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The Washington Post reports that an internet escort in Charleston, W.Va., may have saved her own life and the lives of many other women, when she shot and killed an alleged attacker who showed up at the woman's home on July 18 after answering an escort ad she had placed on Backpage.com. Neal Falls showed up with multiple pairs of handcuffs and a Subaru full of weapons and tools, including a shovel, knives, a bulletproof vest, a machete, bleach, trash bags, sledgehammers and axes. In Falls's pocket, police said, was a list of names of potential future victims, all of whom are sex workers who advertised on Backpage. Investigators are trying to determine whether Falls is responsible for a string of slayings targeting sex workers in Ohio and Nevada. "We are entering his DNA profile into CODIS, which is a national crime DNA database, to see if it matches any previous submissions from anywhere in the United States," says Steve Cooper, the Charleston Police Department's chief of detectives. "If his DNA has been located in any other crimes and his profile was entered into CODIS, there will be a match."
From the moment Falls showed up at the home of his latest alleged victim, he turned violent. "I knew he was there to kill me," says the victim who asked not to be identified. Falls pulled a gun on her and began strangling her. "When he strangled me he just wouldn't let me get any air. I grabbed my rake and when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him. I just grabbed the gun and shot behind me." Local authorities are treating the shooting as an act of self-defense. According to Cooper, "when we find multiple sets of handcuffs, a machete, an axe, a bulletproof vest and container of bleach, the first thing that comes to an investigator's mind is, 'This is a serial killer kit.'"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2015, @06:00AM
Human trafficking exists BECAUSE prostitution is banned. If prostitution were 100% legal and open, then the pimp(s) would have one hell of a hard time trapping girls into these "relationships".
Entrapping the johns for soliciting doesn't impress me much. There's just something about the term "entrapment" that makes me nervous. It's a democracy, you say? A democracy in which multiple demographics don't get any say? Interesting . . .
(Score: 5, Informative) by hankwang on Monday July 27 2015, @07:09AM
"Human trafficking exists BECAUSE prostitution is banned. If prostitution were 100% legal and open, then the pimp(s) would have one hell of a hard time trapping girls into these "relationships"."
Here in the Netherlands, prostitution is actually legal. Trafficking is still a big problem. Insecure young women, sometimes even minors, get trapped into those "relationships" nevertheless. They are typically blackmailed to keep working under the threat of being outed towards their friends and parents. Happens both to locals and girls from abroad (Eastern Europe). What these pimps do is illegal (prison sentences) but it happens nevertheless. In my town, a large red-light district was shut down a year ago because of all the trafficking going on.
Making prostitution illegal would not solve these things, but you can't claim that legal prostitution would solve them either.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2015, @07:12AM
Interesting . . . I wouldn't expect that. Yeah, I expect opportunists to look for such opportunities, but I would never have thought of it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @07:21AM
> Interesting . . . I wouldn't expect that.
Frankly your demonstrated understanding of human psychology is very poor in general. I used to be like you when I was a teenager and then I started to wonder why the fuck I was so frequently wrong about people. It was a real blow to the ego to realize people who did things I didn't understand were not actually stupid, that in fact I was the stupid one for assuming their motivations fit into the simplistic boxes of my worldview.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @09:05AM
"It was a real blow to the ego to realize people who did things I didn't understand were not actually stupid"
I don't smoke, drink, or dfo drugs. I don't understand and have never understood why anyone would do anything both so costly and self destructive. Please explain.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @09:46AM
They do it because it feels good. Pretty simple no?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @03:05PM
I can't tell if you are Poe's Lawing or not.
Life is not binary. Substance abuse is not the same as recreational use.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @04:46PM
Lots of possible reasons:
1. They're not as destructive/self-destructive as the government claims. Prohibition, on the other hand, is far more destructive to individuals and society as a whole.
2. They're not as dangerous as the government claims
3. Because its illegal. Fuck the man, rebel against society!
4. They're fun
5. To see the world and your problems from different perspectives
6. Spirituality
7. Therapy/mental health; MDMA is ideal for this [maps.org]
8. Experimentation, including "The government and my parents lied to me about weed, so I bet they're lying about crack and heroin too. Lets see what those are like."
9. Social lubrication
10. Escapism
11. Physical dependence or addiction
And that's just off the top of my head. There's lots more reasons, and everyone has their own.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday July 27 2015, @01:18PM
Frankly your demonstrated understanding of human psychology is very poor in general. I used to be like you when I was a teenager and then I started to wonder why the fuck I was so frequently wrong about people. It was a real blow to the ego to realize people who did things I didn't understand were not actually stupid, that in fact I was the stupid one for assuming their motivations fit into the simplistic boxes of my worldview.
