CBS/AP) LOS ANGELES - Joe Francis, founder of 'Girls Gone Wild,' was found guilty Monday of misdemeanor counts of assault and false imprisonment stemming from a dispute with three women after a night out at a Hollywood club in 2011.
Officials said after a two-week trial, a jury convicted the 40-year-old man of three counts of false imprisonment, one count of assault causing great bodily injury and one count of dissuading a witness. He faces a maximum of five years in prison. A hearing to schedule his sentencing was set for Wednesday.
Francis met the women at a club in 2011 when they were celebrating a college graduation. Francis led one of them out of the club by the hand into his limo. According to prosecutors, the other two women followed him and their friend thinking he was going to give them a ride to their car.
Prosecutors said Francis took the women to his home, when he tried to separate one from the other two a dispute broke out. Francis grabbed one of the women by the hair and throat and slammed her head into the floor.
After an investigation, the district attorney declined to file felony charges in the case and referred it to the city attorney, who filed the misdemeanor charges.
Francis is the founder of GGW Brands LLC, he filed for bankruptcy in February listing more than $16 million in disputed claims.
Neither Francis nor his attorneys could be reached for comment.For the original post with comments, go to: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57583219-504083/joe-francis-founder-of-girls-gone-wild-convicted-of-assault-and-false-imprisonment-report-says/
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A local woman's life took a turn for the worse when she encountered an escort service.
The couple who ran the escort service took her in, and the man became her pimp.
At first, he offered protection and fed her drug habit. He groomed her with a dream of money and security. She sold sex at ritzy parties and rode in flashy cars around the Puget Sound region.
Eventually, the pimp brainwashed her into submission and ruled every aspect of her life. He collected all of her earnings and kept track of her whereabouts at all times via cellphone.
If she failed to earn a daily quota of $1,500, she was beaten and humiliated. He would urinate on her. He whipped her with an electrical cord.
"That was his way of showing me this is just the beginning of what will happen," said the woman, who requested anonymity for this story out of fear the pimp could retaliate. "I was more afraid of the pimp than the johns."
The pimp found customers (known as johns) through the internet, Craigslist and alt-weekly papers. Her earnings paid for a house in SeaTac for the pimp and his wife. Thousands of dollars in tricks paid for hotel rooms around the Puget Sound region, including Federal Way and the infamous Aurora Avenue in Seattle. She also worked to pay back the cost of those ads, or pay back bail money if she went to jail.
The johns hailed from all walks of life. Some johns reviewed her services online. Johns would ask for particular kind of girls, which was useful information for pimps.
"I had wigs," she said. "Sometimes they'd say, 'I want a blonde.'"
In a typical transaction, the prostitute took care of business with a john while the pimp waited in an adjacent hotel room to collect the money and monitor the time.
The lifestyle left the woman with no choice but to hustle for more money, or face the wrath of her pimp. She recruited other women into the lifestyle to shoulder some of the workload when johns were seeking services at the same time. Several sessions with johns doubled as drug deals. Pimps pressured women to exploit naive customers with blackmail, for example, such as threatening to tell a john's wife unless he paid hush money.
In total, she had eight prostitution arrests on her record, including an undercover bust in Federal Way. Abused as a child, she was walking Pacific Highway in search of paying customers by age 15. Drugs like heroin became a way to numb herself and cope with the streets, where she had sex to survive.
"I had to be high," she said. "I had to feel nothing."
In a twist of fate, a heroin overdose inadvertently marked the turning point in reclaiming her life. While she was hospitalized, the pimp was jailed after a violent spree in search of her.
She formed relationships with people who empowered her. Now in her mid-thirties, she is no longer a victim, but a survivor. She is married. She lives clean and sober with a career in the mental health field. She regained custody of her three children from foster care, and now helps other mothers in similar situations. She hopes to see more reforms in the child welfare system to ensure that youth avoid these abusive relationships.
"My thanks goes to God for sending a man who was a defender of women," she said, referring to Nick Lembo, who with his wife, Jo, provided a support outlet through Overcomer Covenant Church in Auburn.
"The more eyes and ears on the ground," said Jo Lembo, "the smaller a pimp's world gets."
Ending demand
A grass-roots movement is under way to end the demand for prostitution, which is tangled in a web of pornography and cultural attitudes.
