Post by Origanalist on Sept 12, 2016 15:54:09 GMT -8
Elizabeth Nolan Brown | September 9, 2016
Part 1: 'This Is What Human Trafficking Looks Like'
Part 2: How Washington Police Turned Talking About Prostitution into a Felony Offense
Part 3: From 'Prostituted Woman' to Human Trafficker
Coda: A Lifetime of Stigma
PART ONE: 'THIS IS WHAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING LOOKS LIKE'
WITH THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER LAST SUMMER, Sigurds Zitars, a retired accountant, was the only family member left in University Place, Washington. Since 2006 "Sig" had been the clan's caregiver, after his mother developed dementia and his father and sister both took ill. In January, Zitars was fixing up the family home for sale when police broke down its door, arresting the 62-year-old at gunpoint. According to the state, Zitars was one of at least a dozen bad guys associated with an elite league of sexual predators and a multi-state sex-trafficking ring.
News of the bust played perfectly into the growing narrative from both activists and officials that sex trafficking—the use of force, fraud, or coercion to trap people in prostitution—is rampant in America, a pernicious form of what Barack Obama described in 2012 as "modern slavery." According to political lore, both girls-next-door and women smuggled across U.S. borders are at risk, their exploitation aided by online tools and the indifference of lusty patrons.
On January 7, Washington officials unveiled a perfect storm of such horrors: Women lured from South Korea under false pretenses and "held against their will" at local brothels. A website where deviant men promoted and reviewed these enslaved women. "Because they had money," said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg at a televised press conference, these men "gained access to sexually abuse these vulnerable young women, then put their energies toward a campaign to encourage many more men to do the same."
"The systematic importation of vulnerable young women for sexual abuse, exploitation, and criminal profiteering has been going on for years and it came to a stop this week," Satterberg added. "This is what human trafficking looks like."
But as more information about the case has become available, Satterberg's narrative starts to break down. The reality—as evidenced by police reports, court documents, online records, and statements from those involved—is far less lurid and depraved. Instead of a story of stark abuse and exploitation, it's a story of immigration, economics, the pull of companionship and connection, the structures and dynamism that drive black markets, and a criminal-justice system all too eager to declare women victims of the choices they make.
The story is presented here in three parts. The first offers a glimpse at how this sexual economy actually operated, the motivations of its main actors, and how police came to "infiltrate" the scene. Part two explores how the government's war on prostitution—rebranded as a war on sex trafficking—brands innocent men as sexual predators and sets dangerous new standards of disrespect for free speech and free association rights. And part three looks at how policies designed to get tough on pimps and traffickers wind up threatening the very women they're supposed to save.
'Shipped From City to City'
The first wave of arrests came just after New Year's. On January 6, working with the FBI and the Bellevue Police Department (BPD), officers from the King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) raided 12 upscale apartments in Bellevue, a large and affluent suburb of Seattle that's become a hub of tech industry. At a press conference the next day, they announced that 12 female victims from South Korea had been rescued, 12 "brothels" closed, and a major human-trafficking ring shut down.
The team also seized three websites: The Review Board (TRB), a web forum where Seattle sex workers and clients communicated; KGirlsDelights.com, a directory of Korean sex-workers and escort-agencies in America; and TheLoeg.com, a private site for local prostitution story-swapping. TRB was run by "Tahoe Ted"—otherwise known as Sigurds Zitars—arrested the day prior along with nine suspected members of the LOEG (or "League," as police spelled it).
Prosecutor Dan Satterberg described the situation as one of extreme coercion and criminality, calling the 12 Asian women recovered in the operation "true victims of human trafficking."
News of the bust soon spread in sensational newscasts and lurid headlines. The U.K.'s Daily Mail summed the story up like this: "Police smash prostitution ring and rescue 12 South Korean women forced into $300-an-hour prostitution by ex marijuana grower who pimped them out across the U.S."
A Bellevue paper claimed the Korean women were "required to work off their family's debts through sexual service." The Seattle Times reported that police had thwarted "a widespread prostitution ring run by a group of men known as 'The League.'" Local news network KIRO 7 named photographer Michael Durnal and ex-marijuana entrepreneur Donald Mueller as the ringleaders, men who "sold women all over" America.
It was shocking, scandalous, horrifying. Yet almost none of it is true.
While most publications were careful to pepper "police said" into articles, their headlines and language precluded any sense of impartiality. "12 women forced into prostitution freed near Seattle," trumpeted The Oregonian, over an Associated Press article. That article, syndicated widely, said Korean women were "shipped from city to city about every month and typically not allowed to leave their apartments except to go to the airport." The New York Times reported that the women were being "brought to America and forced into prostitution to pay debts" by a "major human trafficking ring." Reuters reported that victims were "forced to work as much as 14 hours per day."
Police, meanwhile, continued to expand the reach of the case. In early May, five months after the first arrests, six more men were added to the complaint against alleged League members. These new defendants included archetypes of the Seattle-Bellevue tech class, including an executive at Microsoft, an engineer for Boeing, and a director of software development for Amazon. Local media reported that these men were part of a "large-scale sex trafficking operation" and offered headlines such as "Microsoft and Amazon Execs Busted for Promoting Sex Slavery."
