Read the whole story at Macon.com…

Reports give details of undercover police raids on massage parlors
By AMY LEIGH WOMACK

Closed police files from raids at Macon massage parlors shed light on operations that undercover officers found there.

In 2008 and 2009, a series of raids targeted more than a dozen Macon-area massage parlors and spas that police suspected of being houses of prostitution. As a result, more than 20 women were arrested on various sex charges.

Seven closed Macon police case files describe how undercover police officers entered businesses and paid for massages. Costs ranged from $40 for a half-hour massage to $140 for sex.

In most cases, the officers were led to rooms where they were asked to undress. Some of them were led to showers or were bathed by women working at the massage parlors.

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In each of the cases, the women asked the officers if they wanted additional services. In at least two cases, the women gestured that they were offering sex.

At one massage parlor, a woman asked an officer in June 2008 if he wanted other services after a 10-minute massage. When he replied that he just wanted a massage, the woman said “$40 is for the house, massage, bath and relaxation. We are extra,” according to a police report.

Some of the women touched the officers’ genitals before offering additional services.

At another massage parlor, a woman initiated a sex act on an officer against the officer’s will in July 2008. Then she stood in front of the door, keeping the officer from leaving until she was paid for the act, according to one report.

Read more here…

Police Targeted Suspected Prostitutes, Johns
Fulton County Police Cleaning Up Fulton Industrial Boulevard
By Tony McNary

CBS Atlanta went undercover with the Fulton County Police Department’s Special Operations Unit Friday night.

They were on a mission to clean up Fulton Industrial Boulevard’s reputation for being a haven for prostitution.

“After several years of being tired of this we’ve gotten a new approach. It’s going to be a sustained effort to continue doing this day in and day out,” said Captain Wade Yates.

An undercover officer posed as a “John” and picked up three women who police said offered him sex for money.

Another undercover officer posed as a prostitute. She was on the street less than five minutes before someone tried to solicit her.

Read more at NBC Augusta…

Craigslist used in undercover prostitution sting
By Christine O’Donnell

Seven men were arrested in a two day Prostitution Sting set up by the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office’s undercover team.

The sting started early Thursday morning and by Friday the following seven men were charged with pandering (soliciting prostitutes for sex).

The team, including an undercover female, listed an ad on craigslist under the “adult services” section.

“The ad itself doesn’t say I’m going to do this or that or anything, it just says adult services,” said one of the undercover investigators.

The investigators said posting a believable ad is easy; all they include is a picture and a phone number. There are dozens of ads for adult services in Georgia-Carolina.

In just a few hours Saturday six women put up new ads.

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“Shortly after [posting the ad] the phone began to ring and guys would ask her what the rates were for her services,” the undercover investigator said. “All the guys that set up the appointments and came asked for some type of sexual favor or sexual act for a set amount of money. Once they paid her, they were taken into custody.”

This is the third undercover prostitution sting the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office has done this year.

The undercover investigator says all seven of the men are most likely back on the streets after posting a $1,300 bail.

The section now listed as “adult services” used to be called “erotic services.” Craigslist changed the name after Philip Markoff was arrested and charged with killing one of three women investigators say he solicited on their website earlier this year.

Read more at Bloomberg.com…

Craigslist Not Responsible for Sex-For-Hire Ads, Judge Rules
By Andrew M. Harris

Craigslist won dismissal of a lawsuit filed by the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, that accused the classified ads Web site of creating a public nuisance by providing a forum for prostitution services.

U.S. District Judge John F. Grady in Chicago threw out the lawsuit filed by Sheriff Tom Dart, finding that the site was only a conduit for others to publish the ads and wasn’t legally responsible for their content.

“Sheriff Dart may continue to use Craigslist’s website to identify and pursue individuals who post allegedly unlawful content,” Grady said in a 20-page decision posted on the court’s electronic docket yesterday. “But he cannot sue Craigslist for their conduct.”