Prostitution has shifted away from the typical streetwalkers. Nowadays, johns arrange meetings online. Federal Way Police Chief Brian Wilson said officers can put an ad on Craigslist, meet with a potential john and make an arrest, all in a span of two hours.
In 2012, there were 12 prostitution-related investigations in Federal Way, Wilson said, with nine of those initiated by police and one involving a 15-year-old girl.
"It's much more underground now," Wilson said during a forum on human trafficking Jan. 9 at City Hall. "This is not a Federal Way issue. It's a regional issue."
According to the former prostitute whose story was told above, the deck is stacked against police. An officer must witness a transaction before making an arrest. When police arrest one prostitute, her pimp will find a replacement and take business to another part of the region.
"There's not much the police can do," said the woman, suggesting a solution for ending demand: spread awareness among youth.
One place to start is by reshaping the perceptions young men have toward women. Some argue the negative influence of pornography on the male sexual identity, including the accompanying message of objectifying women leads to the creation of unrealistic expectations from sex.
While there is nothing wrong with sex, young men need to be educated on how to use and understand it, according to Nick Lembo from Defenders and Shared Hope International.
"Sex is the most powerful stimulant and bonding agent on the planet," he said at the Federal Way forum. "We need to teach men to respect, honor and understand women and build wholesome relationships."
Peter Qualliotine, co-founder of Organization for Prostitution Survivors, said a boy's average age of exposure to pornography is 9. Prostitution and pornography are inseparable, he said at the Federal Way forum, and "one does not exist without the other."
The key to overcoming this obstacle, he said, is to teach young men to eroticize the mutual and consensual parts of sex, instead of the objectified images found in porn.
This post was written by Andy Hobbs. For the original article, go to: http://www.federalwaymirror.com/news/187019821.htmlBE HOLY.BE A MAN.
 The crime of human trafficking is one of the most egregious human rights violations, and it is happening in our own communities. Its victims are individuals lured into this country under false promises of legitimate work, only to be forced into the sex industry on arrival. They are domestic runaways taken in by traffickers and forced to trade sex for a place to sleep. They are also girls being baited into “the life” by a presumed boyfriend who later reveals himself as a pimp. Much like victims of domestic violence, human trafficking victims are trapped by fear, isolation and brutality at the hands of their traffickers and those who purchase them for sex.
An estimated 1 million children worldwide are sexually exploited annually. The average age of girls forced into the sex trade is 12 to 14. Within the United States alone, it is estimated that nearly 300,000 children are trafficked for sex every year. The cases involve tremendous violence, such as a recent case where the victim was beaten, forced naked into a cold shower, covered with ice and then made to stand in front of an air conditioner for 30 minutes.
What can be done to prevent other children and teens from being victimized? A first step is addressing the truth about trafficking. Put simply, human trafficking is the selling of human beings for profit through forced labor, sexual exploitation or involuntary domestic servitude. Experts estimate 27 million people are trafficked worldwide annually, reaping $32 billion in illegal profits, which makes it the second-largest and fastest-growing black market in the world.
Human trafficking is a crime that can be difficult to identify and track. The Internet and websites such as Backpage.com have only exacerbated this problem, by taking the sex trade off our streets and into hotel rooms — out of sight of law enforcement and social services. Our computers provide access to a variety of sites that promote prostitution, which make millions of dollars by offering anonymity to traffickers, further facilitating the victimization of children.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in 2000 became the first federal law to emphasize the need to protect victims and offer legal protection for victims of trafficking. States have responded by passing comprehensive human trafficking statutes and updating existing statutes. Today, all but one state have some form of anti-trafficking law. While momentum against trafficking is increasing, however, more must be done. Our work to reduce the demand for commercial sex is built on a simple, solid foundation: Societal change requires information. Just as a movement against drunken driving helped the public understand the danger of drinking and driving through a concerted campaign of public awareness and powerful testimonials to reduce deadly accidents, our work seeks to spark positive change. Moreover, just as domestic violence all too recently was a topic broached only behind closed doors, bringing the tragedy of human trafficking to the public eye is the first step of many.
