My thoughts.
#1 This is first and foremost the fault of every voter in the USA. For years we have refused to change the laws and for years it has led to bad outcomes. When you keep prostitution illegal things like human trafficking or under age prostitution become more common and harder to control. Not to mention the spread of disease and the abuse of pimps. This has gone on way too long. Just make it legal, control it, tax it and be done with it.
That worked so very well when we ended prohibition. Not. Organized crime is organized crime, it doesn't care HOW it abuses people, people sick enough to do this to women will just find some other way to profit on the same thing. And I do NOT want the kind of operators that do this sort of thing moving into the legally permissible space, which they'd be at a competitive advantage to do if prostitution was legalized.
And I'm sorry, if you want to solve the human trafficking problem in America, legalizing the industry that drives it is NOT the correct solution. God, do you have any idea how hard we already have it trying to make sure other forms of workers aren't illegally imported and exploited, without legitimizing a profession that has a legitimate profit motive for bringing in "professionals" as young and vulnerable as possible? You'd NEVER solve the problem that way, and not only that, you'd have just become Gold Mine Central for the crooked operators that are already in the business. You would have this nation become a place where illegal prostitute slaves could be "laundered" and it would be all the harder to prove that any given prostitute was illegal in the first place.
Legalizing prostitution does not solve the problem of human trafficking -- it metastisizes it. Do NOT open that door!
#2 Kraft shouldn't have gone to that particular place. While the owner of a brothel or a massage parlor will no doubt always try to convince clients who are curious that the ladies are willing. Most people know better than to ask as they could lead to denial of service or an angry outburst by the pimps/providers. There is no way Kraft should have known or would have been told of such women were willing or not at such a location. Best to avoid them for moral reasons. He could have easily paid for a high end escort who he knew was on the up and up. Still. Bad judgement doesn't mean a bad person.
Robert Kraft is of an age where elderly people become increasingly easy to victimize. He's got a lot of money and was flush with success and got suckered into a situation which made him vulnerable. Long story short, it's probably time to turn the franchise over to Jonathan and move Robert aside anyway. This gives Robert the perfect pretext to make the move to ease his father out of whatever executive authority he still has.
And I have no doubt at all that this would N E V E R have happened while Myra was alive, God rest her soul.
#3 The police didn't do a good job here. They had a case on all these place for months. Yet they allowed the service to continue and continue. What were they waiting for? Why let it go on? Was it just to up the arrest numbers on Johns? If so that is a pretty crappy reason. I think questions should be asked about the investigation.
I don't. Any questions for the PD here would be misdirected based on the anguish that a beloved owner made a mistake of this magnitude. Extensive investigations of brothel activity are commonplace. I've been over a couple reasons why an investigation needs to continue for awhile.
And can I be blunt here? Given the Whack-A-Mole nature of prostitution stings, if Kraft was going to be a John, there would be plenty of opportunities for him to get a piece of action, whether this particular operation was in business or not. This just happened to be the one he went to, you bet your bottom dollar that if it wasn't there, the laws of capitalism would apply, and there would be another such operation to take his "business" to. This operation is extremely lucrative, which is why it can survive the vigilance of the police in the first place. Capitalism abhors a vacuum, if there's buyers, there will eventually be a seller.
In other words, the police not closing down this particular brothel before Robert Kraft got caught with his "hand" in the "cookie jar" is completely irrelevant -- if they had been shut down, he would have visited their replacement. And given the nature of police work and his high profile, he probably would have been caught at that one too. Some things an NFL owner is just too visible to do, and being a John is one of them.
