Comments

1
Freedom of Speech? WASPS . . . and their warped libidos . . . FLEEING for their pathetic lives outta Europe aaaaaaaaallllllllllllll those years ago . . . .
2
Ms. Brownstone, if MADD funded a DUI enforcement prosecutor, would that be a problem for you? If an insurance company funded a prosecutor specializing in car theft or vehicular assault? If an advocacy group for battered women funded a domestic abuse division?

Do you personally know women or men who make a living in prostitution? How are they mentally and physically? Well and happy? How's their prospects for the inevitable time for all of us when looking or feeling 22 or even 32 is a memory? Sex workers aren't generally chosen for their sense of humor and personality, I'm guessing.

I'm sincerely asking. For myself I know that not one girl or boy I knew growing up said 'I want to be a hooker!' when I grow up. If I asked any of the younger women I know through work or family or friends 'how'd you like to go into sex work?' (of course I wouldn't) I can't think of one who wouldn't be visibly appalled and disgusted at the thought. But that could just be because we spend time with people like us, mostly.

So like I said, genuinely curious about the answers.
3
@2 I do personally know men and women sex workers. I've written about what they report about their own experiences, too: https://www.thestranger.com/news/feature…

As for the questions about nonprofits funding prosecutors' offices, I do think it's worth asking whether increasingly outsourcing a public service to organizations with their own policy agendas is a good idea--or accountable to the public interest. This goes for DA and any other group.
4
For every "Pretty Woman" sex worker for whom the business works on some level there are a hundred who are exploited and abused, some horrifically so as children.
Slavery was a pretty OK gig for some few, that didn't change the fact that it was a monstrous evil.
5
I guess there is “no conflict of interest” since prosecutors did what they were told to do in order to keep the money flowing, get news coverage, and appease moralists wannabes like @2,4.

Legalize prostitution in designated safe establishments, screened unionized employees with access to health care, clients carded upon entry and so on will provide a safe place to all. Such moves will also cut dramatically on trafficking and abuse.

The rise in conservative organizations pushing a crack down on prostitution altogether will only perpetuate the abuse they claim to eradicate. They know it, yet all they want is to scare the public from a fair and reasonable legalization, which they're terrified of.
7
@2, @4: Prostitution results from a lack of other economic opportunities. Moralizing scolding will do nothing to change that; a program like @5 recounted will at least ensure better conditions for sex workers until we create better opportunities for them.

Meanwhile, as Brownstone noted, local policy should be set by local voters, not by unelected billionaire heiresses from faraway places. The judge may have found no conflct of interest sufficient to invalidate this prosecution; we voters sure as hell can find this to be a conflict of interest between public good and private funds. I hope we do, and demand — or enforce, at the ballot box — an end to this conflict.
8
Oh for goodness sake.

For my money prostitution should be legal and heavily regulated. Law enforcement resources should be used to prosecute those who exploit the unwilling or children as prostitutes/porn actors and actresses and so on. Resources to help those with addiction or histories of abuse or other reasons that amount to coercion out of that career should be available as well. But even of you do so there will be a thriving black market in sex work.

However, anyone who thinks more than a very very few people go into sex work joyfully keen to do so is a fool. People are free to think otherwise but for the vast majority sex is simething intrinsic to love and long or longish term relationships. While I have no right to tell the minority who see it differently they shouldn't, that minority has no right to tell me and the rest how we should feel about sex.

I was, as I wrote, genuinely curious about any question asked. They weren't gotcha or intended that way. Nor am I trying to force anyone to think anything. Ease up. Relax. It doesn't always have to be a battle.
9
tensor @ 7
While I generally in agreement with what you wrote I’d like to add that opting to do sex work isn’t always a "result from a lack of other economic opportunities," though I agree that it often does. That said, with a little bit of research one can find providers who chose to do this line of work and operate independently.
The "better conditions for sex workers until we create better opportunities for them" also seems a bit condescending, though certainly useful to some. If providers’ union decides to set funds
10
... If providers’ union decides to set funds to help those who want out then I’m all for it.
11
#2: "But that could just be because we spend time with people like us, mostly." <- This is the textbook definition of "othering". But yet you write six paragraphs on the "why's" and "how's" of sex work.

