There is nothing holy nor sacred to those who have abandoned God and reason in order to follow their perverse desires. - François Rabelais, Gargantua (chapter 31)
Fair warning: what you’re about to read may make you feel ill. Writing it made me feel both queasy and dirty; I put it off for as long as I could, but I wanted to get done with it completely – including the posting and indexing – early enough so that I could be sure of regaining my appetite by dinnertime. I probably don’t need to tell regular readers that I’m made of pretty stern stuff; my husband is only one of the many who have described me as “hard as nails”. But the minds of some people are so wholly vile and disgusting that reading about their loathsome behavior, their indefensible motivations and their twisted rationalizations makes me feel as though I have been hurled into a tank full of raw sewage and leaves my heart pounding and my hands shaking. The people to whom I refer are sexual predators, those subhuman monsters who are so completely devoid of even the most basic human decency and moral scruples that they think nothing of using other human beings to satisfy their perverted sexual needs, inflicting grievous physical and emotional harm on their victims and sometimes scarring them for life. Worse still, these revolting vermin form associations with other like-minded scum, pooling their resources and cunning so as to more effectively snare unsuspecting victims. It would be bad enough to merely know that these freaks existed, but to see them defended, excused and even glorified in a major newspaper is almost more than I can bear:
…“This is Lushous,” she said in a soft, seductive voice. “You want to come see me today?” The client had found her on backpage.com, where she promoted herself as a busty woman…eager for company…“For half an hour, it’s just $40, baby. Tell me what you want to do.” Lushous wanted to use handcuffs. She was actually an undercover…cop. If the man on the phone actually came…he’d be walking right into the department’s latest sting operation…Sharing Room 241 with her was another undercover officer with a nickname, a square-jawed, blue-eyed cop known as Pretty Boy. He pored through a stack of printed Web ads…[and] called each one. “Are you doing out-calls today, sweetie?” They had arranged the room so it would seem like they were just lonely travelers. Pretty Boy hung a crushed black suit on the rod and placed a used bar of Old Spice deodorant near the sink. He ditched his uniform for a T-shirt and blue jeans but kept on his wedding ring. Lushous ruffled the sheets on the queen-size bed. She had lozenges to keep her voice smooth. She placed a package of condoms on the side table…In 242, about six officers were on hand to help with arrests and the paperwork. In 247, there were two female officers to attract men looking for a woman not of Lushous’s type. Lushous is curvy and black; the two other female officers are white and thin…In 248, a detective posted $10 ads in the adult-services section of backpage.com…“Hello, my name is…” he began typing, trying to dream up a seductive name for the colleague next door. He then tapped out, “B-R-A-N-D-I”…Ten minutes later, Brandi’s phone started to ring. “…Am I busy? No…Yes, those are my pictures.” After she hung up, the man texted her, “Are you affiliated with law enforcement?” She rolled her eyes. Every caller asked this question, under the common delusion…that a cop was legally obligated to say yes. “No,’’ she texted back. “Are you?”…
I think that’s enough to give you the idea; the cops’ sociopathy is made even more revolting by the reporter’s glowing, fetishized praise, almost as loving and lurid as a Nick Kristof description of the tortures inflicted upon imaginary teenage girls. But in spite of themselves, the yellow hack and the blue swine managed to produce one paragraph that was true, though not in the way they meant it: “For police officials, prostitution is not victimless crime…Sex workers are prone to being raped and robbed. Some are victims of sex trafficking. The men who visit them are sometimes assaulted…” That’s all true, but the victimizers – those doing most of that raping, robbing, assaulting and abduction into coercion and captivity – are the police, and they do it with the support of the government and many of the more ignorant and deluded members of the public.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go take a shower.
