Of all the sad and pathetic aspects of the fall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, when his almost decade-long use of prostitutes was uncovered, the most pathetic was Prof. Alan Dershowitz\u2019s assertion that prostitution was a \u201cvictimless crime.\u201d A vicious and destructive \u201cmyth\u201d is the foundation of such a wrong-headed assertion\u2014the myth of the \u201chappy hooker.\u201d
\nThe vast majority of women in prostitution have been sexually abused as children or adolescents. The overwhelming number of them would vastly prefer to not to be in the \u201cbusiness\u201d\u2014a business that systematically and ruthlessly exploits them and then, when they are \u201cdamaged goods,\u201d shoves them ever further down the ladder to seamier and seamier levels of the business.
\nThe \u201cEmperor\u2019s Club,\u201d the escort service of choice for former Gov. Spitzer, is still just a bunch of glorified pimps who take a 50 percent cut off the top from the fee paid by johns for sexually exploiting a young woman.
\nThe women are subjected to devastating psychological and physical harm. Almost all the women in prostitution, at whatever level, if they are not prostituting themselves in order to support a drug habit, become drug addicts to anesthetize themselves emotionally in order to keep on selling their bodies.
\nThis is a gruesome business, and the young woman is the first, but not the only, victim in a sad and tragic parade of victims. Who can look at the shattered faith of a brokenhearted spouse whose trust has been so horribly betrayed and not see her as a victim? Additionally, if press reports are to be believed, Gov. Spitzer was willing to pay \u201cextra\u201d for unprotected sex, thus, potentially exposing his wife to one or more of the more than twenty sexually transmitted diseases (STD\u2019s) at epidemic stage in our society. Only yesterday, a study was released that reported that one in four young women in this country currently have at least one STD. How many of them were given their disease by a partner who got it from a prostitute?
\nLastly, what about the children of fathers who are known to have frequented prostitutes? Are we not to see former Gov. Spitzer\u2019s three teenage daughters and their shattered trust in their father as victims?
\nA \u201cvictimless crime\u201d\u2014I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Of all the sad and pathetic aspects of the fall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, when his almost decade-long use of prostitutes was uncovered, the most pathetic was Prof. Alan Dershowitz\u2019s assertion that prostitution was a \u201cvictimless crime.\u201d A vicious and destructive \u201cmyth\u201d is the foundation of such a wrong-headed assertion\u2014the myth of the \u201chappy hooker.\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n