An interesting article about the online pay-for-sex scene. Read more at redOrbit.com…

Internet Fuels Virtual Subculture For Sex Trade

The Internet has spawned a virtual subculture of “johns” who share information electronically about prostitution, potentially making them harder to catch, according to a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University criminologist.

The research by MSU’s Thomas Holt and Kristie Blevins of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte challenges the common perception that sex customers act alone and do not interact for fear of reprisal or scorn. The study appears in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Holt, assistant professor of criminal justice, said today’s Web-savvy johns use the Internet to solicit prostitutes and to provide each other with warnings of prostitution hot zones and stings, which can hamper the efforts of law enforcement officials.

But the more police become familiar the johns’ Web activities, the more it can help them zero in on the perpetrators, Holt added.

“The growth of these deviant subcultures has made it more difficult for law enforcement,” said Holt, who has helped police devise prostitution stings. “On the other hand, it gives us a new opportunity to use the way the offenders communicate to better target their activities.”

The study analyzed prostitution Web forums in 10 U.S. cities with the highest rates of prostitution arrests: Atlanta; Baltimore; Chicago; Dayton, Ohio; Elizabeth, N.J.; Forth Worth, Texas; Hartford, Conn.; Inglewood, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Memphis, Tenn.

In the Web forums, the johns provide detailed information on the location of sexual services on the streets and indoors, as well as ways to identify specific providers, information on costs and personal experiences with providers.

The open nature of the forums led the johns to carefully disguise their discussions with a unique language, or argot, based largely on code and acronyms. This argot may help johns and sex workers to avoid legal sanctions and any social stigma associated with participating in the sex trade, the researchers said.

Read more at NewsChannel9.com…

Five Busted in Craigslist Prostitution Sting

Five people, including three from Chattanooga, have been arrested in an undercover prostitution sting resulting from advertisement’s on the popular Craigslist web site.

On October 8 the Calhoun, Ga. Special Operations Division conducted the undercover operation. Undercover agents contacted individuals advertising as escorts on Craigslist.

Charges range from prostitution to pimping.

Sgt. J Marquez, Commander Of the Calhoun Special Operations Division said, “This operation was conducted due to the major problem of prostitution being advertised on Craigslist. It was a joint effort between agencies to stop prostitution and narcotics use in the City Of Calhoun”.

It’s best to have a convincing cover story when seeking the talents of a pro.  Read the whole story at ForsythNews.com…

Call girl, client caught at hotel
By Julie Arrington

A Stone Mountain woman who listed her occupation as “call girl” and her alleged client were arrested over the weekend at a local hotel.

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According to a sheriff’s report, authorities were called about 3:30 a.m. Saturday to the Holiday Inn Express on Buford Highway in response to a suspicious vehicle in the parking lot.

Deputies spoke with the driver, who said he had just dropped the woman off to visit a friend.

A hotel employee reported seeing the woman get out of the car and go to one of the rooms.

The investigating deputy went up to the room and noted that he could hear “muffled noises from inside.”

About five minutes later, a fully-clothed woman opened the door and a man, wearing only underwear, was walking around inside. Both looked surprised, the deputy wrote.

According to the report, the man first said the woman was a friend of about eight years who was visiting him at the hotel. Despite the length of their alleged friendship, the man didn’t know her last name.

Authorities observed that both beds in the room had been used and there were signs of sexual activity.

Upon further questioning, the man told the deputy he was separated from his wife and needed someone to talk to about his marital problems.

The woman, he said, was a college friend from Maryland.

The deputy questioned whether the friends actually had time to talk during the estimated 30 minutes they had been in the room.

The man later said he did not know the woman, whom he admitting having met through Exclusive Callgirls of Atlanta.

Another look at so-called John Schools, designed to change the mindset of the men who seek to pay for some TLC from women. Read the whole article at CNN.com…

‘John schools’ try to change attitudes about paid sex

The accused came from all walks of life: Retirees, dads and twentysomethings. An engineer, a business owner and an auto worker. A man in a wheelchair. Men in need of Spanish or Farsi translators.