It was shocking, scandalous, horrifying. Yet almost none of it is true—and the little that is technically true is so lacking in context that it's utterly misleading.
Almost everything that follows was known by detectives prior to their January raids and press conference, because it comes directly from court documents that they filed to establish probable cause for each defendant's arrest. However, the picture that emerges from these documents bears little resemblance to the dramatic and dystopian tale that police publicly spun.
Distorted Details
A sample escort review on TRB, provided in KCSO charging documents
Begin with police's claim that The Review Board was a "sex trafficking website" where "prostituted women" were advertised and reviewed. This implies the women promoted on TRB had no control over their ads appearing there, did not want clients to review them, and generally did not want to be engaged in commercial sex. On the contrary, the core of TRB's business model consisted of escorts posting advertisements for themselves. Countless Seattle-area sex workers who have advertised on the site have attested to this. As one, "Veronica," told the women's site Broadly, TRB "was really a wonderful thing that kept everyone safe. Girls would be in touch with each other. A lot of people used it as a reference system—have you seen this person and are they safe?—for both sex workers and clients."
That TRB worked as an advertising and review system designed to benefit both sex workers and their clients is not something detectives could have merely misunderstood. King County Detective Luke Hillman had been posting undercover on TRB for years—interacting with many defendants in this case—before any arrests were made. And not only were many of the women who advertised on TRB openly listed as "independent," police have in their possession hundreds of emails that show the women actively managing their businesses.
For instance, the Certificate for Determination of Probable Cause against Phillip Dehennis, who was charged with "promoting prostitution"—more on that particular charge later—highlighted a string of emails between him and sex worker "Sabreena." According to Bellevue Detective Tor Kraft, Dehennis and Sabreena "agree on a 90 minute session with her to which she would throw in a neck trim (actual hair cut) at 'No charge.'" After they meet, Dehennis emails Sabreena to ask explicitly, "Would you like me to put a review on TRB?" She says yes. When Dehennis completes the review, he emails her again and asks her to check it for accuracy, to which Sabreena replies "thank you so much for the review!" Dehennis was helping Sabreena market herself.
So what about the two men, Durnal and Mueller, whom KIRO 7 called sex-trafficking ringleaders who "sold women all over the country?" Nowhere in official court documents do police allege this; at most, Mueller and Durnal are accused of exploiting Korean sex workers—a.k.a. "K-Girls"—within the Seattle area.
But even the case for that is flimsy. Despite initially labeling both men "human traffickers," police present no substantial evidence in charging documents that local K-Girls were captive or unwilling. By all accounts, these women flew to Seattle voluntarily and without chaperones, usually from other U.S. cities, in order to work temporarily at one of the area's booming Korean-escort agencies. The K-Girls were, in essence, independent contractors.
"It is reasonable for women to choose sex work in the US instead of sex work in Korea," wrote Seattle resident Christina Slater, who describes herself as an "erotic service provider," in an April blog post about the Review Board bust. "I know that if those were my options...and if I spoke little to no English I would need assistance in finding a work place, scheduling clients, etc."
This is the main criminal activity alleged of Mueller and Durnal: providing K-girls with live-work space, posting online ads for them, and screening and booking their clients. Mueller called his enterprise "Asian Haven," while Durnal ran "K-Dynasty." Both operated out of rentals in high-end apartment complexes in downtown Bellevue. The men paid the rent and utilities on these spaces and stocked them with furniture and supplies, such as mouthwash and condoms, but did not live there. Visiting K-girls each got their own bedroom and private bathroom. In exchange for the room, advertising, and administrative work, Mueller or Durnal received $100 for each $300-an-hour "date" a woman completed.
Doesn't that make Mueller and Durnal "pimps"? Yes, in the sense that the definition of a pimp is anyone who helps manage business for a sex worker or makes money off of prostitution.
But Mueller and Durnal don't conform to pimp stereotypes. The men—both prolific sex buyers themselves—weren't violent or abusive. They didn't have sex with the women they booked, provide them with drugs, try to keep them dependent, or try to keep them from leaving (in fact, their business model depended on women coming and going relatively quickly). They provided a service and took a fee, leaving the K-Girls with whom they worked with a personal profit of hundreds of dollars per day.
Of course, being paid doesn't, on its own, preclude being exploited. What about the claims that the K-Girls were forced to work 12 to 14 hours daily?
The only evidence in police documents to support these statements is TRB advertisements that list escorts' appointment availability. Some ads did indeed indicate availability windows stretching 10 to 12 hours. But being available during those hours doesn't mean the women were actually working for all or even most of them. Mueller allegedly told police that his escorts saw an average of five clients per day, with a typical session lasting one hour.
It's similarly unclear on what basis police allege that K-Girls were trapped in the area or in their apartments. Probable cause documents for Mueller and Durnal offer nothing to support this accusation. A case summary for Mueller states that "Donald's sex workers typically travel via airplane to work at his brothels. His sex employees pay their own travel expense to get to Seattle. [They] fly in from different cities such as New York, Boston, or L.A." The summary also details an email between Mueller and a woman named "Ann" who claims to live out of the country.