I don't see that you are in a position by your own admission to make such a judgment or that such a judgment is warranted in this case. When someone puts up a legal/social framework or system, we don't automatically expect to understand all the ways it can possibly be gamed. I don't consider the previous discussion to be poor understanding of human psychology. Now, Runaway may have written elsewhere of things that indicate some degree of ignorance of human nature, but I don't think that has happened here.
Further, to veer back towards the main topic, it's worth noting here that no one has actually demonstrated that making prostitution illegal helps with human trafficking. They have shown (and I might be a bit generous here) the lesser claim that making prostitution legal doesn't completely eliminate human trafficking or dysfunctional relationships which I doubt was Runaway's expectation despite what was written.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @02:53PM
I don't see that you are in a position by your own admission to make such a judgment or that such a judgment is warranted in this case. When someone puts up a legal/social framework or system, we don't automatically expect to understand all the ways it can possibly be gamed.
That you think it has anything to do with being "gamed" suggests you suffer from the poor analytical ability as runaway. Based on your posting history that is unsurprising you two are fellow travelers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:20AM
That you think it has anything to do with being "gamed" suggests you suffer from the poor analytical ability as runaway.
No, "gamed" is merely an obvious term with respect to discussing intentional systems. When someone figures out how to exploit for benefit a contrived system in a way which was not intended, then it is "gamed". That is all. Given that one of the justifications for legalizing prostitution is to reduce human trafficking, then any behavior, cunning or not, which both runs counter to the intent and amply benefits the person exhibiting the behavior, is gaming of the system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @11:05AM
So it's legal, but how well is it regulated? Is it licensed? Are there inspections?
There's certainly nothing inherent in legalisation which prevents trafficking. What is needed is some easy way for clients to know they're getting the genuine article.
(Score: 2) by Francis on Monday July 27 2015, @03:59PM
That's always going to be a problem under a system like that. The Swedes came up with a system where it's legal to sell sex, but it's illegal to buy sex, traffic in sex workers or promote other's prostitution. It's a system that we've adopted lately. The prostitutes were never the problem, the rape, sexual abuse, exploitation and various other things associated with it were.
People like to suggest that legalization would solve the problem, but more likely it would just make it that much harder to prosecute when there's a problem.
In The Netherlands, the issue they have is primarily due to people compelling the sex workers to lie about the conditions. So you have brothels and it can be really hard for the authorities to determine and prove that the workers are all there voluntarily.
One can solve the tautological problem by legalization, but you're not likely to really solve most of the problems by just legalizing it.
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Monday July 27 2015, @05:04PM
"So it's legal, but how well is it regulated [in NL]? Is it licensed? Are there inspections?"
Sex workers are considerered entrepreneurs, who don't need a license. However, you will need a license to run a brothel. I think inspections are done, but that means that there should be proper employee records. Possibly, prostitutes are asked to declare that they are doing this out of free will. The problem is that abused prostitutes are unlikely to tell an inspector that they are being forced; it is difficult to prosecute pimps.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @04:33PM
The goal isn't to eliminate human trafficking completely, because that's impossible, but to significantly reduce it and its profitability, which is exactly what it would accomplish. No solution is perfect, period, but their lack of perfection is not a reason why they should not be implemented.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday July 27 2015, @06:14PM
Here in the Netherlands, prostitution is actually legal. Trafficking is still a big problem. Insecure young women, sometimes even minors, get trapped into those "relationships" nevertheless. They are typically blackmailed to keep working under the threat of being outed towards their friends and parents.
Would this still happen if prostitution was legal and accepted everywhere? It seems to me that one could only be trapped into a position such as this as long as there is only a limited, "shameful" industry to take advantage of it. Maybe we should bring back the temple prostitutes, and ally prostitution with all the churches.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @07:03PM
The threat of outing is because of societal pressures and not an aspect of legality. If society had more rational views about sex, such pressures should not exist. For example, I do not think any less, or more, of a person that chooses to involve themselves in consenting sex-related practices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @02:14PM
No, human trafficking exists because there is money in it. If prostitution were 100% legal and and open, then the pimp(s) would start beating on the "free operators" and drive them out of their turf. Or into their stables, more likely. You can't wave a magical "freedom wand" and expect all will be better. I'd have thought we'd have learned that from Iraq.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @04:54PM
You mean like how the drug cartels are blowing up marijuana dispensaries and killing the legal sellers in Colorado and Washington? Wait, they're not? You mean legalization has almost completely driven out the marijuana black market in those states where marijuana is legalized? Who'da thunked it?