I'm sure there's nothing wrong with posting here in Tailgate either but with several watson threads having been posted in Pure football and having run their course, it's obvious that the powers that bet also decided it belongs in Pure football.

If the PF threads only stuck to the subject of Watson's availability come Week 1, then you'd have a point. You and I both know that won't happen.

So the people who own and run the board are wrong and those who claim they know the rules and how things should be done here are right?

So you're suggesting that after several watson thread over a period of time the powers that be haven't made a decision based on them not moving any of those threads? Really?

I don't care where someone posts these threads. What I questioned was the reasoning for it.

However, we have posters like Pit, 888, and mac that want to force this topic down our throats because they are butt-hurt about poor, poor Baker.

Speaking of falling flat. You must miss that the mods often go through these threads and remove posts. Just like the low blow attack vers made just yesterday while he was claiming he knew what class was. They have made it painfully obvious to anyone willing to take an honest look that all of these watson posts belong in either form. They seem to comprehend that the outcome of this has a direct impact of what will happen on the field. They seem to understand how this impacts the team and the FO after making the decision to acquire watson.

The fact you keep trying to dance around that is a you problem.

Presented without comment.

Seriously.... how does a lawyer for the defense make THAT comment in a case like this??

Are the wheels falling off??

Odd phrasing, I wonder if he will broach the topic if they are necessarily consensual.

Edit: If he states that the one lady was crying tears of joy because it had a happy ending this story is ending up on E! Entertainment.

Presented without comment.

So Hardin realized he gaffed and is trying to put the cat back in the bag.

I asked this on another thread, Swish. I'm an old guy, but back in my day most of us tried to have as much sex as we could. The clubs were always packed and a large portion of the population had sex w/multiple partners on a consistent basis. You are younger than me and maybe you are not in the loop because you have been married so long, but are you telling me that having sex w/multiple other people of the other sex is now looked upon as "creepy?"

Maybe to you. Not to me, and I'd bet most others. My liking Watson or not wouldn't taint anything.

This is the type of annoying post he was referring to.

I don't care. It's not my fault some are in denial and seem to get butt hurt when presented with the facts.

So, oober was butt hurt because you presented him with facts? Do you think all the people that are annoyed with your continuous snotty, antagonistic posts are butt hurt?

NSFW...click to read tweet....

Excerpts from the actual lawsuit...

Excerpts from the actual lawsuit...

Beginning to look like DW isn't going to belong in Pure Football for a bit.

Florio has been riding Watson almost daily for quite some time. Personally, I don't think a man should be punished so harshly before his guilt has been legally determined.

This is what I'm starting to wonder.

There has to be an "out" somewhere in this contract as the poop keeps getting deeper.

Our GM talks about "the most extensive investigation he's ever seen" the coach talks about a "five month odyssey"... along those lines of "due diligence" another gets crossed:

"DeShaun, are you telling us everything... and I mean everything? We can only make these guarantees based on the information you're telling us being accurate and complete, I want you to be sure we're not leaving any stone unturned."


At this point, it seems either our due diligence sucks or DeShaun hasn't been completely honest (read: LIED). You can't just "forget" about the most egregious case of the bunch.

I have never visited such businesses, so this might be a dumb question, but......do the businesses have cameras in the rooms in order to help protect their workers?

That's one of the problems with the industry. Cameras are prohibited to protect the privacy of the clients but have an adverse effect on those providing the service. One of the ongoing statements by those in the industry was the fact that they basically have to "put up with creeps" because there is little recourse with no actual evidence.

LOL.........no, sorry. You didn't call anyone names. I was referring to the gang over on the other forum where that is a common practice.

I don't recall hearing any took place at Watson's home. Many took place at therapists homes, as well as hotels and business locations.

If I recall correctly the Texans had someone that was booking Watson's sessions due to some issue. The women complaining, or at least some of them, were not booked by the Texans contact but outside of the normal process for some reason.

I tried three times to send you a PM bro, but they all said your PM box was full.
OBJ wanted out of Cleveland so bad that he was free lancing his routes. Sure the posts his Dad made him look open.... he was open because he ran his own damn routes, not the ones that the coaching staff set up. He screwed his own team for the sake of his own personal gain. OBJ can rot in hell,. He treated the browns ten times worse than Baker ever did.

The Browns would still lose the boatload of picks they traded for him.

That would be a very Browns thing to do ......

That's one of the problems with the industry. Cameras are prohibited to protect the privacy of the clients but have an adverse effect on those providing the service. One of the ongoing statements by those in the industry was the fact that they basically have to "put up with creeps" because there is little recourse with no actual evidence.

and what we're seeing with this case (these cases) is exactly what happens silently every day. You can't get something to a criminal case without good (or at least even mediocre) evidence, so the behavior is never checked as every case is *always* your word against theirs. This is why indictment rates are so low and conviction rates are lower. It's an uphill battle and many DA's, who need solid win records for re-elections, won't be too enthusiastic about pursuing them.

GM - I've seen this reported. Are you confirming this from a position of knowledge?

YES

The team provided an NDA?

One has to wonder now if that is why so many others have opted to say/do nothing.

The details seemed really out there and then this came so late when someone was maybe thinking there is a good chance to make some money. I just wonder how the courts will deal w/her credibility.

Q: Did you find her attractive?

A: That wasn’t my intention, sir.

Q: I didn’t ask you what your intentions were.

A: I can’t answer that. I have a girlfriend, so that wasn’t my intention, sir.

Q: So you can’t answer that because you have a girlfriend?

A: Because that’s not what I was looking for.

Q: What did you want from her?

A: Just a massage.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.c...e-leaked-from-deshaun-watson-deposition/

As long as he puts the biscuit in the basket...

"Tip of the Iceberg"

j/c:

REVEALED: Browns' Deshaun Watson 'met at least 66 women for massages over 17-month span and the Texans provided him with NDA after one therapist threatened to expose his sexual misconduct'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...men-massages-17-month-span.html#comments

met at least 66 women for massages over 17-month span

If this is true, the dude has a sex fetish addiction type mental illness. OR he's a predator, plain and simple.

The only possible way that could happen is if the Browns could prove beyond doubt that the Texans operated in bad faith, withheld information or were dishonest with their communications with the Browns. I think the draft picks have sailed no matter what.

No. As I heard it at the time of the deal and contract .... if things went bad for Watson, the contract might be voidable due to language in the contract. The deal to trade 3 first round picks is non-reversible. The only possible way that could happen is if the Browns could prove beyond doubt that the Texans operated in bad faith, withheld information or were dishonest with their communications with the Browns. I think the draft picks have sailed no matter what.

There were 4 teams. I don't know where you get 13-15.

We draft so well in the 2nd and 3rd rounds we don't even need those 1st round picks!!!

Even if we were able to prove that (huge huge if)... is it still even possible? Keep in mind, they've already spent one of said picks.

Yup.
But, of those, only 4 actually made qualifying offers, and if I remember correctly, one was dismissed immediately (Carolina) due to being in their Division.

True. The point remains that we weren't the only team to go after the guy. Many teams wanted to, and some met the qualifying criteria.

I understand, but I am sick of him and others calling me a liar and/or ignorant.

True. The point remains that we weren't the only team to go after the guy. Many teams wanted to, and some met the qualifying criteria.

Yup.
But, of those, only 4 actually made qualifying offers, and if I remember correctly, one was dismissed immediately (Carolina) due to being in their Division.

To be honest - if 4- 8 - 12 - or 30 other teams had such bankrupt morals and such a poor investigation into what potential future drama might ensue from a trade for DW ... it doesn't make any difference. Just because others were as bad as CLE doesn't help improve our situation or give the organization a pass on not doing their due diligence properly.

To be honest - if 4- 8 - 12 - or 30 other teams had such bankrupt morals and such a poor investigation into what potential future drama might ensue from a trade for DW ... it doesn't make any difference. Just because others were as bad as CLE doesn't help improve our situation or give the organization a pass on not doing their due diligence properly.

To be honest - if 4- 8 - 12 - or 30 other teams had such bankrupt morals and such a poor investigation into what potential future drama might ensue from a trade for DW ... it doesn't make any difference. Just because others were as bad as CLE doesn't help improve our situation or give the organization a pass on not doing their due diligence properly.

(which is sad, because I even tried to look for it... don't do stuff when you're distracted by other stuff),

What lesson would they have been taught? Once again, there were 13-15 teams that expressed interest in trading for Watson. Do they all need to be taught a lesson or do sometimes just not work out the way one thought?

As I explained earlier, due diligence can go only so far unless you are the CIA or Jim Rockford.

Due diligence can go only so far unless you are the CIA or Jim Rockford.

Or the New York Times it would appear.

While I didn't spell it out the way you did, I agree. Anyone doing a serious, in depth investigation could have uncovered these things. It didn't take the FBI. And for those posters who are young, Rockford was great, but it was a TV show.

The actor who played Rockford was ugly, and had a terrible voice, so it was a burden to watch.
And shows that involved Private Investigators were stupid in the first place, until Knight Ryder came along.

a kickass Trans Am

j/c:

Browns remain all in on Deshaun Watson, not looking to void $230 million contract or trade with Texans, sources say

https://www.cleveland.com/browns/20...he-230-million-contract-sources-say.html

Glad to hear that the Browns are not considering voiding Watson's contract. I am also happy to hear of the support from the organization and Watson's teammates. This year will most likely be rough, but we could have a great QB on the team for up to a decade. Long-term thinking is smart. I support the Browns and am happy that they have recognized that we needed an upgrade at QB.

Rockford did not have a Trans Am. He had a basic Firebird. It did however have a 400 motor in it.

Rockford did not have a Trans Am. He had a basic Firebird. It did however have a 400 motor in it.

Due diligence my ass Jimmy. You deserve this, I hope it breaks you.

Not coming forward is the norm in many cases similar to this. Women get drug through the mud.

Not coming forward is the norm in many cases similar to this. Women get drug through the mud. Look what happens in politics to accusers. After the news report broke about 66 women, and the browns deal going through, I think those two things triggered women to come forward. I was hoping he could clear his name, I don't see that happening now. I think he's guilty as hell. And that sucks for fans like me. Because now I have to decide rather I will even watch while he's under center. Guys in EO's situation have to hate Haslam for this, what other choice do they have? I feel bad for them for sure, hell I feel bad for all of us at this point. I want a Browns Super Bowl as bad as anyone, but not this way.

I get that a lot of you want Watson to be suspended and think he's guilty. I find it odd, but I can accept it. I do have a question for you guys. Do you really think that the late additions to the civil suits are a bad thing for Watson or perhaps does it throw more shade on those who are making the allegations due to it taking them so long to speak up and are now doing so because it looks like Watson is almost guaranteed to have to pay them off?

Come on, man. I am not ignorant. Don't pretend I am to win an argument. In fact, I brought that up in my very first post on the situation w/Watson and his accusers. I am talking about the timing and 24s claims that didn't match the claims of others.