Within the plans, the pair discuss how to get Ann to the U.S. legally so they [can] go into business together. Ann mentions that she will pay Donald to "Make appointments with customers.' Donald agrees to do some background work into the process and ... explains that he will contact an immigration attorney he knows to assist.
Statements made by League members in their private communications also fail to create an impression that these women were hapless prisoners. For instance, after a session with K-Girl "Mari," one member reports that "she told me she's a total gym rat, spending about two hours a day in the gym." After another session, he reports that Mari "shared some videos of her doing weights in the gym. This girl can lift some weights!"
Even if Mari was making use of the building's rooftop gym, such activities suggest that, at the very least, she wasn't captive and could have reached out for help in some way had she wanted to. This interpretation is further supported by the fact that these women had internet-enabled phones, which they were able to use freely.
"Migrant sex workers, especially Asian migrant workers, are often inaccurately labeled as trafficking victims."
"They talked about going shopping, their favorite restaurants," one former client, who asked to remain anonymous, told me. "Their English was fine." Many came over on student visas, with the goal of making cash quickly in the sex trade before heading back to Korea, he said. One K-Girl who always took great pride in her nails told him she was saving up to open a nail salon and body-waxing spa back home.
"Migrant sex workers, especially Asian migrant workers, are often inaccurately labeled as trafficking victims," Savannah Sly, board president for the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), cautioned in a statement at the time of the bust. "Just because a women came to the U.S. and works as an escort does not mean she did so involuntarily."
There's little in police charging documents to suggest Seattle K-Girls were powerless over how long they stayed in the area. Yes, they frequently told customers they weren't sure how long they would stick around. But although this could be a sign someone is pulling the strings elsewhere, it could just as easily mean that they don't think it's the client's business, that it depends on how long the agency will let them, or—the reason they're most often reported to give—that it depends how business goes.
TRB reviews included in police documents further indicate that K-Girls had their own motivations for staying or going. A June 2015 review of "Ace K" says "she will be leaving the 29th… The weather is getting her down ('I'm an LA girl') so she said she will restrict her visits to the warmer months in the future." A TRB post from user "ItsMe" states that he asked "Angel" when she would return to Seattle "and she said she doesn't like this cold, wet weather, so it might be later when the weather gets nicer." A December 2015 email from "Spider Rico" to some other League members claims K-girl "Asuka" told him she didn't like Dallas because it has "bugs the size of dogs. She is slow but wants to stay in Bellevue because it's clean, she said."
Remember that police claim to have thousands of emails, posts, and private communications between those charged to choose from. The few hundred they included in court documents (from which these quotes are drawn) are what they describe as "representative examples." And while there are some reports of new K-Girls saying they are nervous, or seeming to clients like they don't want to be there, such statements are rare.
Police documents also indicate that women who advertised on TRB, including K-Girls, set different prices, had different boundaries, and offered differing levels of sexual activity. For League members, these were limits to be staunchly respected. A "Code of Conduct" states that individuals will be blacklisted if they don't use condoms, take a shower and use mouthwash at the start of each appointment, respect individual boundaries, and remember that no means no.
"Keep in mind she is a professional provider and it is important to recognize that the menu of activities that is offered varies from one provider to another and from one client to another," the code states.
That seems rather gentlemanly—perhaps even feminist?—for a bunch of men who allegedly get off on "abus[ing] these vulnerable young women," as King County Prosecutor Satterberg put it. But the key to painting League members as traffickers and abusers lies in framing all sex workers as victims. If you understand the K-Girls and others who advertised on TRB as individuals with choice and agency, the men who paid them for sex are no more abusers than you or I when we pay someone to watch our kids, listen to us talk about problems, or fix our cars.
Victimless Crimes
Visitors to TheReviewBoard.net are now greeted with these four images and a note that the site has been seized pursuant to a prostitution investigation
If evidence of the kind of human trafficking ring that haunts the public-imagination existed here, detectives shouldn't have had trouble uncovering it. The King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) had been investigating The Review Board since 2007. An undercover detective first attended a TRB meet-and-greet—meeting both Donald Mueller and the site's proprieter, Sigurds Zitars—in 2008. King County Detective Luke Hillman had been undercover as a hobbyist on TRB since 2013.
Off and on for two years, Hillman would post lengthy and detailed descriptions of alleged sexual encounters with sex workers to TRB. These included the same sorts of statements defendants have been arrested for posting, such as pleas for others to visit a particular woman so she would stick around, info about the screening process for new clients, updates on when a new K-Girl arrived in town, and links to their ads on other websites, like Backpage. (Sample Hillman post: Yoco "is the freight train of sexual energy. ... Her last day is August 23rd, RUN, don't walk, to see her.")
For the better part of 2015, detectives interacted undercover with defendants in myriad ways, monitored alleged brothels, and went on more than a dozen "dates" with the women they believed to be forced into "sexual slavery." (Oddly, they felt no need to "rescue" these women at these times.)
