A cheap camcorder and a way with charming girls out of their pants - literally - got two Bronx brothers convicted of pimping this week. They filmed a raw hourlong documentary of sorts on "the life of the pimp," rolling tape as they charmed young girls into selling their bodies for cash, which allegedly never materialized. Trouble was, the FBI gave the film a title when arresting Christopher and Anthony Griffith last May: Government Exhibit #22. And a jury in Manhattan found them guilty April 4. On the video, Christopher was seen luring girls 14 to 16 years old, whom the brothers would pick up outside Bronx high schools, according to the New York Daily News. Three of the girls testified during the trial that the brothers knew they were underage and encouraged them to give false ages. The case got a big boost from Anthony Griffith himself, a film student at Pace University, who's caught saying, as he flashes $20 bills and smiles on camera, "This is called pimping. I'm going to (get) four girls tonight." And they also filmed the girls having sex with them and others in a rundown hotel room. The brothers each face minimums of 10 years behind bars.
LORAIN, Ohio - Remember the mother whose photographic biography of her young daughter from infancy got her hit with child porn charges when a photo lab complained about one showing the girl rinsing herself off with a hand-held showerhead? Cynthia Stewart won't be going on trial for child porn - because she's signed a deal to undergo counseling and give up two photos the prosecution considered offensive. Stewart signed an agreement acknowledging the two pictures "could be interpreted" as sexually oriented, according to the Akron Beacon-Journal, even though she didn't intend them to be. Stewart and the American Civil Liberties Union had argued the pictures were intended as an artistic documentation of the girl's life.
WASHINGTON - Two Russian women speaking of being tricked into sexual slavery, and a Mexican woman revealing how she was led unwittingly to brothel life, highlighted testimony this week before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and Southern Asian Affairs. The panel heard further testimony on such victims' stories of rape, drug addiction, forced abortion, and physical abuse as it considers legislation to stop sexual slavery. One of the Russian women, a Siberian native, testified to being lured by the offer of a lucrative life working as a domestic in a foreign country, only to end up in Israel and being sold to a man for $10,000 and having to work the debt off. When she resisted, the woman testified further, she was beaten. The U.S. Justice Department estimated between 50,000 to 100,000 women and childred are trafficked as sex slaves into the United States. In a related development, the House Judiciary Committee has passed a bill to create new visas for sex slavery victims; these visas would be granted the victims' families as well as the victims, if they cooperate with authorities and face persecution or hardship if repatriated to their homelands. But the Washington Post says the Clinton Administration is leery of employing sanctions over fears they'd limit U.S. ability to work with law enforcement abroad.
LOS ANGELES - Two decades ago, "New Journalist" Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife looked at sex in America, with generous emphasis on swingers. On April 8, another investigative journalist, Terry Gould, will discuss his probe of the swingers' life, The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers, on sex therapist Susan Block's Internet radio program. "I'd love this book even if it didn't have me in it," Block said, alluding to a chapter on what she calls her "philosophy of ethical hedonism." "This is important reading not just for swingers and the swinging-curious, but for anyone interested in the complex nature of human sexuality." You can listen to and watch the broadcast at www.radiosuzy1.com, or you can call (213) 749-1330 if you'd like to attend in person at 1235 S. Hope St., Los Angeles.
--- Compiled by Humphrey Pennyworth