Those who receive messages from popular music, movies and television that selling sex is just another career choice should know that most prostitutes are, at the very best, selling themselves for the lack of other means to support themselves. In fact, those used in commercial sex lead an extremely dangerous and often violent existence. Epidemiologists report that individuals used in commercial sex live only to an average age of 34. Many aren’t willing participants. The stark reality is that many aren’t even old enough to consent to sex. If apprehended, johns increasingly face serious criminal prosecution. These basic facts, if widely understood, should reduce the demand for commercial sex and thus lessen the number of human trafficking victims.
Is the effort to reduce demand for human trafficking a misguided moral crusade or an imperative to protect young people and others from those who profit from illegal, often involuntary, servitude? Decide for yourself. The answer seems pretty clear.
If you wish to join the effort, consider offering your time and financial support to charities that provide services to victims. Men can speak out against johns who purchase individuals for sex. Parents, parent-teacher organizations and schools can help educate children about how to protect themselves online. Doctors, nurses and hospitality and travel industry workers can seek training to identify victims and help them access services.
The fight to end the exploitation of human trafficking victims continues.
This post was written by Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II who is the attorney general of Virginia. For the original post, go to: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/15/the-truth-about-sex-trafficking/#ixzz2JH96Z6rr
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BE A MAN.
 R.A. Dickey said the pictures and literature couldn't have prepared him for the young boy who approached him last week on one of the squalid streets of Mumbai's red-light district. The boy was maybe 3 years old, 4 at best. He had no pants on. His body was covered with open sores. "He was playing amongst the open sewage and filth with rats as big as dogs. Unsupervised," the Toronto Blue Jays' new knuckleballer told The Canadian Press on a conference call Tuesday from India's most populous city. "You see these images and pictures that just don't seem like they should exist. And you hope that it's the only one ... but that's what's representative, these lives that just don't have a voice." The 38-year-old was in Mumbai to work with Bombay Teen Challenge, a Christian organization that has rescued women and children from sex trafficking for the past 23 years. It's a cause that Dickey says speaks to his own narrative. He wrote about being sexually abused as a child in his autobiography "Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball." "It's authentic to me because of my past experience, also I have a sentimentality to it because the girls that I've seen firsthand in the streets, these 19-, 20-, 21-year-old girls. You have to look beyond that and see at one point they were daughters themselves, and having two daughters ... that just for me was so compelling." He made the trip with his daughters, 11-year-old Gabriel and 9-year-old Lila. "I want to give my children a heart for humanity," Dickey said. "The only way to really do that is to get them outside of the bubble that they live in, and expose them in very measured ways to what real life is to a lot of people. They've responded beautifully." The 2012 NL Cy Young winner said it's been "a roller-coaster" visit, from the visceral red-light images of women in doorways and the cages where they keep them when they're first trafficked. But he also saw hope. Dickey and his daughters stayed at Ashagram, a rehabilitation campus outside Mumbai that's home to 300 women and children. They were the "most hopeful days" of the trip. They played cricket and sang songs with the children, many of whom are HIV-positive. "Those are the miracles, the 300 lives in Ashagram, those are 300 living miracles," Dickey said. "Sure, (my daughters) heard about the wickedness and the darkness, but they got to actually see the redemption, so their response has been really positive. This is a seminal trip for them." Dickey, who speaks openly with his daughters about his own sexual abuse, helped celebrate the opening of a clinic in the midst of Mumbai's red-light district. He helped pay for the clinic, raising over $100,000 by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro last winter. "The facility is like a beacon of light in the middle of a swamp," he said. BTC's Thomason Varghese said the organization was blessed by Dickey's presence. "But we think we've been even more blessed by his daughters," Varghese said. "Just to see innocent girls loving our girls and playing with them with no inhibitions, it's just been a real joy for us to see and experience. There are friendships that have come through this despite how different their backgrounds are. "Today the girls were in our feeding truck serving food to those who are coming from the street; just watching that was a sight to see." While estimates of sex trafficking in India vary, most studies put the number at more than a million children involved in the country's sex trade. Dickey was asked how can one measure success in the face of such grim statistics. "If the organization rescues one human life from that hell, then it's done its job in some way," Dickey said. "You're talking over the last 23 years over 1,000 lives being rescued, given a second chance to have a life, rescuing children, people who were left for dead on doorsteps of these brothels. "The women who had been trafficked into prostitution, dying in hospitals with their children by their bed, here's the Bombay Teen Challenge with a relationship in place to be able to take in and care for these children. "How do you measure success? I think it's one life at a time." The original post for this article can be found at: http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8896558/ra-dickey-toronto-blue-jays-india-help-fight-vs-sex-traffickingBE HOLY.BE A MAN.