Bellevue Police Chief Steve Mylett said at a press conference that the investigation was "unprecedented in size and scope."
Bellevue police had first been alerted to Mueller in April 2015, when a neighbor complained to the agency about possible prostitution activity at an apartment he leased. Soon after, Bellevue Detectives Tor Kraft and Shelby Shearer interviewed Mueller (in an official capacity) and he told them about his business. In the fall, Kraft would meet Durnal while undercover and befriend him; Durnal later complained that Mueller had talked to the cops in the spring and told them "everything." Detective Hillman would also become friendly with Mueller while undercover, and he and Kraft would make dates with women working at both Mueller and Durnal's brothels. In all of these encounters, most involving conversations with detectives posing as prostitution clients, the details of their operations remained the same.
And King County didn't just have their word to go on; detectives also had ample access to suspects' private web-forum and email communications, subpoenaed from internet service providers. Plus they had the 12 women who had allegedly been victimized by defendants—women "held against their will" as "their sexual autonomy [was] stolen repeatedly," as Mylett put it at a press conference. Surely, testimony to that effect from any of the victims would be enough to make human-trafficking charges stick?
But no such testimony exists. To its credit, King County didn't use prostitution charges or immigration threats to try and compel the cooperation of Korean sex workers. Prosecutors don't know what has become of the "rescued" women now.
"Our approach was to allow the women who we recovered from these places to go, without requiring their testimony or requiring them to stay here," says King County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Val Richey, a leader in the area's crusade against commercial sex. "We were really trying to be very victim-centered by essentially saying, 'This situation is over. We are offering you advocacy or services if you want them; if you don't want them you may go.'"
According to Richey, some of the 12 women they encountered at the apartments did accept an offer to talk with non-government advocates or service providers, but these individuals were not required to report what they heard to police. "We do that very intentionally, so that we can really try to allow some freedom and self-determination for people in this situation," says Richey.
If they had wanted to testify, however? "Absolutely, for those who were interested, we would keep their contact information and so forth," says Richey. But none were interested.
"Many of them I think just wanted to leave."
Deal Me In
Before being arrested on suspicion of sex trafficking, Mueller and Durnal were both frequent sex buyers themselves. Their move to managing commercial-sex businesses had been recent, a natural extension of the relationships they made with sex workers and other clients. Mueller said he started when a woman he patronized regularly, ViVi, asked him to become her booker; from there he became more involved, starting his own agency in late 2014. Durnal still maintained a full-time job as a professional photographer but had begun moonlighting in the sex business after dating a K-Girl himself.
After their arrests last January, both men were held in King County Jail on $150,000 bail. In February, they accepted plea deals, copping guilty to promoting prostitution in the second degree. There was no media blast from King County about this development.
While they're still awaiting final sentencing, the penalties Richey recommended were relatively modest: 60 days in jail for Durnal, who pleaded guilty to two counts of promoting prostitution, and 80 days in jail waived as a first-time offender, plus 30 days of community service, for Mueller, who pleaded guilty to three counts of promoting prostitution. In addition, each man would get 12 months of community custody afterward, pay a $3,000 fine, "be available for interviews and testimony as directed," and take a class on "Stopping Sexual Exploitation."
It's true that severity of crime and severity of punishment aren't always perfectly correlated. Mueller and Durnal might have gotten favorable sentencing recommendations in exchange for offering testimony against bigger prostitution players, for example.
But there's no evidence that's the case so far. Instead, it's likely that the lighter sentences and less severe charges reflect the true nature of these men's actions, which did advance or promote prostitution, but not necessarily at anyone's expense (except perhaps the taxpayers', now that King County has gotten involved).
"If there was evidence that Mueller and Durnal were really like physically restraining or assaulting these women, we would have taken a more aggressive approach," Richey, the King County deputy prosecutor, says. "But instead the evidence was more that [they were] providing a place" and "promoting the prostitution of numerous foreign nationals."
Let's just linger on that a second: For all the bluster about busting up a ring of international bad guys, the worst offenders in the case can only be said to have "provided a place" for consensual prostitution to take place.
Police and media reports were crafted to sound as if the sting took down a massive, coordinated criminal organization devoted to sexual exploitation. In fact, the "brothels" they busted were solo operations that worked more like talent or temp agencies, with willing workers showing up for short-term gigs brokered through the agency. The "sex trafficking website" they took down was a robust platform for independent sex-worker advertising.
And the shadowy sexual exploiters of The League? Just plain-old prostitution clients who occasionally liked to get together for beers.
With Mueller and Durnal out of the picture, it's the sex buyers that prosecutors have been focusing on. But buying sex isn't the crime these defendants were charged with: Like Mueller and Durnal, each faces a felony promoting-prostitution charge. Unlike Mueller and Durnal, however, League members aren't accused of managing escort agencies, operating brothels, or having any direct hand in running a prostitution business. The activity used to sustain their charges includes posting sex stories in online forums, private emailing with and about sex workers, and meeting for drinks at local bars. Part two of this series will explore The League in more depth.