Again, I get that some of you desperately want him to be guilty and he very well may be guilty. On the other hand, I can see how stories got embellished when both parties knew this was about sex from the get-go.

Beneath the surface, women who experience everything running the "sex gamut", from harassment to actual rape, feel guilty. Guilty like they did something to cause it, guilty for smiling or harmless flirting, etc, etc... but once they don't come forward immediately, it usually takes something drastic to change their mind. So whether they are a victim or a "gold-digger", an event such as the HBO special becomes impetus and an acceptable reason for either woman.

I think there are a decent amount of people with your point of view, although most won't say it out loud. I think it's a fair response, but it's basically DOA because there are so many accusations. Just as it is "unfair" to assume guilt, it would be outright ludicrous to think Watson is 100% "innocent". Assuming some of the women are lying is fine... trying to affix dishonesty on any single woman, strictly because of the timetable would be unfair, imo.

You also have to remember, we're living in a time where everyone is a "victim" and even second-guessing anyone's victimhood is vilified to the highest degree.

So yes, these are a very bad thing for Watson.

Did you ever forget to send that birthday text... then days later you're like "pfftt... if I sent it now I'd would feel like an idiot"? On the surface, this isn't much different.

Beneath the surface, women who experience everything running the "sex gamut", from harassment to actual rape, feel guilty. Guilty like they did something to cause it, guilty for smiling or harmless flirting, etc, etc... but once they don't come forward immediately, it usually takes something drastic to change their mind. So whether they are a victim or a "gold-digger", an event such as the HBO special becomes impetus and an acceptable reason for either woman.

I think there are a decent amount of people with your point of view, although most won't say it out loud. I think it's a fair response, but it's basically DOA because there are so many accusations. Just as it is "unfair" to assume guilt, it would be outright ludicrous to think Watson is 100% "innocent". Assuming some of the women are lying is fine... trying to affix dishonesty on any single woman, strictly because of the timetable would be unfair, imo.

You also have to remember, we're living in a time where everyone is a "victim" and even second-guessing anyone's victimhood is vilified to the highest degree.

So yes, these are a very bad thing for Watson.

Not coming forward is the norm in many cases similar to this. Women get drug through the mud. Look what happens in politics to accusers. After the news report broke about 66 women, and the browns deal going through, I think those two things triggered women to come forward. I was hoping he could clear his name, I don't see that happening now. I think he's guilty as hell. And that sucks for fans like me. Because now I have to decide rather I will even watch while he's under center. Guys in EO's situation have to hate Haslam for this, what other choice do they have? I feel bad for them for sure, hell I feel bad for all of us at this point. I want a Browns Super Bowl as bad as anyone, but not this way.

So if the accusers, the lawyers, the league, the media, etc are all entitled to their pound of flesh, then what does that leave for the Browns team and fanbase?

Come on, man. I am not ignorant. Don't pretend I am to win an argument. In fact, I brought that up in my very first post on the situation w/Watson and his accusers. I am talking about the timing and 24s claims that didn't match the claims of others.

Again, I get that some of you desperately want him to be guilty and he very well may be guilty.

I will say he talks a good game.

IMO and only IMO he looks like a creep. I don't believe he is guilty of everything he is acussed of. However I believe he is guilty of being a creep but not guilty of attacking any women. Pressering... yep, exposing himself.... yep. Raping anybody... nope, forcing anybody... nope. BUt that is my opinion only and I have no proof. I hope he is guilty of nothing more than he is charged with, but he may be guilty of a whole lot more. I don't pretend to know, but I also am not going to hang him out to dry when I don't know.

If he is innocent then 95 percent of America needs to get down on their knees and forgive him. I Think the truth lies in the middle between his claims and the womans.

IMO and only IMO he looks like a creep. I don't believe he is guilty of everything he is acussed of. However I believe he is guilty of being a creep but not guilty of attacking any women. Pressering... yep, exposing himself.... yep. Raping anybody... nope, forcing anybody... nope. BUt that is my opinion only and I have no proof. I hope he is guilty of nothing more than he is charged with, but he may be guilty of a whole lot more. I don't pretend to know, but I also am not going to hang him out to dry when I don't know.

We went from Cinderella Sweethearts as people called US America's team for a couple of years, to untouchables all due to one player being added. This is what the fanbase gets out of it. And maybe, we will get to see DW win a bunch of games. Meanwhile, each of us gets to internalize what that means to us as diehard Browns fans. A crap sandwich is exactly how it feels right now.

IMO and only IMO he looks like a creep. I don't believe he is guilty of everything he is acussed of. However I believe he is guilty of being a creep but not guilty of attacking any women. Pressering... yep, exposing himself.... yep. Raping anybody... nope, forcing anybody... nope. BUt that is my opinion only and I have no proof. I hope he is guilty of nothing more than he is charged with, but he may be guilty of a whole lot more. I don't pretend to know, but I also am not going to hang him out to dry when I don't know.

j/c:

Thanks. I guess I am right there with you. I don't think there was physical force used. I think a whole bunch of unsavory went on, that was not consensual or expected by the women. Where you and I might differ is the impact of that pressure, authority, manipulation, coercion. To me that's a huge issue. DW might be completely ignorant of why or how it's such a big deal ... but being a horny dude and putting (up to) 66 women in a situation and then having an escalating "routine" that manipulates the situation to a sexual scenario is serious. Most especially because consensual options would be available if he wanted.

And while I can say I hope he is innocent on all levels - logic dictates that's not the case.

Who is to say that the women weren't the ones applying pressure? What if it wasn't consensual or expected on DeShaun's end? They're "medical professionals" and had Watson in a "vulnerable" position. If a dude cries rape, he's a laughingstock. If a woman implies it, she's a cultural icon. The assumptions and double standards are just interesting in modern society.

At this point, Watson might as well stick with his strategy, especially if it's the truth.

If that's what you want to believe - go ahead. I'm not stopping you. I think you'd have to be really be trying even more hard than usual to be the contrived contrarian to think 28 women accused DW of something when he was the victim. I think you'd have to be trying even harder than that to think DW put himself in that situation and was abused by these women and he did went back 66 times in 17 months.

But that's your right.

While I will not say that Watson is guilty, I also won't say that there is any chance of him being a victim of sexual misconduct. Not trying to convince you otherwise, but I can't see that at all.

I am still willing to allow the legal system to determine the outcome of these cases, but it seems to me that having sex was probably the motive and that both parties understood that. Some seem to think that having sex is a bad thing. I don't know....maybe things have changed a lot since I was in my teens and 20s, but almost all of us were trying to have sex w/multiple partners. Also, while a poster or two tries to act like the idea of famous people paying for sex is a new idea, it is indeed a reality because it was supposed to reduce the amount of attempts made by money-grabbers. I don't get the sense that Watson forced himself on these women by physically grabbing them and making them do things against their will. I could be wrong about that, though. Lastly, I look at the handful of posters who have already determined Watson's guilt and are desperately trying to get others to agree w/them and have noticed something. They talk about morals and how they can't root for the man, but other than Flo, all of them are among the very most morally corrupt individuals on this board. They lie. They misquote people to win arguments. They gang up on those they disagree with. They viciously attack others daily. Then, they turn around and talk about morals. Fake outrage.

Thanks. I guess I am right there with you. I don't think there was physical force used. I think a whole bunch of unsavory went on, that was not consensual or expected by the women. Where you and I might differ is the impact of that pressure, authority, manipulation, coercion. To me that's a huge issue. DW might be completely ignorant of why or how it's such a big deal ... but being a horny dude and putting (up to) 66 women in a situation and then having an escalating "routine" that manipulates the situation to a sexual scenario is serious. Most especially because consensual options would be available if he wanted.

And while I can say I hope he is innocent on all levels - logic dictates that's not the case.

Nope. If it were to come out that Deshaun arranged to have sex with these women before they showed up, instead of the women thinking they were just there to give him a massage, then he would be innocent in my eyes. But at this point, I don't believe that is remotely likely. What is likely, in my opinion, is that Deshaun wanted easy sex. So he arranged the massages as just massages, then turned the tables on these girls once they were in a controlled environment; then, he used his celebrity and financial status to either get his desired ends or silence those who might speak out against him. If this is the case, he's a predator. And that's the way I think this unfolded currently. I haven't slammed the door shut on him being innocent, but the more I hear, the more it looks like there is little chance of that.

BUT, and this is where you probably think I'm condemning him unfairly, after learning what we have learned and processing it, then trying to remain neutral in not judging... there has just been too much put out for me to support him playing while this is unresolved. NOPE. He should be benched until we know what he is guilty or not guilty of, IMO. And I think this is where the Browns' "due diligence" went wrong. I can't imagine they knew about 66 women and the possibility of numerous more allegations coming down the pike before inking $230 Million fully guaranteed. From a business standpoint, it looks idiotic.

If that's what you want to believe - go ahead. I'm not stopping you. I think you'd have to be really be trying even more hard than usual to be the contrived contrarian to think 28 women accused DW of something when he was the victim. I think you'd have to be trying even harder than that to think DW put himself in that situation and was abused by these women and he did went back 66 times in 17 months.

But that's your right.

IMO and only IMO he looks like a creep. I don't believe he is guilty of everything he is acussed of. However I believe he is guilty of being a creep but not guilty of attacking any women. Pressering... yep, exposing himself.... yep. Raping anybody... nope, forcing anybody... nope.

We get to lose bandwagon fans? Oh the horror.

Funny that you talk about not name calling.
You talk about misquoting posters.
You talk about lying.

Yet here you are - name calling. You are misrepresenting what posters are doing - no-one is trying to convince others, just expressing opinions. As for lying - I personally think you hold that crown. But you do you Vers. I'll repeat - 90% of the snark and angst were gone from this board when you weren't posting. I guess that's coincidence.

And 66 in 17 months is only 3 a month.

So a new person every 10 days. And you used 'only' before that?

As always you miss a point trying to show how clever you are.

1 every 10 days is nowhere near excessive imo.

I don't know what the outcome of all this will be. I'm just preparing myself for the worse, possibly not having DW for the entire 2022 and 2023 season. IN the meantime, I'll hope for the best.

So the cop Baker said a woman just gave Watson a bj, because he was DW. She said he didn’t ask for it, didn’t ask for anything, he just took it. Very long read, but that is at the bottom.

https://sports.yahoo.com/tense-depo...cence-coercion-vs-consent-010619990.html

Yeah, one story out of 66 holds a TON of weight! Sometimes I don't actually believe you hear yourself. And I'm sure that has nothing to do with why she felt watson committed a crime. Would you like to see why she said that? Nah, you don't care about that part.

He is not well.

I don't know what the outcome of all this will be. I'm just preparing myself for the worse, possibly not having DW for the entire 2022 season. IN the meantime, I'll hope for the best.

So, you ignored the rest of the post to poke fun at Frenchy?