 Porn is a problem. It's a personal problem for many and a cultural problem for all. You may think you have not been affected by porn, but you have because it's embedded in the surrounding culture. The staggering size of the pornography industry, its influence upon the media and the acceleration of technology, paired with the accessibility, anonymity, and affordability of porn all contribute to its increasing impact upon the culture. Pornography affects you whether you’ve ever viewed it or not, and it is helpful to understand some of its negative effects, whether you are a man or woman, struggling with watching it, or simply a mom or dad with a son or daughter. There is a plethora of research on the detrimental effects of pornography (and I do not think that what follows are necessarily the worst of them), but here are seven negative effects of porn upon men and women: 1. PORN CONTRIBUTES TO SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS WITHIN MEN Anti-pornography activist, Gail Dines, notes that young men who become addicted to porn, “neglect their schoolwork, spend huge amounts of money they don’t have, become isolated from others, and often suffer depression.” (Pornland, 93). Dr. William Struthers, who has a PhD in biopsychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, confirms some of these and adds more, finding that men who use porn become controlling, highly introverted, have high anxiety, narcissistic, curious, have low self-esteem, depressed, dissociative, distractible (Wired for Intimacy, 64-65). Ironically, while viewing porn creates momentary intensely pleasurable experiences, it ends up leading to several negative lingering psychological experiences. 2. PORN REWIRES THE MALE BRAIN Struthers elaborates, As men fall deeper into the mental habit of fixating on [pornographic images], the exposure to them creates neural pathways. Like a path is created in the woods with each successive hiker, so do the neural paths set the course for the next time an erotic image is viewed. Over time these neural paths become wider as they are repeatedly traveled with each exposure to pornography. They become the automatic pathway through which interactions with woman are routed….They have unknowingly created a neurological circuit that imprisons their ability to see women rightly as created in God’s image (Wired For Intimacy, 85).In a similar vein regarding porn’s effect upon the brain, Naomi Wolf writes in her article, "The Porn Myth,"After all, pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it. 3. PORN TURNS SEX INTO MASTURBATION Sex becomes self-serving. It becomes about your pleasure and not the self-giving, mutually reciprocating intimacy that it was designed for. 4. PORN DEMEANS AND OBJECTIFIES WOMEN This occurs from hard-core to soft-core pornography. Pamela Paul, in her book Pornified, quoting the research of one psychologist who has researched pornography at Texas A&M, writes, ‘Softcore pornography has a very negative effect on men as well. The problem with softcore pornography is that it’s voyeurism teaches men to view women as objects rather than to be in relationships with women as human beings.’ According to Brooks, pornography gives men the false impression that sex and pleasure are entirely divorced from relationships. In other words, pornography is inherently self-centered–something a man does by himself, for himself–by using another women as the means to pleasure, as yet another product to consume (80). Paul references one experiment that revealed a rather shocking further effect of porn: “men and women who were exposed to large amounts of pornography were significantly less likely to want daughters than those who had none. Who would want their own little girl to be treated that way?” (80). Again, it needs to be emphasized, that this is not an effect that only rests upon those who have viewed porn. The massive consumption of porn and the the size of the porn industry has hypersexualized the entire culture. Men and women are born into a pornified culture, and women are the biggest losers. Dines continues, By inundating girls and women with the message that their most worthy attribute is their sexual hotness and crowding out other messages, pop culture is grooming them just like an individual perpetrator would. It is slowly chipping away at their self-esteem, stripping them of a sense of themselves as whole human beings, and providing them with an identity that emphasizes sex and de-emphasizes every other human attribute (Pornland, 118).5. PORN SQUASHES THE BEAUTY OF A REAL NAKED WOMAN Wolf, in her own blunt way, confirms this, For most of human history, the erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn (Quoted in Wired for Intimacy, 38).6. PORN HAS A NUMBING EFFECT UPON REALITYIt makes real sex and even the real world boring in comparison. It particularly anesthetizes the emotional life of a man. Paul comments, Pornography leaves men desensitivzed to both outrage and to excitement, leading to an overall diminishment of feeling and eventually to dissatisfaction with the emotional tugs of everyday life…Eventually they are left with a confusing mix of supersized expectations about sex and numbed emotions about women…When a man gets bored with pornography, both his fantasy and real worlds become imbued with indifference. The real world often gets really boring…” (Pornified, 90, 91).7. PORN LIES ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE MALE AND FEMALE Dines records how porn tells a false story about men and women. In the story of porn, women are “one-dimensional”–they never say no, never get pregnant, and can’t wait to have sex with any man and please them in whatever way imaginable (or even unimaginable). On the other hand, the story porn tells about men is that they are “soulless, unfeeling, amoral life-support systems for erect penises who are entitled to use women in any way they want. These men demonstrated zero empathy, respect, or love for the women they have sex with… (Pornland, xxiv).”This content originally appeared on theResurgence.com. Resurgence exists to train people to love and worship Jesus in all of life. Visit theResurgence.com for more gospel-centered resources.BE HOLY.BE A MAN.