The why's and how's should be for the individual adult to determine on their own terms. Society has an interest when their exists coercion or lack of capacity to understand. When the parties are adults with the ability to consent and determine boundaries and permissions, your conditioned bias has no place in that affair. The foundations of personal liberty and rights to determine one's self-determination are eroding at an alarming rate.

Val Richey was not serving King County last week, he attended a conference sponsored by the group Morality In Media. He sat at a table with Melissa Farley, who had said that a man who uses Pornhub should be charged with buying sex. Val Richey has taken as his own the power to make laws, are we willing to wait until he applies a sex registry condition to someone who viewed Pornhub?

12
What make this journalist so uniquely incredible is her willingness to understand and research the subjects she is reporting. At times she becomes an advocate-journalist but my God she built a case to pursue Matt Hickey by forming a trusting relationship with his victims. She takes chances that reporters (at times stenographers) from the gentrified media cannot take because each year they are forced to throw going away parties for people they worked with as part of downsizing.

Regarding exit services: the current rescue orgs are farcical. Seattle Against Slavery spends 90% on wages, zero on services. Organization for Prostitution Survivors spends less than 5% on individuals. A sex worker responded to one of their Tweets this weekend with a reply that the only service offered to her was "art therapy" and instead of engaging her they blocked here. I have read an OPS board member's comments describing sex workers as a "sewer" respository.

Sex workers need legal identities. They need their own voices heard. They need people to quit speaking for their experiences or pretending to be the Universal Prostitute whose experience is shared by all and now that her lens is clear she understands and waits with open arms.

Mostly, they need to be allowed to come out of the shadows.

13
@2: If King County prosecutor's started taking money from far right wing nationalists groups you would not see a problem with that? If King County prosecutor's started taking money from Russian Oligarchs associated with Vladamir Putin, or Chinese Oligarchs associated with the Red Army you would not see a problem with that?

There are legal guidelines in place when other public officials take private money that involves disclosure and other safe guards to prevent just such a scenario. There are no such legal protections in place for prosecutors taking private money simply because no one ever imagined they would.

By allowing this, even if you support this particular group, you are opening the door to state violence for hire to out of State parties you may not approve of. If you don't see how that is a slippery slope that could lead to greater problems, perhaps you need to watch Robocop from the 1980's. Spoiler alert, It does not end well.

There is a reason we pay law enforcement with public tax money. Once you circumvent that process without safe guards in place. You are opening our system up to the way things are run in third world banana republics where a Ricardo Escobar sets law enforcement policy. I'm sure the Police there convinced themselves after they took his money that knocking out competing drug lords while sparing his organization was what they would have done anyway. After all, they had a history of taking down drug lords, right?

As it is, we can see from the court documents provided here that for as little as $50,000 a year they bought direct influence from the Prosecutor's office. They made false accusations for sex trafficking and exploitation that where entirely unfounded. You are kidding yourself if you think this does not have a direct affect of the integrity of the trial system.

If you or I made such claim we would face defamation, but that will never happen here because prosecutors have an absolute immunity to lie to the public without consequence. It's a privedge judges and prosecutors cooked up for themselves in the 1990's in the name of "warning the public about public a danger." As we can see here, they used that privileged to instead make false public claims about the case that were patently untrue. If you don't think this corrodes our faith in the public statements of law enforcement, you're mistaken.

While I admire the effort here and have no doubt Judge Chun is a man of integrity, I doubt any other outcome was ever possible. The primary purpose of a judge is to hold those accused of a crime accountable, not the Prosecutor's or police involved in the case they broadly consider their allies. To expect any judge to hold a prosecutor, or the police they work with every day accountable for an ethical violation of conduct is akin to making Pete Carrol a referee at a Seahawks game and asking him to call 'em as he sees 'em.
14
Great points. I listened to a podcast about qualified immunity and a point made was the double standard within the criminal justice system that is tearing the fabric of our country aside. Put 20 bullets in a man in Sacramento, mute your mikes and go home. Be a minor in Alabama where a cop kills your friend during a robbery and you spend 65 years in prison for murder. These are two cases in the news this past week.