The worst would be that he never plays a down as a Brown and the browns still have to pay him and lose all the picks. I'd say that's an actual possibility at this point.

Another mental health putdown? As I said before, look at the character of those who are so morally offended by Watson being on the Browns.

That's why I had asked the question about the NFL stepping in and maybe giving us our picks back if he's not going to be able to play.

That's why I had asked the question about the NFL stepping in and maybe giving us our picks back if he's not going to be able to play.

Another mental health putdown? As I said before, look at the character of those who are so morally offended by Watson being on the Browns.

1 every 10 days is nowhere near excessive imo.

That's why I had asked the question about the NFL stepping in and maybe giving us our picks back if he's not going to be able to play.

So is ejaculating on an unsuspecting woman, "just being a creep"? Is purposefully exposing yourself to unsuspecting women, "just being a creep"?

I ask this because if you "think he's guilty of some of it" where do you draw the line of "just being a creep"? Do you believe someone has to actually rape someone or physically force themselves on a woman to be anything more than "just a creep"?

I have a feeling that if he did this to a woman you know well as a close personal friend you would find it to be a lot more than that.

Not if there are any females on the jury.

Not just them. Read the board. I don't see many females posting all day about the guy.

[quote]How many women did he ejaculate on Pit? How many women did he expose himself to? Why would any woman in her right mind keep massaging him while he was exposing himself? Why would they keep massaging him while he played with himself? Why wouldn't they leave?

I don't see many females posting all day about the guy.

Not just them. Read the board. I don't see many females posting all day about the guy.

[quote=GMdawg]
Some of the women have mentioned being a single parent and being afraid he would impact their livelihood because they did not do as he wanted. There is a term for it that escapes me right now, but it has to do with coercing someone into sex due to being in a position of power over them. This was one of my concerns as Watson maintains his innocence, he could possibly have no clue how his behaviors impacted these women.

Other than Eve and Sk8termom, I'm not aware of any current female posters. (There may be some that I didn't know were females.) The board used to have a small but vocal group of females, but since Watson I haven't seen them. I'd be interested to hear from Jules, or especially Dawg Michelle, who I believe is a massage therapist. Others like Iambrown, Dawgylama, Nursedawg, Couchgirl, ONB, and a few more, all dropped out a while ago. I wish they were still here, I liked reading them.

So the cop Baker said a woman just gave Watson a bj, because he was DW. She said he didn’t ask for it, didn’t ask for anything, he just took it. Very long read, but that is at the bottom.

https://sports.yahoo.com/tense-depo...cence-coercion-vs-consent-010619990.html

Glad Watson's defense is implementing this as one of their strategies to their arsenal. The NFL has a long and poor history when they have played judge, jury, and sometimes executioner. This needs to be highlighted and used as a weapon by Watson's defense team. In fact, I have been calling for that in multiple threads. Although, I did leave out Jones and put some others in there. I would not limit it to just the owners, though. The NFL clearly screwed Ezekiel Elliot. The NFL's sorry history of how they treat the rich, white owners vs the black paid help is terrible and needs to be exposed.

This and a lot of the owners are pissed about the contract. I could see them handing down a brutal suspension just to teach Jimmy a lesson. Between this whole thing making the NFL look bad, Jimmy handing out that contract, and the fact that the Browns get treated like the league's unwanted relative at the cookout... It could be damn near anything coming. Fair or not. I expect paid leave until the cases are resolved. The NFLPA can argue that all day, but the league will site protecting the brand, and DW will be getting paid. The browns will get punished by that, so the owners will back it. It's all speculation until it happens, but they are under pressure to do something. Then when it's all resolved, the suspension will happen, and probably a fine. Also, because of the number of women, if DW starts losing these cases, I think they'll make an example out of him to silence the anti-women vibes of this case and the past cases that they were too light on. But he may not get anything at all...

You and FrankZ could be 100% right about the owners, but all I know is the talking heads made a very big deal out of it like it was egg on the Brown's face. All I'm saying is be prepared for anything, we're the Browns.

Owners can be upset all they want but someone was going to get the first fully guaranteed contract sooner or later. I think it was inevitable. And it was inevitable to be a QB. Next will likely be some EDGE if I had to guess.

Yeah, but it's not just him; he's just the first big one coming up. Haslam reset the bar for ALL QB DEALS going forward with this.... and, like Frank pointed out, this will soon cascade to other premier position groups like Edge and Cornerback. It's the whole "the Genie is out of the bottle" aspect, not the myopic short-term view.

There is a narrative going around that the other 31 NFL owners are mad at the Browns for giving Watson the contract they did, and in turn, that’s the reason a team hasn’t traded for Mayfield. According to Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com, that narrative simply isn’t true and is “off base.”

https://dawgpounddaily.com/2022/05/08/deshaun-watson-contract/

RAVENS OWNER BLASTS BROWNS FOR DESHAUN WATSON CONTRACT

by ANTHONY FARRIS
3 months ago
6Comments
Videos by OutKick
There’s no love lost between AFC North rivals Baltimore and Cleveland. And that feeling apparently extends beyond the field and up to the luxury suites. On Tuesday, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti blasted divisional foe Cleveland for handing Deshaun Watson a “groundbreaking” contract.

Watson, of course, received the most fully guaranteed money in NFL history – $230 million – from the Browns in a trade.

“It’s like, ‘Damn, I wish they hadn’t guaranteed the whole contract.’ I don’t know that he should’ve been the first guy to get a fully guaranteed contract,” Bisciotti said Tuesday while speaking at the NFL’s annual league meetings.

Jeez, Steve. Don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel.


Bisciotti’s comments are likely tied to the fact that his franchise QB, Lamar Jackson, a former league MVP, is slated to play the 2022 season on an expiring contract. Baltimore would undoubtedly love to extend Jackson’s deal for the foreseeable future, but his price tag has now gone up since Cleveland decided to give Watson a vault full of money.


“To me, (Watson’s contract is) something that is groundbreaking, and it’ll make negotiations harder with others,” said Bisciotti, no doubt alluding to Jackson.

The Baltimore owner must not be paying very close attention to the NFL’s current financials. League contracts, especially for quarterbacks, have reached a “next man up” level. Any starting quarterback with a pulse and some promise, who’s nearing the end of his contract, generally scores the latest and greatest deal. Unfortunately for the Ravens, Jackson’s next in line.

“But (Watson’s deal) doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to play that game, you know? We shall see,” Bisciotti added.

Cleveland and Baltimore play one another twice a year, and based on all these contract talks, those games should be rich.

https://www.outkick.com/ravens-owner-blasts-browns-for-deshaun-watson-contract/

NFL teams have no right to be mad at the Browns regarding Deshaun Watson's contract


Steven Kubitza

The Cleveland Browns made a controversial decision to not only trade for Deshaun Watson, but to also immediately sign him to a fully-guaranteed $230 million deal. It is no secret that the 22 pending civil lawsuits against him now hang over the franchise as well.

This stirred up plenty of controversy among fans over the decision to add someone like Watson, given the allegations against him. It also created controversy among NFL owners, but for very different reasons.








00:01
02:00
Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti had a quote, shared by ESPN's Jamison Hensley, that summed up how the owners are feeling.

"I don't know that he should've been the first guy to get a fully guaranteed contract. To me, that's something that is groundbreaking, and it'll make negotiations harder with others."
Jamison Hensley
Jamison Hensley
@jamisonhensley

Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti on Deshaun Watson's $230 million guaranteed contract: "I don't know that he should've been the first guy to get a fully guaranteed contract. To me, that's something that is groundbreaking, and it'll make negotiations harder with others."
2001
182
Bisciotti is blatantly saying that this Watson deal is going to make negotiations harder with others. The quarterback was given a record amount of guaranteed money. This has changed the way top stars will view appropriate deals. But are the Browns in the wrong here?





NFL owners have no logical right to get mad at the Browns over Deshaun Watson

The NFL owners have always given off the sense of being a tight-knit group. Yet it's not like large contracts are rare. Just a few years ago, Patrick Mahomes was given a decade-long deal worth nearly half-a-billion dollars. Sure, it was not fully guaranteed, but it set a new standard.


Just recently, Aaron Rodgers got $150 million guaranteed from the Green Bay Packers and set the market at $50 million annually. Were other owners mad at these two teams?

The beauty of the NFL for the owners is the salary cap. So there eventually becomes a cap to how high they can go, at least, on a yearly basis. Yet as the cap rises, so do the salaries.





The cap also means each team can act however it wants. If the Browns want to fully guarantee a deal, they have the right to do that.


For example, let's say Lamar Jackson wants the exact same deal as Watson got in Cleveland but Baltimore will not give it to him. If another team will do such a thing, then that is just the nature of the business. The only way to stop this process is for every single owner to refuse to offer such a deal.



This is just the way professional sports work. If one team doesn't want to pay a star, there is usually another out there ready to do just that. The salary cap, at least, ensures a system where one team can't spend significantly more than others to buy up all the stars.

So even if the quarterback market rises, it is an even playing field for every single NFL owner out there. Blaming the Browns here is just recency bias after years and years of innovation when it comes to contracts.


https://www.sportskeeda.com/nfl/nfl...browns-regarding-deshaun-watson-contract

Hidden in Plain Sight



How Corporate Secrecy Facilitates
Human Trafficking in Illicit Massage Parlors�
2
Illicit Massage Parlors and Corporate Secrecy
What is unique about this form of trafficking is that massage parlor traffickers actually go through
the process of registering their businesses as if they were legitimate.
Conceivably then, it should be relatively simple to determine the basics about these businesses —
such as what products or services they provide and who ultimately controls and makes money from
the business. The actual or “beneficial” owner would then in most cases be the trafficker and could
be prosecuted as such.

In reality, the laws governing business registration are almost tailor-made for massage parlor
traffickers to hide behind. Neither states nor the federal government require people setting up
companies to include the name of the actual owner of the business in the registration paperwork.
What is actually required depends on the jurisdiction. Sometimes the owner’s name is left blank.
Sometimes it is filled in with the name of a registered agent or someone else paid to be the front
person or point of contact. Sometimes the business is registered under the name of an anonymous
shell company — another business that exists in name only but has no actual assets.3

All of this obfuscation is perfectly legal.
The figure of 9,000 illicit massage businesses operating across the country, first reported in Polaris’s
recently released report, “Human Trafficking in Illicit Massage Businesses,” was difficult to come
by because of these lax or nonexistent corporate transparency laws. It took extensive research,
including cross-referencing publicly available datasets with websites on which commercial sex
purchasers leave reviews of their sexual experiences at these illicit businesses, to arrive at this
minimum figure.