 A new study by Patrick F. Fagan examines the effects of pornography on individuals, marriage, family and community. Fagan is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Research on Marriage and Religion at the Family Research Council. He specializes in examining the relationships among family, marriage, religion, community, and America's social problems. This study is important for everyone to read as it demonstrates that it has damaging effects on individuals and families. In the summary Fagan explains, Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual's concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability. Social scientists, clinical psychologists, and biologists have begun to clarify some of the social and psychological effects, and neurologists are beginning to delineate the biological mechanisms through which pornography produces its powerful negative effects.Some of the findings inside the study include: - Pornography is addictive, and neuroscientists are beginning to map the biological substrate of this addiction.
- Users tend to become desensitized to the type of pornography they use, become bored with it, and then seek more perverse forms of pornography.
- Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their conjugal relations and less emotionally attached to their wives. Wives notice and are upset by the difference.
- Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters.
- Among couples affected by one spouse's addiction, two-thirds experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse.
- Many adolescents who view pornography initially feel shame, diminished self-confidence, and sexual uncertainty, but these feelings quickly shift to unadulterated enjoyment with regular viewing.
- The main defenses against pornography are close family life, a good marriage and good relations between parents and children, coupled with deliberate parental monitoring of Internet use. Traditionally, government has kept a tight lid on sexual traffic and businesses, but in matters of pornography that has waned almost completely, except where child pornography is concerned. Given the massive, deleterious individual, marital, family, and social effects of pornography, it is time for citizens, communities, and government to reconsider their laissez-faire approach.
This post was written by Ed Stetzer. The original post can be found here: http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-blogs/139251-the_effects_of_pornography.html/BE HOLY.BE A MAN.
 Though he looked the part, Daniel Walker was not a typical Western visitor to brothels in Asia. Playing the part of a lonely tourist, Walker was actually an undercover agent investigating the sex trade industry in various locations around the globe. Knowing his life would be in danger if he were exposed, Walker was moved by more than a paycheck. In his book God in a Brothel, it becomes clear that Walker's overriding motivation to rescue girls and women trapped in this brutal form of slavery was God's great love for each and every one of them. Human trafficking is a present-day reality about which many of us would prefer not to think. No modern invention, it was the situation in which God's people suffered under the rule of the Egyptians, enslaved to construct Egypt's buildings as forced laborers. In the midst of their suffering -- just as in the midst of our own experiences of suffering -- it would have been tempting to give up hope in the God who had called them His own. And yet, instead of relinquishing trust, the Hebrew people continued to cry out to God for deliverance for four hundred years. The One who loved them heard their cries, saw their misery, and was concerned for their suffering. In the midst of suffering, it's tempting to believe that God does not care or that God has abandoned us. The truth is that bodies which are used and abused, broken and beaten, matter deeply to God. God does not turn away from the suffering of a young woman being trafficked for profit. God does not ignore the cries of the needy. Rather, the One who used Moses to deliver His people out of captivity is the One to whom you can turn in the midst of your suffering. God sees your suffering and hears your cries.This post is taken from Today in the Word, June 3, 2012. BE HOLY.BE A MAN.
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