitation. It broadly defines sex trafficking by the methods a pimp uses to control a prostitute. The threshold can be met if the pimp instills fear of a beating, but also by more subtle intimidation, like spreading a secret that might subject the person to ridicule, or doing anything “calculated to harm” the health, safety or immigration status of the prostitute.
“One thing we’ve learned from women who have been prostituted is that it is very easy to get into, but very difficult to get out of,” said Norma Ramos, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.
An example of a business card a prostitute was told to hand out. Credit Manhattan District Attorney’s Office