Law Enforcement can legally lie (to the point where you cannot determine at what point they are being honest anymore) but an accused caught telling a lie is stacked with added charges. These are just a few examples.

The organizers of the Hump Festival being arrested for sex trafficking sounds absurd. So does writing on an anonymous bulletin board "...a beautiful and creative woman," about a woman's social medial presence, a woman they had not met and being charged with promoting prostitution.
15
@4: The Happy Hooker/Pretty women on one hand vs. the sex slave chained to a bed post on the other dichotomy is an unrealistic fevered vision perpetuated by Crusaders.

The problem with Crusaders has always been that they have no regard for the means to their end and when others don't agree with their simplistic view of reality they are always the first to pick up a gun.

It's an authoritarian mindset that a constitution democracy must resist if it hopes to maintain minority rights, which is the entire purpose of The Bill of Rights. If you don't see their value here, perhaps you see their value in the women's suffrage and civil rights movements that protected those groups from the firing squad. If you carelessly tear down minority rights achieve your short term goal at all costs, then what will protect you when the winds change, as they always do?

I suggest you read "Sex at the Margins" by Laura Augustin, or many of the other equally credible books dealing with the complexity and nuance of both sex and sex work generally. It's a topic as complicated as human society and sexuality itself that goes well beyond the mythical belief in the female saint vs. the fallen whore.

That said, this is really not an article about sex work anyway. This is an article about how private funding coerced a prosecutor into turning his "no" into a "yes." I imagine you can see how dangerous and coercive that can be. In many ways, you can say the money forced his consent to cooperate. I mean, your entire argument is that money corrupts sexuality, correct? It should not be hard for you to understand how those same cohesive elements would turn a no into a yes within the criminal system.
16
But even of you do so there will be a thriving black market in sex work.

Why? We no longer have the "thriving black market" in alcohol which our country enjoyed in the 1920s and 1930s. Care to hazard a guess as to why not? We no longer have the "thriving black market" in cannabis Washington state enjoyed until just a few years ago. Again, have you any thoughts as to why these "thriving black markets" utterly collapsed?

It doesn't always have to be a battle.

Then I suggest you (a) not choose a combative screen name and (b) not use it to write paragraph after paragraph of condescending, chiding speculation about persons whom you yourself claim not to know.

Of all the many benefits of legalizing sex work, eliminating moralizing scolds and their corrupting money from our public lives would be one of the best for everyone.
17
Okay.

I'm "othering' people by doing what nearly everyone does: spending time around those with whom I share interests and values. Oh, and by realising this and asking someone with knowledge of sex work from her writing research what she knows.

I'm a moral scold for thinking legalising sex work could be a good idea. And that, though I disagree with your minority views of sex, I completely support your right to have them. I guess just having a view of sex you'd call puritanical or prudish makes me a moral scold?

Maybe I also kick puppies? Have my grand-pappies KKK hood framed in my front hall? Even drive an SUV?!

If prostitution is ever legalized by initiative I'd probably vote for it, depending on wording. And I'd do it like I did with pot- by ignoring the loud, sometimes rude and occasionally dishonest proponents and focusing on whether it made sense as law.
18
I should add this.

Thank you, Ms. Brownstone, for your response. Your earlier linked article was interesting and gave me a lot to think about.
19
@16

Making illicit alcohol that tastes as good as legal for less money would be difficult. If I can go to Safeway and buy a bottle of Johnny Walker (being a scotch man I wouldn't, but smuggled illicit single malt for the black market is rare, at a guess) for $30 why would I pay the same for indifferent quality? Though there still are 'moonshiners' it's not a notable black market.