The rest of the series can be found at reason.com/archives/2016/09/09/the-truth-about-us-sex-trafficking
Part 1: 'This Is What Human Trafficking Looks Like'
Part 2: How Washington Police Turned Talking About Prostitution into a Felony Offense
Part 3: From 'Prostituted Woman' to Human Trafficker
Coda: A Lifetime of Stigma
PART ONE: 'THIS IS WHAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING LOOKS LIKE'
WITH THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER LAST SUMMER, Sigurds Zitars, a retired accountant, was the only family member left in University Place, Washington. Since 2006 "Sig" had been the clan's caregiver, after his mother developed dementia and his father and sister both took ill. In January, Zitars was fixing up the family home for sale when police broke down its door, arresting the 62-year-old at gunpoint. According to the state, Zitars was one of at least a dozen bad guys associated with an elite league of sexual predators and a multi-state sex-trafficking ring.
News of the bust played perfectly into the growing narrative from both activists and officials that sex trafficking—the use of force, fraud, or coercion to trap people in prostitution—is rampant in America, a pernicious form of what Barack Obama described in 2012 as "modern slavery." According to political lore, both girls-next-door and women smuggled across U.S. borders are at risk, their exploitation aided by online tools and the indifference of lusty patrons.
On January 7, Washington officials unveiled a perfect storm of such horrors: Women lured from South Korea under false pretenses and "held against their will" at local brothels. A website where deviant men promoted and reviewed these enslaved women. "Because they had money," said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg at a televised press conference, these men "gained access to sexually abuse these vulnerable young women, then put their energies toward a campaign to encourage many more men to do the same."
"The systematic importation of vulnerable young women for sexual abuse, exploitation, and criminal profiteering has been going on for years and it came to a stop this week," Satterberg added. "This is what human trafficking looks like."
But as more information about the case has become available, Satterberg's narrative starts to break down. The reality—as evidenced by police reports, court documents, online records, and statements from those involved—is far less lurid and depraved. Instead of a story of stark abuse and exploitation, it's a story of immigration, economics, the pull of companionship and connection, the structures and dynamism that drive black markets, and a criminal-justice system all too eager to declare women victims of the choices they make.
The story is presented here in three parts. The first offers a glimpse at how this sexual economy actually operated, the motivations of its main actors, and how police came to "infiltrate" the scene. Part two explores how the government's war on prostitution—rebranded as a war on sex trafficking—brands innocent men as sexual predators and sets dangerous new standards of disrespect for free speech and free association rights. And part three looks at how policies designed to get tough on pimps and traffickers wind up threatening the very women they're supposed to save.
'Shipped From City to City'
The first wave of arrests came just after New Year's. On January 6, working with the FBI and the Bellevue Police Department (BPD), officers from the King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) raided 12 upscale apartments in Bellevue, a large and affluent suburb of Seattle that's become a hub of tech industry. At a press conference the next day, they announced that 12 female victims from South Korea had been rescued, 12 "brothels" closed, and a major human-trafficking ring shut down.
The team also seized three websites: The Review Board (TRB), a web forum where Seattle sex workers and clients communicated; KGirlsDelights.com, a directory of Korean sex-workers and escort-agencies in America; and TheLoeg.com, a private site for local prostitution story-swapping. TRB was run by "Tahoe Ted"—otherwise known as Sigurds Zitars—arrested the day prior along with nine suspected members of the LOEG (or "League," as police spelled it).
Prosecutor Dan Satterberg described the situation as one of extreme coercion and criminality, calling the 12 Asian women recovered in the operation "true victims of human trafficking."
News of the bust soon spread in sensational newscasts and lurid headlines. The U.K.'s Daily Mail summed the story up like this: "Police smash prostitution ring and rescue 12 South Korean women forced into $300-an-hour prostitution by ex marijuana grower who pimped them out across the U.S."
A Bellevue paper claimed the Korean women were "required to work off their family's debts through sexual service." The Seattle Times reported that police had thwarted "a widespread prostitution ring run by a group of men known as 'The League.'" Local news network KIRO 7 named photographer Michael Durnal and ex-marijuana entrepreneur Donald Mueller as the ringleaders, men who "sold women all over" America.
It was shocking, scandalous, horrifying. Yet almost none of it is true.
While most publications were careful to pepper "police said" into articles, their headlines and language precluded any sense of impartiality. "12 women forced into prostitution freed near Seattle," trumpeted The Oregonian, over an Associated Press article. That article, syndicated widely, said Korean women were "shipped from city to city about every month and typically not allowed to leave their apartments except to go to the airport." The New York Times reported that the women were being "brought to America and forced into prostitution to pay debts" by a "major human trafficking ring." Reuters reported that victims were "forced to work as much as 14 hours per day."
Police, meanwhile, continued to expand the reach of the case. In early May, five months after the first arrests, six more men were added to the complaint against alleged League members. These new defendants included archetypes of the Seattle-Bellevue tech class, including an executive at Microsoft, an engineer for Boeing, and a director of software development for Amazon. Local media reported that these men were part of a "large-scale sex trafficking operation" and offered headlines such as "Microsoft and Amazon Execs Busted for Promoting Sex Slavery."
