May 2008

Following every prostitution round up I can tell you with certainty that at least some of the women involved become despondent about the course their lives have taken. They may even be on the verge of suicide.

National figures bear me out. In a major study by Melissa Farley, called “Prostitution: Fact Sheet on Human Rights Violations” it’s reported that 75 percent of women engaged in prostitution have tried to kill themselves.

Dr. Farley follows up with a lot of other numbers in a lot of other dreadful categories. Bottom line: A majority of prostitutes report they were victims of incest or child sex abuse, have been violently raped on the job, physically assaulted with weapons, struggled with hunger and homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse and diseases like HIV. Most meet the criteria for post traumatic stress disorder. The average age of entry for a prostitute is 14 to 16 years old and most spend more than a decade selling their bodies. [click to continue...]

“What is the ethical question for any newspaper when a long time news source turns out to be a criminal…..?”

- Anita Busch following the Pellicano verdict

Hollywood’s big wigs held their collective breath during the sordid, long running trial of the Private-Eye-to-the-Stars, Anthony Pellicano.

So many of them had hired Pellicano over the years that they were sweating bullets, worried that their names or their company’s names, might come up in court. Most of those most-worried honchos are connected to either the big Hollywood studios or are part of L.A.’s vast entertainment law community. None wanted their names mentioned in the same sentence with terms like: illegal wiretaps, pay-offs, intimidation tactics, back-door deals.

Now, the Los Angeles Times is called on the carpet in this smarmy scandal. [click to continue...]

There are surely those who are glad to see her gone. Deborah Jeane Palfrey aka “The D.C. Madam.” She led a complicated life, a life on the edge, and it included some very powerful personalities.

But an e-mail Palfrey wrote to a spiritual advisor during the peak of her latest run in with the law reveals she was more than a hard-bitten purveyor of flesh. She had a real spiritual side and a knowledge of the bible that might surprise some given her line of work.

Her words, read here for the very first time and just days after her death, are a chilling reminder for investigators to keep an open mind. It might not have been a suicide after all. [click to continue...]