About 40 men somberly entered a classroom on a recent Saturday morning. About half of them wore shiny wedding bands.

All had tried to buy a prostitute’s services and were caught by police. It was their first offense, and a county court referred them to a one-day program called the John School. It’s a program run by volunteers and city officials in conjunction with Magdalene House, a nonprofit that works to get prostitutes off the streets.

“Prostitution doesn’t discriminate,” said Kenny Baker, a cognitive behavioral therapist who is the program’s director. “Most of these men don’t have a prior criminal history, so our goal is to help these folks understand why they put themselves in a bad position, to prevent it from happening again.”

Set in a church in Nashville, Tennessee, the John School is led by former prostitutes, health experts, psychologists and law enforcement officers who talk to — and at times berate — the men about the risks of hiring a prostitute.

Prostitution is based on the law of supply and demand. The thinking is: Women won’t stop selling sex until men stop buying.

So Nashville and a growing number of cities are shifting their focus from locking up suppliers to educating buyers. Across the country, about 50 communities are using John Schools. Atlanta, Georgia, and Baltimore, Maryland, are among dozens more cities that plan to launch similar programs by the end of the year.

“It will make them [offenders] see that this is not a victimless crime, and they are contributing to the exploitation of women,” said Stephanie Davis, policy adviser on women’s issues at the mayor’s office in Atlanta. “It’s hurting them, the man, and it’s hurting their families and its hurting the community.”

Craigslist has closed it’s ‘erotic services’ section, after a bit of scrutiny from law enforcement. But it looks like the racy ads have migrated to the new ‘adult’ section. Progress? See what ABC News says…

Craigslist Clean-Up: Is it Really Working?
Conn. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal: ‘We’re Not Going Away’

It’s been nearly a month since Craigslist promised improvements to clean the Web site of prostitution and graphic images, and while attorney general watchdogs report some progress it still takes just seconds to find illegal activities advertised on the site.

ABCNews.com looked at advertisements in eight cities and almost immediately found posts that were both lewd and illegal in markets that included Hartford, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Salt Lake City and Columbia, S.C.

The ads have ranged from a lusty “Hey fellaz” with hourly rates to raunchy photos, and even an offer to trade drugs for sex.

“It’s very much a continuing battle,” Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told ABCNews.com. “So far, Craigslist has failed to do enough and that’s why we’re asking the questions.”

Craigslist, which told ABCNews.com that it was being unfairly targeted, was hit with a fresh round of questions on May 26 from the attorneys general of seven states, requesting more information about the site’s screening process and criteria for banning certain posts among other details.

The Web site has yet to respond to the AGs’ letter sent to Craigslist attorney Edward Wes, but Blumenthal said further action would be determined, in part, by the answers to those questions.

And its all downhill from here. Read the story at AJC.com…

Sugarloaf’s ‘Mansion Madam’ files for bankruptcy

So-called “Mansion Madam” Lisa Ann Taylor, the erstwhile stripper and former high-priced prostitute in Gwinnett County, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this week.

Taylor could not be reached immediately for comment. Her former attorney, Max Richardson confirmed the bankruptcy filing came from the former Penthouse model, who’s known onstage as “Melissa Wolf.”

Richardson represented Taylor two years ago against charges that she ran a brothel in one of metro Atlanta’s most exclusive neighborhoods, Sugarloaf Country Club in Duluth.

Richardson is one of 10 creditors in Taylor’s bankruptcy filing. The document, filed Monday, states that she is between $500,000 and $1 million in debt.

Taylor, 44, pleaded guilty to prostitution and drug charges in October 2007. She was given seven year probation and ordered to pay a $150,000 fine in a year.

In an interview in January, Taylor said her deadline for paying that fine had been extended to March.

“I’ve been doing a lot of charity work for the community in hopes that … if I cannot pay the fine, maybe they’ll allow me to work it off in community service, ” she said.