It was shocking, scandalous, horrifying. Yet almost none of it is true—and the little that is technically true is so lacking in context that it's utterly misleading.
Almost everything that follows was known by detectives prior to their January raids and press conference, because it comes directly from court documents that they filed to establish probable cause for each defendant's arrest. However, the picture that emerges from these documents bears little resemblance to the dramatic and dystopian tale that police publicly spun.
Distorted Details
A sample escort review on TRB, provided in KCSO charging documents
Begin with police's claim that The Review Board was a "sex trafficking website" where "prostituted women" were advertised and reviewed. This implies the women promoted on TRB had no control over their ads appearing there, did not want clients to review them, and generally did not want to be engaged in commercial sex. On the contrary, the core of TRB's business model consisted of escorts posting advertisements for themselves. Countless Seattle-area sex workers who have advertised on the site have attested to this. As one, "Veronica," told the women's site Broadly, TRB "was really a wonderful thing that kept everyone safe. Girls would be in touch with each other. A lot of people used it as a reference system—have you seen this person and are they safe?—for both sex workers and clients."
That TRB worked as an advertising and review system designed to benefit both sex workers and their clients is not something detectives could have merely misunderstood. King County Detective Luke Hillman had been posting undercover on TRB for years—interacting with many defendants in this case—before any arrests were made. And not only were many of the women who advertised on TRB openly listed as "independent," police have in their possession hundreds of emails that show the women actively managing their businesses.
For instance, the Certificate for Determination of Probable Cause against Phillip Dehennis, who was charged with "promoting prostitution"—more on that particular charge later—highlighted a string of emails between him and sex worker "Sabreena." According to Bellevue Detective Tor Kraft, Dehennis and Sabreena "agree on a 90 minute session with her to which she would throw in a neck trim (actual hair cut) at 'No charge.'" After they meet, Dehennis emails Sabreena to ask explicitly, "Would you like me to put a review on TRB?" She says yes. When Dehennis completes the review, he emails her again and asks her to check it for accuracy, to which Sabreena replies "thank you so much for the review!" Dehennis was helping Sabreena market herself.
So what about the two men, Durnal and Mueller, whom KIRO 7 called sex-trafficking ringleaders who "sold women all over the country?" Nowhere in official court documents do police allege this; at most, Mueller and Durnal are accused of exploiting Korean sex workers—a.k.a. "K-Girls"—within the Seattle area.
But even the case for that is flimsy. Despite initially labeling both men "human traffickers," police present no substantial evidence in charging documents that local K-Girls were captive or unwilling. By all accounts, these women flew to Seattle voluntarily and without chaperones, usually from other U.S. cities, in order to work temporarily at one of the area's booming Korean-escort agencies. The K-Girls were, in essence, independent contractors.
"It is reasonable for women to choose sex work in the US instead of sex work in Korea," wrote Seattle resident Christina Slater, who describes herself as an "erotic service provider," in an April blog post about the Review Board bust. "I know that if those were my options...and if I spoke little to no English I would need assistance in finding a work place, scheduling clients, etc."
This is the main criminal activity alleged of Mueller and Durnal: providing K-girls with live-work space, posting online ads for them, and screening and booking their clients. Mueller called his enterprise "Asian Haven," while Durnal ran "K-Dynasty." Both operated out of rentals in high-end apartment complexes in downtown Bellevue. The men paid the rent and utilities on these spaces and stocked them with furniture and supplies, such as mouthwash and condoms, but did not live there. Visiting K-girls each got their own bedroom and private bathroom. In exchange for the room, advertising, and administrative work, Mueller or Durnal received $100 for each $300-an-hour "date" a woman completed.
Doesn't that make Mueller and Durnal "pimps"? Yes, in the sense that the definition of a pimp is anyone who helps manage business for a sex worker or makes money off of prostitution.
But Mueller and Durnal don't conform to pimp stereotypes. The men—both prolific sex buyers themselves—weren't violent or abusive. They didn't have sex with the women they booked, provide them with drugs, try to keep them dependent, or try to keep them from leaving (in fact, their business model depended on women coming and going relatively quickly). They provided a service and took a fee, leaving the K-Girls with whom they worked with a personal profit of hundreds of dollars per day.
Of course, being paid doesn't, on its own, preclude being exploited. What about the claims that the K-Girls were forced to work 12 to 14 hours daily?
The only evidence in police documents to support these statements is TRB advertisements that list escorts' appointment availability. Some ads did indeed indicate availability windows stretching 10 to 12 hours. But being available during those hours doesn't mean the women were actually working for all or even most of them. Mueller allegedly told police that his escorts saw an average of five clients per day, with a typical session lasting one hour.
It's similarly unclear on what basis police allege that K-Girls were trapped in the area or in their apartments. Probable cause documents for Mueller and Durnal offer nothing to support this accusation. A case summary for Mueller states that "Donald's sex workers typically travel via airplane to work at his brothels. His sex employees pay their own travel expense to get to Seattle. [They] fly in from different cities such as New York, Boston, or L.A." The summary also details an email between Mueller and a woman named "Ann" who claims to live out of the country.