It is hard to escape the irony here: Someone looking to purchase commercial sex from an illicit
massage parlor can log in to any number of review boards and, sometimes for a small fee, get
graphic descriptions of individual women’s bodies and specific sexual experiences with those
women. Meanwhile, while the businesses themselves are easy to find, the privacy of the actual
owners of the businesses where these sexual acts take place is scrupulously protected by U.S. law.
Irony aside, the fact that the United States is among the easiest country in the world in which to
hide who actually owns and benefits from a business4 is part of the reason why massage parlor
trafficking is so difficult to prosecute criminally. There are legitimate reasons why some businesses
use anonymous shell companies and there is no reason why they cannot continue to do so. But if
we are to end human trafficking in massage parlors, we must begin by lifting the veil of secrecy that
protects the criminals who profit from it.


Who Actually Owns Massage Parlors

Polaris analysts used open-source data5
to examine over 9,000 illicit massage parlors and their
networks across the country to find ownership information.

• Of the more than 6,000 illicit massage businesses for which Polaris found business
records, only 28 percent of these illicit massage businesses have an actual person
listed on the business registration records at all.

• Only 21 percent of all the business records found for illicit massage parlors actually
specifically name the owner — although even in those cases, there is no way to know
for sure if that information is legitimate.

Why corporate transparency matters in massage parlor trafficking
Most illicit massage parlors are part of an organized crime network. Generally, these networks
include at least one other illicit massage parlor as well as non-massage venues such as nail salons,
restaurants, grocery stores, and cleaners.

Criminal networks are necessary in large part for laundering money from the illicit massage parlors.
These businesses generally operate out in the open, paying taxes and otherwise taking steps
to avoid drawing attention to the true nature of the operation. A hallmark of an illicit massage
business is that it advertises services at significantly lower rates than is the standard. For example,
an illicit massage parlor will charge $40 for a one hour massage in a jurisdiction where a therapeutic
massage performed by a licensed massage practitioner averages between $80 and $100 an hour.
Of course, the $40 advertised price is just a baseline price. The real price is negotiated and paid
based on the specific sexual act requested and performed.

A tax auditor would notice the discrepancy between what the business charges and the far higher
amount the business actually brings in. To avoid detection, the business owner spreads the
suspicious profits out to other businesses in the network.

If the businesses were all registered under the name of the person who actually owned them
— for example, “John Q. Smith,” the connections would be clear and the money laundering
operations obvious. Because many of the businesses are registered anonymously, as shell
companies (“Massage LLC” for example), or in the name of someone other than the actual owner,
these connections are often missed, along with the opportunity to prosecute and shut down these
human trafficking venues.

Historically, victims of massage parlor trafficking have been the main target of law enforcement
activity, while the owners of the businesses — the traffickers — fly under the radar. Typical law
enforcement activity around illicit massage parlors has involved raids in which officers sweep into
the facility and arrest everyone on the premises. These raids are highly unlikely to net the actual
owners of the businesses, as they are rarely on site or even necessarily involved in the day-to-day
operations of the massage venues. That is left to managers (often referred to as “mamasan”), and
sometimes a manager-in-training (someone who is still primarily selling sex, but who has begun
assisting management in controlling victims).

Raids focusing on employees are antithetical to efforts to shut down human trafficking. First of
all, vice raids don’t do much to slow profits from these businesses. If a single venue in a criminal
network is shut down, the trafficker is still pulling in profits from the other venues, and can simply
5 For a full list of open-source data used, please see methodologies section of full report at https://polarisproject.org/
massage-parlor-trafficking transfer the victims to another massage parlor. Rotating
victims between businesses in the network, or within other networks in sharing agreements, is routine in
massage parlor trafficking. This rotation process keeps the victims disoriented and makes them therefore easier
to control while also ensuring buyers at a particular location have a steady supply of new women to choose
from. On average, traffickers rotate victims between the businesses every 2-6 weeks.6
The frequent arrests of victims — not owners — strengthens the traffickers hold on the women,
demonstrating their power while underlining the vulnerability of the victims they control and rotate at
will. The traffickers routinely tell the women under their control that they have no options for seeking assistance
once they become involved in the massage parlor
world. They are told that police see them as prostitutes, not as victims, that they are considered trash, and that
no one will help them out of their situations. When the women are then swept up in police raids, the traffickers
are proven right.

To effectively and sustainably target massage parlor
trafficking, law enforcement must undertake organized
crime investigations, which focus on ownership by
looking into money laundering or tax evasion. This
would shut down entire networks, meaning that the
women could not simply be moved around until the
police interest had calmed down. Such prosecutions
would not only punish perpetrators, but also send a
strong signal that human trafficking in massage parlors
is no longer a low-risk, high-profit venture, as it is widely
seen today. Flipping the perception of the risk versus
the reward of human trafficking in these and other
venues is key to ending the proliferation of the crime.
Unfortunately, the ability of businesses to obscure
ownership and therefore network ties, makes it
incredibly time-consuming and resource-intensive,
and sometimes impossible, for law enforcement to
undertake such investigations.
6 Rotation can vary by geographic region. This figure is based on conversations between Polaris and partner city law
enforcement and prosecutors between January 2015 and April 2016. (See Methodology, p. 87 of this report).
San Francisco Spa
Obscures Ownership7
Shell companies are intended to make
it difficult to discover true business
ownership. One spa in San Francisco,
CA, provides a good example of
how confusing a purposely obscured
business organization can be. The
phone number and address for the
spa, listed on the massage parlor
review site RubMaps, also belong
to a business bearing an individual’s
name. That business is classified under
the Standard Industrial Classification:
Religious Organizations (pretty
unusual for a religious organization
to be linked to a spa!). And it isn’t the
only linked business. The spa’s phone
number is also connected to another
business in Los Angeles with a name
advertising sexual products (classified
under Miscellaneous Retail Stores), as
well as a residential address in LA.
While there is no listed point of
contact for the shell company, the
address and phone number are that of
the original advertised illicit massage
business. The business name is also
an alias for the name of the owner of
the illicit massage business listed on
RubMaps. Having a shell company
registered at the same address as an
illicit massage business facilitates the
movement of illicitly gained funds, and
allows the spa to keep its reported
annual income under a figure that
would raise red flags. Additionally, any
income the shell company earns that
exceeds the reported annual income
can be passed off as donations, and
because the spa is registered under
Religious Organizations, the business
owners can qualify for different tax
breaks that normal small businesses
do not receive.
7 Keyhan, Rochelle et al, “Trafficking
in Illicit Massage Businesses.” Polaris,
(January 17, 2018)
CASE STUDY�
5
Along with organized crime investigations and prosecutions, the most powerful tools for
shutting down massage parlor trafficking are strong state and local civil laws that regulate how
the businesses operate. For example, laws that require massage businesses to have front-door
entrances can deter customers, who are often accustomed to frequenting illicit massage parlors
with rear entrances, if they think they might be seen or noticed entering such an establishment by
others in their community.
Enacting and enforcing such laws is among the most effective ways to shut down massage parlor
trafficking and incorporation transparency is a necessary element. It is difficult to enforce civil code
if the enforcing agency cannot identify the person who is actually responsible for paying a fine, or
remediating a building issue.
Also worth nothing is that effective enforcement requires that businesses actually register that they
are, in fact, massage businesses. Today, massage parlors can — and do — register as nail salons,
modeling studios — whatever they want. This dishonest self-classification allows them to avoid
regulations that would make it difficult for them to conduct illicit business.
For example, in Houston, many illicit massage parlors registered as modeling studios until the city
rewrote its local ordinance to close this loophole.8
In particularly egregious cases, traffickers register
under unrelated industries such as religious organizations or educational institutions, making them
eligible for tax breaks.
Again, it is hard to enforce rules requiring honest and accuracy in business registration if there is not
a human being responsible for the business that anyone can find and hold accountable.
Unfortunately, even after a city or county closes the loopholes in its ordinance, traffickers have
options. They can — and do — simply move to the next town over, where the regulations are still lax.
Preventing regulation shopping will take a concerted, nationwide effort at the state and local level.
8 Massage Establishment Ordinance « Human Trafficking Houston. (n.d.). Retrieved November 12, 2017,
from http://humantraffickinghouston.org/toolkits/massage-establishment-ordinance-toolkit/
Code Enforcement and Human Trafficking in Massage Parlors �
6
Recommendations
Requiring transparency around business ownership for law enforcement purposes is key to ending
traffickers’ ability to hide their networks and cash flow.
Both state and federal laws should:
• Require businesses to register official operators and primary owners (aka as
the beneficial owner, partner, etc.), all of whom should be required to provide a valid
phone number and address and a unique identifying number from a non-expired U.S.
passport, a non-expired U.S. state identification card or driver’s license, or a nonexpired passport issued by a foreign government.
• Require that covered entities file annual reports of beneficial owners and
provide updates to the government within 60 days of any change in the name or other
information previously disclosed about a beneficial owner or in the list of people who
are beneficial owners.
• Provide state, local and federal law enforcement with direct access to this information
• Impose criminal and civil liability for failure to report beneficial ownership information.
• Hold the official operator listed on all registration records legally liable for
the business, unless it can be confirmed that the listed operator is a victim who was
compelled to list herself as an operator.
The U.S. Congress is currently considering several bipartisan pieces of legislation that meet these
standards.9
Pending proposals differ on how information on beneficial ownership would be collected and stored.
Options include having states collect the information or putting the responsibility on FinCen, the
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. There are
pros and cons to each approach. States already have forms for corporate registration so the transition
would be somewhat smoother. The FinCEN approach would house all the information in a single
place, which could potentially make it easier for law enforcement to access in a timely manner.
With comprehensive federal legislation setting the standards for incorporation by which federal laws
and tax liability are applied, state and local law enforcement investigating massage parlor trafficking
networks will have the ability to more easily follow the money and build strong organized crime
cases. And most importantly, traffickers will no longer have the strong incentive of a system that
allows them to obscure their illicit activities.


https://polarisproject.org/wp-conte...afficking-in-Illicit-Massage-Parlors.pdf

Dave obviously didn't know about the trafficking, hell I thought it was just for being busted at a rub and tug. So just stop. You are being ridiculous.

JMO, but I fail to see the equivalence between what Robert Kraft did, and the charges alleged by Watson's 26 (and counting) accusers. The issue is consent.

Make me stop!

Thanks, OCD. I was not aware of any sex trafficking charges against Kraft. If human trafficking was involved, would that onus be on the consumer who had no knowledge of the circumstances of how the sex worker got there? Would it rise to the level of 26 separate charges by different women?

I said you might have been unaware. But now, you are trying to make excuses. Who the hell doesn't know what is going on in such places once they visited them? Please! Most of us don't go to those places for that very reason.

Is Lamar's mom still negotiating his contracts? Maybe the rats have some hope.

Can you imagine the phone call the day after Watson was signed?!

Not surprised that some will overlook sex trafficking in one case and crucify a man in another case. And OCD, get bent w/your hypocrisy.

“YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED”: THE WILD, DISTURBING SAGA OF ROBERT KRAFT’S VISIT TO A STRIP MALL SEX SPA

After the Patriots owner made two trips to Orchids of Asia Day Spa, where a half-hour “massage” costs $59, he was charged with soliciting a prostitute. What happened next was not what anyone expected.
BY MAY JEONG

OCTOBER 4, 2019
Robert Kraft waving at 2019 super bowl
ILLEGAL CONTACT
Robert Kraft at this year’s Super Bowl in Atlanta. “You won’t believe what happened,” he told a friend after getting a massage at a strip mall.PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX.

I. THE RAID
On July 6, 2018, a health inspector named Karen Herzog visited a massage parlor in South Florida for a routine inspection. She noticed that the spa worker, a young Asian woman, was “dressed provocatively,” spoke “little English,” and appeared “nervous.” Herzog also noted suitcases, clothes, a fridge full of food, and condoms, all of which, according to the training she had received, could be signs of human trafficking. She reported her findings to the Martin County sheriff’s office.

Over the next eight months, Detective Mike Fenton launched an investigation into what he believed was a large-scale prostitution ring engaged in human trafficking. Because one of the massage parlors, Orchids of Asia Day Spa, fell on the other side of the county line, in Palm Beach County, Fenton’s office notified Detective Andrew Sharp of the Jupiter police, who began his own investigation in October 2018.


Orchids is located off U.S. 1, in a strip mall anchored by a Publix supermarket. Jupiter is a three-bar town that is home to what one local calls “old and quiet money.” Like most spas in the area, Orchids charged $59 for a half hour massage and $79 for a full hour. Like many spas in the United States, it’s staffed by women of Asian descent.

For seven days in early November 2018, Sharp and his team staked out the spa. Almost everyone they saw enter was a man. One day, a group of eight men who arrived in a golf cart made touchdown gestures before entering, their arms flung up to indicate that they were about to score. “At that point I understood this was not just a regular massage parlor but one that was an illicit massage business,” Sharp later testified.

Sharp asked Herzog if she could survey the parlor, and on November 14, she complied.

Herzog later testified that the spa workers appeared agitated by her visit and failed to make eye contact. “As the inspection progressed, I began to feel more and more uneasy,” she recalled. Herzog noted an “excessive amount of food in the refrigerator.” She also noted bedding, clothing, and a flatiron. Herzog’s report gave Sharp sufficient cause to search the spa’s trash, and on November 14 and 19, his team found semen among the refuse. Last January, he requested what is colloquially known as a sneak-and-peek search warrant.

The warrant is a holdover from 9/11. Issued under the Patriot Act, it was initially designed to temporarily expand surveillance and investigative powers of law enforcement agencies in domestic terrorism cases. Since then, however, both the act and the warrant have been routinely used in cases that stray far from their original intent.

Sharp received the warrant on January 15, and two days later his team returned to Orchids, where they evacuated the premises, telling workers that a bomb threat had been called in. While the women waited outside, officers placed hidden cameras in the ceilings of the massage rooms.

Over the next five days, Sharp and his team watched, via a live feed, as more than 20 men received manual sex, oral sex, and anal play. When the johns left the spa, an officer would follow them and initiate a traffic stop as a pretext for identifying the men.

Get 1 year for just $29.99 $15 + a free tote.

Subscribe Now
Among the patrons who turned up on the surveillance video at Orchids was Robert Kraft, the 78-year-old owner of the New England Patriots. Kraft, who visited the spa on the afternoon of January 19, spends part of the year in a double oceanfront apartment he owns on Breakers Row, among the most coveted addresses in Palm Beach. Earlier that day, according to a man I spoke with who asked to be identified only as Kraft’s “best guy friend,” Kraft had gone to the hotel spa for a massage. When he was unable to get an appointment, he conferred with his old friend Peter Bernon, the dairy and plastics tycoon who also lives in Palm Beach. Bernon offered to drive Kraft in his 2014 white Bentley to a place he knew in Jupiter, 20 miles up the Treasure Coast.

At Orchids, according to the Jupiter police, Kraft paid cash to the spa’s co-owner, Lei [censored], who goes by Lulu, and received a hand job from her and another worker, later identified as Shen Mingbi. After Kraft ejaculated, Mingbi wiped his penis with a white towel. Then she and Lulu helped him get dressed.

As Kraft left the spa in the white Bentley, Officer Scott Kimbark, nicknamed Bark, stopped the car for a minor traffic violation. Kraft asked the officer if he was a Miami Dolphins fan and showed him his Super Bowl ring, explaining that he was the owner of the Patriots. Kimbark, having accomplished his mission, let Kraft and Bernon go with a warning.

WATCH


'The Boys' Cast Break Down Season 3 Fan Theories


MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Human, Person, Skirt, Clothing, Apparel, Fashion, Michael Peterson, Premiere, Long Sleeve, and Sleeve
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max

BY JULIE MILLER

Image may contain: Human, Person, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, and Tie
Royal Photographer Tim Rooke on What It’s Really Like to Travel With Kate Middleton and Prince William

BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Image may contain: Tie, Accessories, Accessory, Room, Indoors, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Human, and Person
Johnny Depp Will Have His Day in Court. Again.

BY KENZIE BRYANT


ADVERTISEMENT

Later that day, Kraft called his friend. “You won’t believe what happened to me,” his friend recalls him bragging. Kraft explained how he had gone for what he thought was a regular massage, but that the masseuse had given him a hand job instead.

The friend excoriated Kraft for getting a “rub and tug.” Kraft, seemingly hurt, insisted that it “wasn’t like that.” He said he had felt a real connection with Lulu and Mingbi.

Later that evening, Kraft received a call from Orchids, asking him to visit again. (At the time, Kraft’s number in Palm Beach was publicly listed.) Kraft, according to his friend, was thrilled. He did not seem to understand that the spa was merely soliciting repeat business.

The next day, Kraft returned to Orchids, this time with a driver in a 2015 blue Bentley. He arrived before 11 a.m., qualifying for the early bird special: $15 off. He received a hand job and a blow job from Lulu, and left after 14 minutes. That afternoon he flew to Kansas City, to watch his team play the Chiefs in the NFL playoffs. The Patriots won.

II. THE SEX RING
On February 19, after staging dramatic raids on nearly a dozen massage parlors in South Florida, Sheriff William Snyder held a press conference. Local officers, he announced, working alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, had busted a $20 million sex trafficking ring with tentacular reach to New York and China. Many of the women, he said, had been tricked into coming to the United States and had been working to pay off debts to traffickers before being rescued. “I don’t believe they were told they were going to work in massage parlors seven days a week, having unprotected sex with up to 1,000 men a year,” Snyder said.

Sex trafficking, under law, involves recruiting and transporting women by force or fraud, and coercing them to work as prostitutes. The traffickers, Snyder continued, had covered their tracks by moving the women every 10 to 20 days to different spas, where they were forced to sleep on massage tables and cook on hot plates. Some were unable to leave, the sheriff said, because the traffickers confiscated their money and passports.

Snyder announced that as many as 300 men who went to the spas for sex would be charged with soliciting prostitution. “Many of the men are married,” the sheriff said, adopting the moralizing tone common to faith-based groups that consider the sex industry an affront to Christian values. “Many of those men are in ongoing relationships.”

Three days later, on February 22, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg announced that Kraft would be charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution. “Human trafficking is evil in our midst,” Aronberg told reporters. “Modern-day slavery” can “happen anywhere, including in the peaceful community of Jupiter, Florida.”

Owner and worker from Orchids of Asia Day Spa where Robert Kraft visited
STRIP-MALL SERVICE
After Florida police raided Orchids of Asia Day Spa (above), co-owner Hua Zhang (right) was charged with procuring prostitution. Zhang started as an esthetician in China (below). FROM TOP, BY BARRY CHIN/THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES, FROM PBSO/MEGA, COURTESY OF ZHANG HUA.
III. THE ISLAND
When I arrived in Palm Beach last spring, the weather report was threatening rain. The sky hung low and the air was loamy. If you are the 1 percent, you can opt out of most things in this world, including the weather. Many of the island’s residents were packing up prior to hurricane season; covered trailers lined driveways, waiting to transport art back to Aspen or Connecticut or Long Island.

Hearings on the sex charges were ongoing; Kraft, who had pleaded not guilty, was vigorously fighting them in court. The question that the wealthy residents of Palm Beach were asking themselves was, plainly, why? Why would a man worth $6.6 billion risk getting a $59 hand job at a strip mall massage parlor?

Many year-round residents of Palm Beach attempted to distance themselves from the “nasty Krafty” scandal by dismissing the Patriots owner as nothing but a seasonal resident—one of the 20,000 or so who come to the island from Thanksgiving to Easter—and therefore not an actual member in good standing of the Palm Beach community. Others proffered the heat defense, typically reserved for explaining away acts of insanity, such as first-degree murder or third marriages. The reasoning is deterministic: the feeling that Florida itself—especially South Florida—propels men to strange deeds.

Florida has always played an outsize role in the national psyche, a shorthand for a specific aspect of the American dream. Florida is where you go when you don’t want to be found, or when you have something to hide, or to escape bad debt and scandal, as did Charles Ponzi, the original defrauder. Palm Beach is the place where William Kennedy Smith was acquitted, in 1991, of raping a woman he met at a bar alongside his uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy. Where financier Jeffrey Epstein was given a “sweetheart deal,” in 2008, for soliciting minors for prostitution. Where Bernie Madoff preyed on wealthy investors before pleading guilty, in 2009, to bilking his clients of nearly $65 billion.

South Florida as we know it began in 1886, when Standard Oil cofounder Henry Flagler started building railroads over recently drained swampland. It was Flagler who built the Breakers resort, to accommodate passengers on his railways, at a time when land was going for $1.25 per acre. (Now land goes by the square foot.) Flagler was also known for convincing the state legislature to allow him to divorce his second wife, whom he had committed to an insane asylum, so he could remarry.


MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Human, Person, Skirt, Clothing, Apparel, Fashion, Michael Peterson, Premiere, Long Sleeve, and Sleeve
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max

BY JULIE MILLER

Image may contain: Human, Person, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, and Tie
Royal Photographer Tim Rooke on What It’s Really Like to Travel With Kate Middleton and Prince William

BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Image may contain: Tie, Accessories, Accessory, Room, Indoors, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Human, and Person
Johnny Depp Will Have His Day in Court. Again.

BY KENZIE BRYANT


ADVERTISEMENT

The island of Palm Beach, 16 miles long and less than a mile wide, remains among the most economically and socially segregated towns in America. Apart from the occasional titled European, many Palm Beach residents have been heirs to various fortunes: the Singer sewing machine, the Watson computer, Jell-O, Listerine. Ninety-seven percent of residents are white, and the median age is 67. Houses come with living rooms that can hold parties of 175, and two pools—one to catch the sun in the morning, the other to catch it in the late afternoon. Rembrandts hang in guest bathrooms.

