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Is Paying for Time legal as long as not for sex? Is it similar to how Restaurants avoid Liquor License laws?

12-Nov-2008

Some escort agencies and independent companions get busted others don't yet they all sell the same thing; time and companionship. Is that legal? Neither product is sexual conduct so it has to be legal? If purchasing time to go have consensual sex is illegal then more than Jeane Palfrey and Jenny Paulino are guilty. What does the money pay for? It has to pay for sexual conduct to be illegal. See US V. Jones 909, where a dispatcher and seven escorts won and appeal in Federal Court. They had been convicted of Travel Act (Interstate Transportation in Aid of Racketeering Enterprise - ITAR or Travel Act) and Mann Act violations on a vague notion that prostitution was occurring. The Appellate Court said, "no." You have to have proof that sexual conduct was been bought or sold or at least offered for a fee. The Fed Prosecutors could not do that. The only thing they could prove was that money was being spent for some period of time for some companionship. Usually on hour but sometimes longer. What ever they do or did behind closed doors is up to them or is it?

Palfrey is also using this argument cited the Jones case in addition to her constitutional argument under Lawrence vs Kansas. Her June 15, 2007 Motion to dismiss count 2 is quite interesting at http://deborahjeanepalfrey.com/download/count2.pdf

Up until now I totally agreed the "just for time not for sex" disclaimers were worthless that it would be if a reasonable person would assume there was an expectation of sex as part of the fee. But I now see the argument as what was actually paid for. If you pay for time but also expect sex, your still paying for time not sex is the argument. Legal issues rely on such fine points in definitions. And there is some support for that in seems in United States v. Jones, 909 F.2d 533. At least the defense is being tried along with the constitutional defense of prostitution in a case with good attorneys making the fight.

The phone operators convictions were reversed since the mere "inducement" for sex was not enough to have a conviction at least under the Mann Act. The Travel Act is more complex and may have been reversed more on bad jury instructions since under the Travel Act intent can be a valid criminal act it seems. Is the escort agency case like the restaurant avoiding having to have a liquor license (see argument below)? Was money paid for the sex or for the time is the issue with escorts.

It would certainly be a whole lot simpler and not waste all these attorney fees and Courts time if private prostitution was simply decriminalized as in most of the world with no significant negative effects.

May be comparable to restaurants avoiding liquor license problem
In response to my post Ryver writes:
Around here (Philadelphia, PA), many restaurants that do not have a liquor license serve meals with multiple courses for a per-person set price and serve wine and liquor as "complimentary" along with the paid-for meals. Others have everything prices separately but still serve "complimentary" wine and liquor with whatever you order. I believe this is a common practice in many establishments that do not have such licenses to sell alcoholic beverages instead of being strictly BYOB.

Now, it's well known when you go there for dinner, you will be served alcohol and of course you realize on an unspoken level that you are paying for it somewhere in the cost of your food but legally you are only paying for food and the establishment is not violating liquor laws since they are not selling alcohol without a license.

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Similar issue in Canada - Is a release an adult body rub "sex" so it would violate the bawdy house law (outcall 100% legal in Canada as in most of the world except the U.S.)

Parlour's 'manual release' ruled legal
Charges thrown out in masturbation case
Do you just pay for massage and "manual release" simply optional no fee addition
Argument of course is similar in the U.S. including for time paid for an escort
A Canadian judge rules it wasn't sex

Some cities like Vaughan (suburb of Toronto) are going after unlicensed body rub parlors under the rarely enforced bawdy house law that makes incall prostitution illegal, while outcall has always been legal.

Justice Howard Chisvin, of the Ontario Court of Justice, dismissed two bawdy house charges against a body rub manager saying: "The payment of money was for a full-body massage. The act of masturbation was optional, at no additional fee. I wonder, and am left in doubt as to whether or not the community might consider the act of masturbation in all situations to be sexual."

The judge then made a reference to Clinton's liaison with the intern. "One only needs to look to the conduct of a certain president of the United States and ... the activity that he participated in to wonder whether or not the act of masturbation is indeed, in all circumstances, a sexual act."

Will the judge's ruling open the flood gates for more "happy endings" at rub and tugs without fear of police prosecution? Lawyer Alan Gold says it's too early to tell. But he said he believed the judgment to be unprecedented and said it will be in the next issue of his Criminal Law Netletter, a collection of "novel and important" cases.

In his ruling, Chisvin was critical of the undercover York Regional police officer in the case. The court heard how the officer stripped naked, lay first on his stomach and then flipped over for the female attendant, stopping her when she put her oiled-up hands on his penis.

He went to the massage parlour again, going through the drill with another attendant. "It strikes me that his actions were not only unnecessary but outside a protocol of investigative techniques of offences of this nature and bordered on no more than attending for self-gratification."

Source: http://www.thestar.com/article/255176 from 9/11/2007

Good comments:
... Kinda like McDonald's offering free smiles with your meal. You dint pay for it, didn't ask for it, but it was nice to get and you'll probably go back since they made you feel special.

Unless it's challenged in appeals court, it becomes legal precedent. The judge has defined that a HJ in itself is not prostitution if no dealing took place, and that it wasn't an indecent act that would have made the place a common bawdy house. Lets hope that, in the future, the justice system spends its time prosecuting real crime, instead of stimulation between consenting adults.

I prefer to have my penis massaged by a vagina. Now THAT's a full body massage *g*

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