Within the plans, the pair discuss how to get Ann to the U.S. legally so they [can] go into business together. Ann mentions that she will pay Donald to "Make appointments with customers.' Donald agrees to do some background work into the process and ... explains that he will contact an immigration attorney he knows to assist.
Statements made by League members in their private communications also fail to create an impression that these women were hapless prisoners. For instance, after a session with K-Girl "Mari," one member reports that "she told me she's a total gym rat, spending about two hours a day in the gym." After another session, he reports that Mari "shared some videos of her doing weights in the gym. This girl can lift some weights!"
Even if Mari was making use of the building's rooftop gym, such activities suggest that, at the very least, she wasn't captive and could have reached out for help in some way had she wanted to. This interpretation is further supported by the fact that these women had internet-enabled phones, which they were able to use freely.
"Migrant sex workers, especially Asian migrant workers, are often inaccurately labeled as trafficking victims."
"They talked about going shopping, their favorite restaurants," one former client, who asked to remain anonymous, told me. "Their English was fine." Many came over on student visas, with the goal of making cash quickly in the sex trade before heading back to Korea, he said. One K-Girl who always took great pride in her nails told him she was saving up to open a nail salon and body-waxing spa back home.
"Migrant sex workers, especially Asian migrant workers, are often inaccurately labeled as trafficking victims," Savannah Sly, board president for the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), cautioned in a statement at the time of the bust. "Just because a women came to the U.S. and works as an escort does not mean she did so involuntarily."
There's little in police charging documents to suggest Seattle K-Girls were powerless over how long they stayed in the area. Yes, they frequently told customers they weren't sure how long they would stick around. But although this could be a sign someone is pulling the strings elsewhere, it could just as easily mean that they don't think it's the client's business, that it depends on how long the agency will let them, or—the reason they're most often reported to give—that it depends how business goes.
TRB reviews included in police documents further indicate that K-Girls had their own motivations for staying or going. A June 2015 review of "Ace K" says "she will be leaving the 29th… The weather is getting her down ('I'm an LA girl') so she said she will restrict her visits to the warmer months in the future." A TRB post from user "ItsMe" states that he asked "Angel" when she would return to Seattle "and she said she doesn't like this cold, wet weather, so it might be later when the weather gets nicer." A December 2015 email from "Spider Rico" to some other League members claims K-girl "Asuka" told him she didn't like Dallas because it has "bugs the size of dogs. She is slow but wants to stay in Bellevue because it's clean, she said."
Remember that police claim to have thousands of emails, posts, and private communications between those charged to choose from. The few hundred they included in court documents (from which these quotes are drawn) are what they describe as "representative examples." And while there are some reports of new K-Girls saying they are nervous, or seeming to clients like they don't want to be there, such statements are rare.
Police documents also indicate that women who advertised on TRB, including K-Girls, set different prices, had different boundaries, and offered differing levels of sexual activity. For League members, these were limits to be staunchly respected. A "Code of Conduct" states that individuals will be blacklisted if they don't use condoms, take a shower and use mouthwash at the start of each appointment, respect individual boundaries, and remember that no means no.
"Keep in mind she is a professional provider and it is important to recognize that the menu of activities that is offered varies from one provider to another and from one client to another," the code states.
That seems rather gentlemanly—perhaps even feminist?—for a bunch of men who allegedly get off on "abus[ing] these vulnerable young women," as King County Prosecutor Satterberg put it. But the key to painting League members as traffickers and abusers lies in framing all sex workers as victims. If you understand the K-Girls and others who advertised on TRB as individuals with choice and agency, the men who paid them for sex are no more abusers than you or I when we pay someone to watch our kids, listen to us talk about problems, or fix our cars.
Victimless Crimes
Visitors to TheReviewBoard.net are now greeted with these four images and a note that the site has been seized pursuant to a prostitution investigation
If evidence of the kind of human trafficking ring that haunts the public-imagination existed here, detectives shouldn't have had trouble uncovering it. The King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) had been investigating The Review Board since 2007. An undercover detective first attended a TRB meet-and-greet—meeting both Donald Mueller and the site's proprieter, Sigurds Zitars—in 2008. King County Detective Luke Hillman had been undercover as a hobbyist on TRB since 2013.
Off and on for two years, Hillman would post lengthy and detailed descriptions of alleged sexual encounters with sex workers to TRB. These included the same sorts of statements defendants have been arrested for posting, such as pleas for others to visit a particular woman so she would stick around, info about the screening process for new clients, updates on when a new K-Girl arrived in town, and links to their ads on other websites, like Backpage. (Sample Hillman post: Yoco "is the freight train of sexual energy. ... Her last day is August 23rd, RUN, don't walk, to see her.")
For the better part of 2015, detectives interacted undercover with defendants in myriad ways, monitored alleged brothels, and went on more than a dozen "dates" with the women they believed to be forced into "sexual slavery." (Oddly, they felt no need to "rescue" these women at these times.)