Breakers Row—home to mostly Jewish residents, including Robert Kraft—is referred to by the island’s WASPs as the Gaza Strip. The clubs are so exclusive, local legend has it, that Burt Reynolds was once turned away at the door on account of his dark skin color. Even Joseph Kennedy Sr. was reportedly spurned on account of his Catholic faith. Besides, his money was deemed too new. “It’s new if it was made in the past century,” explained Debi Murray, chief curator of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

Some residents, when I asked them about Kraft, appeared puzzled that a man of such immense wealth would feel the need to leave his valeted residence for a massage, let alone sexual services. What horrified these residents most was that Kraft had gone “over the bridge.” Over the bridge is West Palm Beach, a service town on the mainland, where the support staffs live: maids, gardeners, doctors, judges—anyone who has to work for a living. It is where you go when you can’t send someone else, when you have to show up in person at the hospital, or the courthouse, or the charity photo opportunity. The Publix supermarket on Palm Beach island sells Marcona almonds; the Publix in West Palm Beach only stocks the standard California variety.

Men like Kraft, after all, can have the help come to them. J’Anine, who used to work on the island as a high-end escort, told me about the many famous johns she had worked for, a list that includes best-selling authors and rock stars and titans of industry. As a professional, J’Anine charged $1,000 an hour—about 13 times more than Orchids. But the high price did not always ensure discretion. There had been one incident, J’Anine shared, when she took too much cocaine on the job and ended up locking herself and her crack pipe in the bathroom. The client’s daughter, desperate to get rid of her, had called the police for help. Two officers managed to restrain J’Anine, but not before using a Taser and a choke hold.

Jeff Greene, a Palm Beach resident who ranks 232nd on the Forbes list of richest Americans, told me that he could not understand why any man would want to pay for sex, but that he did understand why Kraft had chosen to go across the bridge. Everyone in Palm Beach attends the same parties, Greene explained, and wakes up the next morning to read about the selfsame parties in the town newspaper, printed on glossy paper so as not to smudge the gloved hands of its readers. “Palm Beach is a small town,” Greene said. “I imagine if you want to do something you shouldn’t be doing, you go out of town.”


MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Human, Person, Skirt, Clothing, Apparel, Fashion, Michael Peterson, Premiere, Long Sleeve, and Sleeve
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max

BY JULIE MILLER

Image may contain: Human, Person, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, and Tie
Royal Photographer Tim Rooke on What It’s Really Like to Travel With Kate Middleton and Prince William

BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Image may contain: Tie, Accessories, Accessory, Room, Indoors, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Human, and Person
Johnny Depp Will Have His Day in Court. Again.

BY KENZIE BRYANT


ADVERTISEMENT

Luxury items—champagne, caviar, truffles—have no inherent value. They are made desirable through scarcity. But for the tiny stratum of society for whom nothing is unattainable, the commonplace, paradoxically, can attain a luster of its own. If calling up an escort like J’Anine is akin to ordering Wagyu beef from room service, then visiting Orchids is like swinging by the McDonald’s drive-through.

Sometimes you just want a burger.

IV. THE MEN
Whenever I encountered men of Palm Beach in their natural habitat, in hotel lobbies, inlet tiki bars, and private clubs, they were exceedingly eager to share stories of their visits to spas like Orchids.

In midtown Manhattan, at a smoke-filled club frequented by seasonal residents like Rudy Giuliani, I fell into conversation about Kraft with a man at its mahogany bar. I explained that after many months of working on this story for VANITY FAIR, I still could not figure out why Kraft had acted with such abandon. The man, who identified himself as the son of a famous politician, explained that men go to massage parlors for many reasons. In fact, he told me, he was heading to one himself in a few days. If I liked, I would be welcome to accompany him as his guest. (The trip did not take place.)

At a bar in Jupiter, a Patriots fan named Billy told me that he is a regular at Orchids, and had visited the spa only two weeks before the raid. His father and uncle had served in World War II, he explained, at a time when the U.S. military tacitly endorsed prostitution as good for morale. Over the years, many soldiers returned from Japan and Korea and Vietnam with a highly sexualized view of the women they met.

“Marry an Asian woman,” Billy recalled being told. “You’ll be happy for the rest of your life. Asian women know how to take care of a man. You come home and she cooks dinner, takes your shoes off, never complains.”

Billy was 42 when he was first taken to a “jack shack” on his way to a Patriots game in New England. After moving to South Florida, friends he made at a local bar told him about Orchids.

“A lot of my friends think Asian women are very attractive,” Billy said. “That’s what I think myself. The girls are beautiful. They are thin, in shape. That’s why American guys like that.”

Indeed, on one of my first nights on the island, I was sitting at a hotel bar, working up the courage to crash a reception for alumni of the Harvard Business School, Kraft’s alma mater, that had already begun out on the deck. An older gentleman approached me and asked where the function was. I pointed to the deck. He told me he couldn’t hear what I was saying. I suggested he try the deck. He became upset and walked away.

Later, the man approached me again, this time to apologize for having behaved rudely. By way of explanation, he told me that he had thought I was a member of the hotel’s service staff. I introduced myself as a reporter in town on a story, and we began chatting about Kraft and Jupiter. Suddenly, he leaned toward me—this older man who only moments earlier had treated me with disdain—and began making sexually explicit comments. “I had all these fantasies about you,” he confessed.

On the island, there were only two preordained roles for a young woman of Asian descent. Being a reporter was not one of them.

V. THE MADAM
Lulu, the co-owner of Orchids who allegedly attended to Kraft, lives a world away from her clients. From Palm Beach, you drive through West Palm Beach, past the South Dixie Highway, past laundromats advertising weekday deals and pawn shops after your gold. If you hang a right and drive north until the turnpike narrows, past billboards advertising plastic surgery and personal injury lawyers, past state prisoners performing hot, humid labor, you enter Martin and Port St. Lucie and Indian River counties, where the rest of Florida lives.

There, upstream from the source, the story of Kraft and the massage parlor raids has grown muddied. Flora Vera and Sean Williams, who live next door to Lulu, told me they had heard the sex workers had been kept naked so they wouldn’t run away. Another neighbor chimed in, telling me it was all part of a complex global conspiracy involving President Trump, full of byzantine connections that I found impossible to follow.

Flora laughed. “Next thing you know, we are saying I saw a UFO,” she said.

“Well, I did see a UFO,” her husband said.

He told me that it had appeared above a Kmart parking lot at dusk, “hovering above the pines,” on his way to church. He had been 12 years old. Later, Flora told me that she has precognitive dreams.

Lulu, who had been arrested at home and released after posting a cash bail of $75,000, declined my request for an interview. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including soliciting others to commit prostitution. But her business partner, Hua Zhang, who owns the other half of Orchids, agreed to speak to me.


MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Human, Person, Skirt, Clothing, Apparel, Fashion, Michael Peterson, Premiere, Long Sleeve, and Sleeve
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max

BY JULIE MILLER

Image may contain: Human, Person, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, and Tie
Royal Photographer Tim Rooke on What It’s Really Like to Travel With Kate Middleton and Prince William

BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Image may contain: Tie, Accessories, Accessory, Room, Indoors, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Human, and Person
Johnny Depp Will Have His Day in Court. Again.

BY KENZIE BRYANT


ADVERTISEMENT

Zhang was born into a “not rich but respected” family in Guangzhou, China, in 1960. After marrying and giving birth to a son, Zhang applied for a U.S. visa in 2001. Five years later, the visa came through. Zhang hesitated. She was making a good living in China as an esthetician. She knew every bend of every road in Guangzhou. The new country would be full of unfamiliar roads, and strangers who wouldn’t know how to pronounce her name.

But Zhang was a mother before she was anything else, and she decided to emigrate for her son. After the family moved to Los Angeles, Zhang learned there weren’t many opportunities for a middle-aged woman with no professional expertise. A friend Zhang made from her English as a second language class suggested she go to work at a massage school run by Jet Li’s personal masseuse.

ONE NEIGHBOR SAID THE RAIDS WERE PART OF A COMPLEX GLOBAL CONSPIRACY INVOLVING TRUMP, THE DETAILS OF WHICH WERE IMPOSSIBLE TO FOLLOW.

At the school, Zhang made another friend who later moved to Florida to work at a massage parlor there. The friend soon began calling Zhang, pleading with her to join her. Zhang was reluctant, but by that time her son was grown, and she and her husband were filing for divorce. Florida is the land of second acts, and in 2010, Zhang moved to Jupiter to begin her life anew as Mandy.

Mandy packed light; she knew every­thing would be provided. Businesses owned by Chinese Americans—laundro­mats, restaurants, massage parlors—frequently provide room, board, and transportation for newly arrived workers, who often lack the means and connections to buy or rent a place on their own.

After a few years of hard work, Mandy raised enough money to buy Orchids in 2013. She hired workers from Chinese immigrant communities across the country, placing ads in Chinese-language newspapers. Mandy also provided day care for children while their mothers were at work. By then, her son had moved to Florida, and word got out that a Chinese woman and her English-speaking son would take in your kids for a reasonable fee. Soon, Mandy was looking after as many as 11 children.

In 2017, Mandy signed over half of the spa to Lulu, one of her steadiest workers. She began devoting most of her time to her grandson, Michael—named after local resident Michael Jordan, who owns a 28,000-square-foot mansion on three acres in Jupiter.

On the morning of February 19, Mandy was making coffee at a condominium near the spa that she had rented to house her workers. Suddenly, there was banging at the door. Six police officers swarmed in, handcuffed Mandy, and booked her into the Palm Beach jail.

“At the time I thought: They must have made a mistake,” she says. “It’s so funny—they treat me as a treacherous criminal. I can’t believe what kind of system it is. Why do you make such a big move against a family woman?”

As the co-owner of Orchids, Mandy was charged with a second-degree misdemeanor for “maintaining a house of prostitution.” She was also charged with 26 counts of soliciting others to commit prostitution, as well as a second-degree felony for deriving support from prostitution, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges. A police affidavit lists the “victim” of her crime as the state of Florida. “Because it’s our society as a whole that has been victimized by this prurient behavior,” explains Robert Norvell, a West Palm Beach attorney who represents one of the defendants in the case. “I [censored] you not.”


MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Human, Person, Skirt, Clothing, Apparel, Fashion, Michael Peterson, Premiere, Long Sleeve, and Sleeve
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max

BY JULIE MILLER

Image may contain: Human, Person, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, and Tie
Royal Photographer Tim Rooke on What It’s Really Like to Travel With Kate Middleton and Prince William

BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Image may contain: Tie, Accessories, Accessory, Room, Indoors, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Human, and Person
Johnny Depp Will Have His Day in Court. Again.

BY KENZIE BRYANT


ADVERTISEMENT

After a few weeks, Mandy was released on bail. Unable to return to the condo, where two of her employees were being detained, she was placed under house arrest in a home that a cousin of hers had put on the market. The house, on a quiet street in a gated subdivision, had not been lived in for some time, and was infested with vermin. Mandy spent six weeks scrubbing its floors. Her ankle monitor prevented her from taking out the trash or picking the ripe mangoes in the backyard, so she stared at the falling fruit from the window.