My cousin is a sheriff deputy. Pot grown illegally for sale is very much a thing, according to him. For the reason booze isn't. It's relatively easy to grow and competes with a relatively expensive legal product. According to him. You say otherwise. I'll have to look into it for my own information, having no personal experience of the stuff legal or not

Does Vegas have a problem with extra-legal sex work? Given that t's legal there and has been long enough for markets to express themselves, that could be a good test case.
20
Thank you, Thecenterisright, for asking questions. We sex workers never get to speak for ourselves unless it is in the comments section of a news story. Sinclair Broadcasting ensures that Demand Abolition's propaganda is aired--and in this case, time and again, but will never allow any newsworthy pieces questioning the current influence of politically active Fundamentalist Christians and their coalition with conservative Republicans and Radical Feminists (which is often referred to as the American Taliban) because their goal--according to them--is to change our laws to reflect their religious beliefs, which would make America look more like Saudi Arabia.
21
Now for the subject of conflict of interest, I want to point out a few instances of undue influence that crosses the line into possible conspiracy:

1. When the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) asked to meet with the King County prosecutors, they asked Demand Abolition (DA) if they should. San Francisco, on the other hand, turned down Demand's offer of money in favor of working with local sex workers in identifying ways to combat genuine trafficking.

2. The District Attorney's Office repeatedly misrepresents The Review Board bust as a "international trafficking ring," while knowing that NO ONE WAS EVER CHARGED WITH TRAFFICKING. They said it 2 years ago with much fanfare, and Satterberg continues to repeat these lies on a weekly basis.
18 months after the raid, the Seattle Times ran a front page story in the Sunday paper as if it was breaking news, continuing to claim the case involved trafficking. Since two people have requested a jury trial, isn't it illegal to discuss it in public, let alone lie about it? Or is it ok for public prosecutors to lie like the police? Especially when using their official title, I would think they should have to win their cases on its merits and not through obvious manipulation.

3. These men were charged with FELONY Promoting, merely for writing a review of a provider. Promoting is a pimping charge intended for someone who is making money from prostitution. These men never made money--quite the opposite! They were guilty of nothing more than the misdemeanor charge of Soliciting.

4. To make the inappropriate charge stick, the prosecuting attorney offered these men a real "plea bargain" they couldn't refuse: Plead guilty to a felony pimp charge and you won't have to serve any time in prison, or go to trial and he promised they would not only serve time, but be added to the sex offender register as well. A pimp charge on your record is a life changer, but the sex offender register is a life destroyer. How is this not coercion and intimidation?

4. Satterberg does gain something by being the only attorney to ever make a pimping charge stick to an act of solicitation: a name for himself. Try to remember this was consensual adult sex. Nothing more. So why the lies and misrepresentation? So he can be a big man in the eyes of his fundamentalist Christian audience--perhaps even hero status nationally. He certainly isn't doing it on behalf of trafficking victims, because THERE WERE NO TRAFFICKING VICTIMS! And he damn sure didn't do it on behalf of the county--he has done grave damage to the perceived integrity of his office and caused real harm to real people (who pay taxes and vote) in King County. The ends do NOT justify the means. Not even close.
22
And for the record, I hold two degrees and can work outside the sex industry, but I chose this line of work. A quote from George McGovern reflects my initial motivation, "Life is not only precious, it's fragile and uncertain, and we need to love each other more."
Prostitution--it's not what you've been told. Many of my clients and I are celebrating our 8th year together in 2018, and I can't imagine my life without them. We enjoy great relationships that are honest and growth producing for both parties. They get to feel accepted and enjoy my undivided attention, and I get to meet my financial obligations and feel appreciated. A win-win transaction if ever there was one.

I'm done now.
23
@18 Thanks for asking questions! I'm glad you got something out of the piece.
24
@8: You gave us a bold, sweeping and unequivocal statement, presented as if it was an actual fact, about legalizing sex work: "But even of you do so there will be a thriving black market in sex work." When I asked for some evidence to support your bold, sweeping, and unequivocal statement, which you had presented as if it was an actual fact, @19 you allowed that there is at least one place in the US with legal sex work, and wouldn't it be great if maybe we looked there?

But you didn't type any of those words into the search engine at the top of your browser's window and look at the results. After all, of what good is a search for knowledge if it then just contradicts your bold, sweeping, and unequivocal statement -- the one you presented as if it was an actual fact? Why take that risk?

It's better just to stick with the bold, sweeping, and unequivocal statement you made, and presented exactly as if it was an actual fact -- a bold, sweeping and unequivocal statement which just so happens to be exactly the type of bold, sweeping, and unequivocal statement the Demand Abolition folks would certainly want presented as fact in any public debate about sex work. Yes, that's a better course of action for you, I agree.

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