Bellevue Police Chief Steve Mylett said at a press conference that the investigation was "unprecedented in size and scope."
Bellevue police had first been alerted to Mueller in April 2015, when a neighbor complained to the agency about possible prostitution activity at an apartment he leased. Soon after, Bellevue Detectives Tor Kraft and Shelby Shearer interviewed Mueller (in an official capacity) and he told them about his business. In the fall, Kraft would meet Durnal while undercover and befriend him; Durnal later complained that Mueller had talked to the cops in the spring and told them "everything." Detective Hillman would also become friendly with Mueller while undercover, and he and Kraft would make dates with women working at both Mueller and Durnal's brothels. In all of these encounters, most involving conversations with detectives posing as prostitution clients, the details of their operations remained the same.
And King County didn't just have their word to go on; detectives also had ample access to suspects' private web-forum and email communications, subpoenaed from internet service providers. Plus they had the 12 women who had allegedly been victimized by defendants—women "held against their will" as "their sexual autonomy [was] stolen repeatedly," as Mylett put it at a press conference. Surely, testimony to that effect from any of the victims would be enough to make human-trafficking charges stick?
But no such testimony exists. To its credit, King County didn't use prostitution charges or immigration threats to try and compel the cooperation of Korean sex workers. Prosecutors don't know what has become of the "rescued" women now.
"Our approach was to allow the women who we recovered from these places to go, without requiring their testimony or requiring them to stay here," says King County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Val Richey, a leader in the area's crusade against commercial sex. "We were really trying to be very victim-centered by essentially saying, 'This situation is over. We are offering you advocacy or services if you want them; if you don't want them you may go.'"
According to Richey, some of the 12 women they encountered at the apartments did accept an offer to talk with non-government advocates or service providers, but these individuals were not required to report what they heard to police. "We do that very intentionally, so that we can really try to allow some freedom and self-determination for people in this situation," says Richey.
If they had wanted to testify, however? "Absolutely, for those who were interested, we would keep their contact information and so forth," says Richey. But none were interested.
"Many of them I think just wanted to leave."
Deal Me In
Before being arrested on suspicion of sex trafficking, Mueller and Durnal were both frequent sex buyers themselves. Their move to managing commercial-sex businesses had been recent, a natural extension of the relationships they made with sex workers and other clients. Mueller said he started when a woman he patronized regularly, ViVi, asked him to become her booker; from there he became more involved, starting his own agency in late 2014. Durnal still maintained a full-time job as a professional photographer but had begun moonlighting in the sex business after dating a K-Girl himself.
After their arrests last January, both men were held in King County Jail on $150,000 bail. In February, they accepted plea deals, copping guilty to promoting prostitution in the second degree. There was no media blast from King County about this development.
While they're still awaiting final sentencing, the penalties Richey recommended were relatively modest: 60 days in jail for Durnal, who pleaded guilty to two counts of promoting prostitution, and 80 days in jail waived as a first-time offender, plus 30 days of community service, for Mueller, who pleaded guilty to three counts of promoting prostitution. In addition, each man would get 12 months of community custody afterward, pay a $3,000 fine, "be available for interviews and testimony as directed," and take a class on "Stopping Sexual Exploitation."
It's true that severity of crime and severity of punishment aren't always perfectly correlated. Mueller and Durnal might have gotten favorable sentencing recommendations in exchange for offering testimony against bigger prostitution players, for example.
But there's no evidence that's the case so far. Instead, it's likely that the lighter sentences and less severe charges reflect the true nature of these men's actions, which did advance or promote prostitution, but not necessarily at anyone's expense (except perhaps the taxpayers', now that King County has gotten involved).
"If there was evidence that Mueller and Durnal were really like physically restraining or assaulting these women, we would have taken a more aggressive approach," Richey, the King County deputy prosecutor, says. "But instead the evidence was more that [they were] providing a place" and "promoting the prostitution of numerous foreign nationals."
Let's just linger on that a second: For all the bluster about busting up a ring of international bad guys, the worst offenders in the case can only be said to have "provided a place" for consensual prostitution to take place.
Police and media reports were crafted to sound as if the sting took down a massive, coordinated criminal organization devoted to sexual exploitation. In fact, the "brothels" they busted were solo operations that worked more like talent or temp agencies, with willing workers showing up for short-term gigs brokered through the agency. The "sex trafficking website" they took down was a robust platform for independent sex-worker advertising.
And the shadowy sexual exploiters of The League? Just plain-old prostitution clients who occasionally liked to get together for beers.
With Mueller and Durnal out of the picture, it's the sex buyers that prosecutors have been focusing on. But buying sex isn't the crime these defendants were charged with: Like Mueller and Durnal, each faces a felony promoting-prostitution charge. Unlike Mueller and Durnal, however, League members aren't accused of managing escort agencies, operating brothels, or having any direct hand in running a prostitution business. The activity used to sustain their charges includes posting sex stories in online forums, private emailing with and about sex workers, and meeting for drinks at local bars. Part two of this series will explore The League in more depth.
The rest of the series can be found at reason.com/archives/2016/09/09/the-truth-about-us-sex-trafficking