VI. THE MOGUL
The men who were arrested for availing themselves of Mandy’s services faced no such restrictions. After his arrest, Kraft was free to live his best life. He reportedly donated $100,000 at a charity dinner at the Breakers in Palm Beach, attended the annual pre-Oscar brunch at the Beverly Hills home of Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, and watched Rafael Nadal defeat Dominic Thiem in Paris to win the French Open.

Kraft was born in 1941, in the affluent Boston suburb of Brookline. In 1963, he married Myra Hiatt, an heiress to a paper box fortune whom he met at a Boston deli. They had four children. In 1994, he purchased the New England Patriots, growing the team into one of the most valuable franchises in the National Football League.

In 2010, Myra, referred to by some as the “smartest Kraft,” fell ill with ovarian cancer. During the NFL lockout in 2011, Kraft spent his days negotiating with union representatives, then came home each evening to rub Myra’s feet. She died later that year, and Kraft’s life became a boat you forgot to tie up.

The following year, at a party in Los Angeles at the home of New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, Kraft met Ricki Noel Lander, an aspiring actress 38 years his junior. The two began seeing each other: on, then off, then on again.

Kraft reveled in his newfound status as a single rich guy. Owning a winning football team in America gave him access to a world that money alone can’t buy. He was seen at the Met Gala and the Grammys and the VANITY FAIR Oscar party, and sometimes appeared at events alongside young women who remained uncredited in photos.

Kraft hadn’t gone to Orchids on that January day because the Florida heat had driven him mad, or because he was in search of anonymity, or because he had served his country in the Far East. Born the year of Pearl Harbor, he was 13 when the Vietnam War began. He went to Orchids, in his relatively new status as a single rich guy, to get a massage. And it was in his part as a single rich guy that he came to believe he had done nothing wrong. According to his best friend, he thought there had been something between him and Lulu. He thought she liked him. He thought that what had transpired between them had no business being discussed in a courtroom.

“If you are affluent, rules loosely apply to you,” says Norvell, the lawyer representing one of the defendants. “You wear it like a loose garment.”

As the owner of a six-time Super Bowl championship team, Kraft understood that sometimes the best defense is a good offense. To represent him in court, he hired William Burck, who withheld sensitive documents from Congress during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing; Alex Spiro, who defended former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez after he was charged with murder; and Jack ­Goldberger, the Palm Beach attorney who helped broker a plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein himself, in his twisted worldview, saw Kraft as a kindred spirit. A few months after Kraft was charged, a Fox Business reporter asked Palm Beach’s most notorious sex offender if he knew that the girls he had lured to his mansion for massages and sex were underage. Epstein insisted that his own crimes weren’t “that much different than what happened to Bob Kraft. Only he went somewhere, and they came to me.”

Kraft’s legal team bombarded the court with motions, pushing to bar the public release of the surveillance video from Orchids as an invasion of their client’s privacy. “It’s basically pornography,” Burck told the court.


MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Human, Person, Skirt, Clothing, Apparel, Fashion, Michael Peterson, Premiere, Long Sleeve, and Sleeve
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max

BY JULIE MILLER

Image may contain: Human, Person, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, and Tie
Royal Photographer Tim Rooke on What It’s Really Like to Travel With Kate Middleton and Prince William

BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Image may contain: Tie, Accessories, Accessory, Room, Indoors, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Human, and Person
Johnny Depp Will Have His Day in Court. Again.

BY KENZIE BRYANT


ADVERTISEMENT

On March 28, the state attorney’s office in Palm Beach offered Kraft a plea bargain. If he admitted his guilt, the charges would be dropped and his record expunged. Prosecutors extended the same offer to the other defendants in Palm Beach, a county that, despite being the home of Mar-a-Lago, votes blue. Next door, in the Trump-supporting Martin County, no plea deals were forthcoming.

Kraft rejected the plea deal.

America’s criminal justice system relies on defendants taking plea deals: More than 90 percent do so. The system was not built to indict rich men, and so it was not prepared for a rich man to reject an offer of leniency. The case would have gone away quickly had Kraft not decided to devote his tremendous resources to destroying the state’s case.

Palm beach resort and Kraft meeting with Trump
COUNTRY-CLUB LIFE
The Breakers (above), the Palm Beach resort where Kraft has an apartment. In 2017, Kraft joined President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago (below). TOP, THE PALM BEACH POST/ZUMAPRESS.COM; BOTTOM, BY AL DRAGO/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX.
VII. THE RESCUE INDUSTRY
Florida, perhaps more than any other state, has been a leader of the Christian right’s campaign to “rescue” those they consider victims of a globally syndicated criminal human trafficking ring. The first comprehensive human trafficking act passed in 2000, but it wasn’t until three years later, when President George W. Bush pledged $50 million to support anti-trafficking organizations, that the campaign became a full-fledged industry.

Human trafficking is a serious problem: The Department of Health and Human Services calls it the world’s “fastest-growing criminal industry.” But some anti-trafficking groups, in search of funding, routinely overstate the scale of the commercial sex trade. They frequently claim that 300,000 minors are “at risk” for being sold into sexual slavery in America each year—a number that has been debunked by researchers as wildly overinflated. (The Washington Post dismisses it as a “nonsense statistic.”) In 2018, the FBI confirmed a total of 649 trafficking cases in America, adults included.

Even more alarming, the exaggerated numbers about sex trafficking have come to inform public policy. On May 3, driven in part by spurious statistics, the Florida legislature passed a sweeping new law to combat prostitution. The measure creates a statewide “anti-prostitution registry” that is intended to list men like Robert Kraft, should he be convicted, as a john. But critics worry that the registry, which is vaguely defined, will also wind up including sex workers like Lulu and Shen Mingbi. In doing so, the anti-prostitution law could effectively end up functioning as an anti-immigration law, targeting poor women of color, many of them from Asia.

Florida’s new sex registry is the latest in a long line of similar laws. One of America’s first laws against prostitution, in fact, was the 1870 Act to Prevent the Kidnapping and Importing of Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese Females for Criminal or Demoralizing Purposes, intended to protect the public from “scandal and injury.” The law was a precursor to the Page Act of 1875, which aimed to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women,” which in turn was a precursor to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first law to bar all members of a specific ethnicity or nationality from immigrating.


MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Human, Person, Skirt, Clothing, Apparel, Fashion, Michael Peterson, Premiere, Long Sleeve, and Sleeve
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max

BY JULIE MILLER

Image may contain: Human, Person, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, and Tie
Royal Photographer Tim Rooke on What It’s Really Like to Travel With Kate Middleton and Prince William

BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Image may contain: Tie, Accessories, Accessory, Room, Indoors, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Human, and Person
Johnny Depp Will Have His Day in Court. Again.

BY KENZIE BRYANT


ADVERTISEMENT

The raids on Orchids and other massage parlors in South Florida were conducted in the name of rescuing women from sex trafficking. But the only people put in jail were the women themselves. A few, like Lulu and Mandy, managed to post bail and were placed under house arrest. But others were transferred to the custody of ICE. Women who migrated to America in search of work—who chose the least bad option available to them—were being punished for what one of their lawyers calls “the crime of poverty.”

The New York Times and other news outlets, quoting investigators, initially presented the raids as a clear-cut case of sex trafficking. Women at the spas, the media reported, were working “14 hour days” and “sleeping on massage tables.” After “surrendering” their passports to spa owners, they were not allowed to leave the premises without an escort. The “wretched” women in “strip-mall brothels” were not sex workers, but rather “trafficking victims trapped among South Florida’s rich and famous.”

But as police subjected the women to hours-long interrogations, those claims began to unravel. The only woman alleged to have been locked up and forced to live on the premises was Yong [censored], who went by the spa name Nancy. In fact, like many other employees, Nancy had been hired from out of state, so her boss drove her back and forth from the job. When the owner fell ill, Nancy was asked if she wouldn’t mind sleeping at the spa.

The one woman whose passport had allegedly been taken away was Lixia Zhu, or Yoyo. During questioning, the police repeatedly grilled Yoyo, looking for evidence of human trafficking. Did anyone else set up her bank account for her? Did anyone else have access to her account? “Did you feel like you had a choice to come down and work, or did you feel like you were forced to?”

“No one forced me,” Yoyo insisted. It was the terrible winter of 2018 back in Pennsylvania, where she was living at the time, that inspired her to move to Florida.

The interrogator pressed harder. “Did you feel like you had to do this?”

Yoyo shook her head.

“Then why did you do it?”

The inquiry continued along these lines for several more hours. It was somehow easier for law enforcement officers in South Florida to believe that the women had been sold into sex slavery by a global crime syndicate than to acknowledge that immigrant women of precarious status, hemmed in by circumstance, might choose sex work.

In the end, Yoyo told police that her boyfriend had confiscated her passport, locked it in a safe, and threatened her with a gun. He was the one, she intimated, who had forced her into sexual slavery.

Later, during a hearing conducted after she had managed to retain a lawyer, Yoyo recanted the story about her boyfriend. She told the court that she had said what she felt the police wanted to hear, in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence.


MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Human, Person, Skirt, Clothing, Apparel, Fashion, Michael Peterson, Premiere, Long Sleeve, and Sleeve
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max

BY JULIE MILLER

Image may contain: Human, Person, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, and Tie
Royal Photographer Tim Rooke on What It’s Really Like to Travel With Kate Middleton and Prince William

BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Image may contain: Tie, Accessories, Accessory, Room, Indoors, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Human, and Person
Johnny Depp Will Have His Day in Court. Again.

BY KENZIE BRYANT


ADVERTISEMENT

Within weeks of the raids, the state’s case had evaporated. There was no $20 million trafficking ring, no women tricked into sex slavery. The things the state had mistaken as markers for human trafficking—long working hours, shared eating and living arrangements, suspicion of outside authorities, ties to New York and China—were, in fact, common organizing principles of many Chinese immigrant communities. As an assistant state attorney in Palm Beach told the court on April 12: “There is no human trafficking that arises out of this investigation.”

VIII. THE MIX-UP
Democrats have tried, so far without success, to tie the Orchids scandal to Donald Trump. Kraft, after all, was a close friend of the president. He had attended Trump’s wedding to Melania in 2005, and gave $1 million to his inaugural fund. (Trump once reportedly tried to set up Ivanka with Tom Brady, hoping to make the Patriots quarterback his son-in-law.) Li “Cindy” Yang, the former owner of the Orchids spa, also donated to Trump’s campaign, and ran a consulting firm that promised Chinese business executives access to Trump and Mar-a-Lago.

On March 15, congressional Democrats on the intelligence and judiciary committees asked the FBI, the director of national intelligence, and the Secret Service to open an investigation into Yang and her alleged ties to Trump. I emailed Nancy Pelosi’s office to ask why she wanted Yang to be investigated by a top intelligence agency. The speaker’s press officer, Ashley Etienne, pointed me to news reports about Yang “bypassing security” at Mar-a-Lago. “This was before it broke that she’s a likely spy,” Etienne added.

Etienne appeared to have misidentified Yang. I asked her if she was referring to a separate probe involving a Chinese woman named Yujing Zhang, who had allegedly breached Mar-a-Lago security. “I am not sure what you mean,” Etienne wrote back, referring me to the FBI for “more details.”

I also emailed Senator Dianne Feinstein, who had signed the letter requesting an investigation. Her press person also responded by citing the case against Zhang.

“This is political prosecution with no evidence,” Cliff Yi, executive director of the National Committee of Asian American Republicans, told me. “It reminds us of our experience in China. It reminds us of how we were scared, how we were oppressed.”

On September 11, Zhang was convicted of trespassing and lying to federal agents. The FBI has also opened a public corruption investigation into Yang, focusing on whether she illegally funneled money from China into Trump’s reelection campaign. Federal prosecutors sent subpoenas to Mar-a-Lago, demanding that it turn over all records relating to Yang.

IX. THE DOUBLE STANDARD
Kraft, aided by the best defense team money can buy, seems likely to beat the charges against him. Last May, a judge threw out the video evidence that had been gathered at Orchids, ruling that the warrant had been “seriously flawed.” The judge also threw out evidence from Kraft’s traffic stop, calling it “the fruit of an unlawful search.” The state is appealing the ruling.

Even if he is found guilty, however, Kraft has little to fear in the way of punishment. In Florida, as in most other states, the purchasing of sex is a misdemeanor. The few first-time johns who wind up being convicted typically pay a fine and perform no more than 100 hours of community service. The selling of sex, however, is policed far more severely. Sex workers are more likely than johns to face repeated arrest, increasing the odds that they will be charged with a felony and sentenced to prison, and have fewer resources to defend themselves in court. And “madams” who profit from the prostitution of others—the charge leveled against Mandy and Lulu—can be convicted of money laundering if the proceeds are deposited in a bank, or used to pay rent, or buy milk.

While Kraft’s legal team fights to have the charges against him dismissed, one of the alleged sex workers arrested in the raids, Lei Chen, remains in ICE custody. Under civil forfeiture proceedings, the state seized her J.P. Morgan Chase account, which held $2,900. Until August 21, when she was transferred to another immigration facility, Chen was held at the detention center in West Palm Beach, a half mile from a strip club where Stormy Daniels performed, and across from the Trump International Golf Club.

Another alleged sex worker, Yaping Ren, was also held for five months, waiting to be handed over to ICE, before being released in July. Her status remains uncertain: Her attorney told me that he has been unable to determine whether she is going to be deported. The county has only two court-certified Mandarin interpreters, who charge $400 an hour—a prohibitively high fee for his clients.

Under Florida law, it would appear, happy endings are the exclusive property of men.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/the-disturbing-saga-of-robert-kraft

Not surprised that some will overlook sex trafficking in one case and crucify a man in another case. And OCD, get bent w/your hypocrisy.

Why was Robert Kraft only charged with solicitation of prostitution in a sex trafficking case?


The case of the Patriots' owner highlights how many people don't see the trafficking victims before their own eyes.


By Andrea Powell, founder and executive director, Karana Rising


Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, was charged this week with soliciting prostitution in a case that law enforcement referred to as a human trafficking investigation. The disconnect between a solicitation charge and his patronization of a massage parlor said to be engaging in the trafficking of women seems to have many people confused as to the difference between prostitution and sex trafficking. Did he buy sex from a sex worker? Or did he pay for sex from a sex trafficking victim?

Sadly, there's no way to know if Kraft and the other men charged with solicitation by law enforcement cared enough to ask; news reports indicate that, even if they did, many of the women did not did not speak English. But the distinction between sex work and sex trafficking, and relationship between the two, matters. And failing to appreciate as much often leads to victims being arrested, and the most dangerous traffickers walking free.

The shame associated with buying and selling sex coupled with the clandestine nature of sex trafficking makes questions about who buys sex, who sells it and whether there is (or can be) respect and autonomy in the transaction very hard to answer. But if we want to end sex trafficking, we must tackle them, and we must understand that sex trafficking, as opposed to sex work, is about serial rape for profit.




Robert Kraft's arrest is a chance for Roger Goodell to show the NFL is serious about its morality policies
To legally define an adult as a victim of sex trafficking, two primary elements must exist: First, there must be a trafficker (often referred to as a pimp) profiting off the sale of someone else for commercial sex. Second, there must be elements of force, fraud or coercion between the pimp and the person being sold for sex; these can be threats of beatings, threats against someone the victim loves, threats of deportation or other kinds of emotional manipulation. Traffickers are masters of deception who generally leave their victims too terrified to try to escape, even if someone on the outside might think the victim had a choice.

Child sex trafficking involves a trafficker, a sex buyer and a child under the age of 18; unlike with adult victims, law enforcement does not need to prove force, fraud or coercion because the power dynamic between adults and children is presumed under the law to replace that requirement. Buying sex from a child is always a crime but, in some states such as Maryland, children can still be arrested for prostitution and other commercial sexual activity even if they are simultaneously considered trafficked.

At Karana Rising, the survivor-led nonprofit I co-founded, the average age we see for those victimized by sex trafficking is 14-16 years, though many of those trafficked as minors are exploited until they 18 and beyond. Their underage exploitation often leaves them with no education, few job options and trauma; reaching the age of majority is no shield against being trafficked.



To end sex trafficking, stop arresting sex workers
And, due to the criminalization of sex work in most of the United States, many sex workers and sex trafficking victims — such as those to whom Kraft allegedly bought access — are simply arrested, which pushes them even further to the margins of society. The threat of arrest is often held over the heads of sex trafficking victims by their traffickers, and makes them less likely to trust the police. They thus often stay in “the life” for years, going from child victim to adult victim.

Kraft is alleged to have bought sex from illicit massage businesses where adult women from Asian countries were being trafficked. Inside these establishments, police have alleged that the women were often forced to engage in sexual acts with up to 8 to 15 men a day and were frequently moved from establishment to establishment while never being able to leave the premises on their own.

This set-up is common among the few larger trafficking rings, which often hold women captive and even tell them that they must pay back a debt of thousands of dollars before they will be “free.” But their traffickers, who may even charge them even for the lubricants or condoms used during their rapes (if they're allowed to use condoms at all), know that those debts will almost surely never be satisfied.




Coming out in a small conservative town made my father a trailblazer

Most buyers, meanwhile, do not see the full scope of the harm that they (and their demand) causes these victims. Many seek to find — or convince themselves they have found — the “pure” sex worker who has, in the buyer’s mind, simply “chosen” that profession as one of many options available to them.

Maybe they have, but it is likely they have not. For example, consenting adults engaging in commercial sexual activity with no elements of force, fraud or coercion do not exist in locked establishments where the women inside cannot leave of their own free will.

Yet, at the real core of trafficking is poverty, misogyny and racism. At Karana Rising, we know that most sex trafficking survivors first experienced homelessness, domestic violence and sexual abuse prior to being trafficked, or they were fleeing political or economic instability in their home country — often instability driven by massive destitution.


Cyntoia Brown's clemency must begin a #MeToo movement for unacknowledged sex trafficking survivors

For those sex trafficking survivors who do get out of their situations and find support services, they often struggle to find employment and stable housing because of a lack of family support, unjust arrests and stigma. Their previous trauma, exposure to the sex trade and economic instability lead them back into the world that they know, even if being there is not truly what they want in life, and often back into being trafficked.

Our society also demands a “perfect” victim when it comes to women we recognized as trafficked, even though many victims are not kidnapped or naïve foreign women or girls. Many of the trafficking victims with whom we work are desperately poor and marginalized women who were (and continue to be) boxed out of the opportunities that would enable them to thrive before, during and after they were forced, defrauded or coerced by a trafficker.

This brings us back to Kraft, the NFL and others in a position to effect change. Professional sports leagues, owners and players have the agency to educate their staff and players, adopt no-tolerance policies around sex work and sex trafficking and commit substantial resources to survivor services. Society has afforded them the privilege and power that victims of sex trafficking do not have; men like Robert Kraft have the resources and systemic advantage to make a difference in the lives of women that are too often exploited.

The question now is whether he will.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opini...-prostitution-sex-trafficking-ncna976361

Not surprised that some will overlook sex trafficking in one case and crucify a man in another case. And OCD, get bent w/your hypocrisy.

Not surprised that some will overlook sex trafficking in one case and crucify a man in another case. And OCD, get bent w/your hypocrisy.

It seems you don't want to speculate on Watson but would be willing to speculate on Kraft even though Kraft apparently made two trips (reported that we know of) to the one location?

You can post whatever you like.

Re-read my post. No-where did I suggest you couldn't have those opinions. In fact much of the post was verifying I understood your perspective. If you think otherwise - quote where I said not to.

Don't become a mini-Vers. Hopefully you are better than that.

Using another use as an insult?


"It seems you don't want to speculate"...

Not in that post, it was directed specifically at the disparity in accusations. Don't read more into than that.

I have commented on Watson's situation elsewhere.

That should have been :usin another user as an insult"

Not surprised that some will overlook sex trafficking in one case and crucify a man in another case. And OCD, get bent w/your hypocrisy.

Sorry you got dragged into this Frank. However, I never once said that Kraft was guilty of illegal trafficking. 888 fabricated that and Pit was on board. I reported them to the refs and explained that I never once said that or tried to imply it. The posts still stand. That's the way it goes.

Like a moth to a flame.

I am not shy about stating my opinions and some board bullies can't stop me from voicing my opinions!!!

For those sex trafficking survivors who do get out of their situations and find support services, they often struggle to find employment and stable housing because of a lack of family support, unjust arrests and stigma. Their previous trauma, exposure to the sex trade and economic instability lead them back into the world that they know, even if being there is not truly what they want in life, and often back into being trafficked.

Our society also demands a “perfect” victim when it comes to women we recognized as trafficked, even though many victims are not kidnapped or naïve foreign women or girls. Many of the trafficking victims with whom we work are desperately poor and marginalized women who were (and continue to be) boxed out of the opportunities that would enable them to thrive before, during and after they were forced, defrauded or coerced by a trafficker.

Well you accused me of trying to prevent you from expressing an opinion. I did no such thing. That's something someone else dies a lot. I thought you were better. Sorry.

Thanks for the discussion.

Not surprised that some will overlook sex trafficking in one case and crucify a man in another case. And OCD, get bent w/your hypocrisy.

You were trying construct and imply Kraft was involved with sex trafficking and that posters were overlooking that while trying to "crucify" Watson.

You can't lie your way around this.