"A story little told is that of Jews in Hollywood's seedier cousin, the adult film industry. Perhaps we'd prefer that the 'triple exthnics' didn't exist, but there's no getting away from the fact that secular Jews played (and still continue to play) a disproportionate role throughout the adult film industry in America. Jewish involvement in pornography has a long history in the United States, as Jews have helped transform a fringe subculture into what has become a primary constituent of Americana. These are the 'true blue' Jews. Smut peddlers

Jewish activity in the porn industry divides into two (sometimes overlapping) genres: pornographers and performers. Though Jews make up only two percent of the American population, they have been prominent in pornography. Many erotica dealers in the book trade between 1890 and 1940 were immigrant Jews of German origin ...

In the postwar era, America's most notorious pornographer was Reuben Sturman, the 'Walt Disney of porn.' According to the US Department of Justice, throughout the 1970s Sturman controlled most of the pornography circulating in the country ... By the mid-80s he owned over 200 adult bookstores ... It was said that Sturman did not simply control the adult-entertainment industry, he was the industry.

Eventually he was convicted of tax evasion and other crimes and died, disgraced, in prison in 1997. His son, David, continued running the family business. The contemporary incarnation of Sturman is Steven Hirsch, a 43-year-old Jewish Clevelander who has been described as the 'Donald Trump of porno.' The link between the two is Steve's father, Fred, who was a stockholder-cum-lieutenant to Sturman. Today Hirsch runs the Vivid Entertainment Group, which has been called the Microsoft of the porn world, the top producer of 'adult' films in the US. His specialty was to import mainstream marketing techniques into the porn business. Indeed, Vivid parallels the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in its exclusive contracts to porn stars who are hired and moulded by Hirsch ...

Jews accounted for most of the leading male performers as well as a sizeable number of female stars in porn movies of the 1970s and '80s. The doyen of the Hebrew studs is Ron Jeremy ... [H]e's the nebischy, fat, hairy, ugly guy (an image from his web site opens this article) who gets to bed dozens of beautiful women. He presents an image of a modern-day King David, a Jewish superstud who supersedes the traditional heroes of Jewish lore ...

As probably the most famous Jewish male porn star, Jeremy has done wonders for the psyche of Jewish men in America ... Seymore Butts, aka Adam Glasser, is everything that Jeremy is not: young, handsome, and toned ... Within a few years, 'Seymore Butts' -- his nom de porn which is simultaneously his sales pitch -- became one of the largest franchises in the adult-film business ... [H]e is today probably the most famous Jewish porn mogul ...

Glasser employs 12 people, including his mother and cousin ... Gertzman (Jay Gertzman, author of Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940) explains that 'Jews, when they found themselves excluded from a field of endeavor, turned to a profession in which they sensed they could eventually thrive by cooperating with colleagues in a community of effort' ... The adult entertainment business required something that Jews possessed in abundance: chutzpah .. Of course, the large number of Jews in porn were mainly motivated by the desire to make profits ... As Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the ADL, commented, 'Those Jews who enter the pornography industry have done so as individuals pursuing the American dream" ...

Sturman ... identified as a Jew -- was a generous donator to Jewish charities -- and the performer Richard Pacheco was once interviewed to be a rabbinical student ... Is there a deeper reason, beyond the mere financial, as to why Jews in particular have become involved in porn? There is surely an element of rebellion in Jewish X-rated participation. It's very taboo and [its] forbidden nature serves to make it attractive.

As I have written in these pages before, treyf signifies 'the whole world of forbidden sexuality, the sexuality of the goyim, and there all the delights are imagined to lie ..." (Reel Kashrut, Jewish food in film, JQ 189, Spring 2003) According to one anonymous industry insider quoted by E. Michael Jones in the magazine Culture Wars (May 2003), 'the leading male performers through the 1980s came from secular Jewish upbringings and the females from Roman Catholic day schools.' The standard porn scenario became, as a result, a Jewish fantasy of schtupping the Catholic shiksa ...

Extending the subversive thesis, Jewish involvement in the X-rated industry can be seen as a proverbial two fingers to the entire WASP establishment. Some porn stars viewed themselves as frontline fighters in the spiritual battle between Christian America and secular humanism.

According to [Luke] Ford, Jewish X-rated actors often brag about their 'joy in being anarchic, sexual gadflies to the puritanical beast'. Jewish involvement in porn, by this argument, is the result of an atavistic hatred of Christian authority: they are trying to weaken the dominant culture in America by moral subversion ...

Al Goldstein, the publisher of Screw magazine, said (on lukeford.com), 'The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don't believe in authoritarianism." Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged ...

It is a case of the traditional revolutionary/radical drive of immigrant Jews in America being channeled into sexual rather than leftist politics. Just as Jews have been disproportionately represented in radical movements over the years, so they are disproportionately represented in the porn industry. Jews in America have been sexual revolutionaries. A large amount of the material on sexual liberation was written by Jews. Those at the forefront of the movement that forced America to adopt a more liberal view of sex were Jewish ..

Overall, then, porn performers are a group of people who praise rebellion, self-fulfilment, and promiscuity. What are we ashamed of? This brief overview and analysis of the role and motivations behind pornographers and performers is intended to shed light on a neglected topic in American Jewish popular culture. Little has been written about it."

[Nathan Abrams is a Lecturer in Modern American History at the University of Aberdeen. He has just completed a book on neo-conservatism in the United States.]

"Towering Men and Stout-Hearted Sisters": Book review of Jewish scholar Jay Gertzman's Bookleggers an Smuthounds

Jerusalem Post, March 9, 2000

"A great many of the publishers and peddlers of what was variously called flagitious, pornographic, or erotic literature were Jews, and most of those were German Jews who had learned the printing trades in the old country.

This fact of course fed right into the animosity of anti-smut crusaders who constantly decried the 'foreign, radical, corrupting' character of the smut peddlers. The main protagonists in this battle for the soul, if not the groin, of America were the patrician John Saxton Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and Samuel Roth, a writer, poet and genuine man of letters and an equally authentic purveyor of sleaze. Roth, for example, not only published (and often pirated) works by Lawrence, Joyce, Miller and legitimate classics, but also printed and peddled flip books, pornographic playing cards, albums of 'French postcards' and the vulgarities known as 'Tijuana Bibles.'

Just to compound matters, during his various stints in prison Roth wrote works like Jews Must Live, a book of rabid anti-Jewish sentiment that Gertzman says still circulates in anti-Semitic circles today ... Gertzman himself acknowledges towards the end of his book that his uncle once ran the most notorious 'dirty bookshop' in Philadelphia. For that matter, Sam Roth's grandson is none other than Prof. James Kugel, the eminent Bible scholar at Harvard University. If there's a more complicated and surprising tribe on earth, I've yet to hear about it."

"Porners Must Live." San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 25, 2000

"The story of the Web's most influential pornophile is nearly unbelievable: the son of an Australian Christian evangelist, Ford converted to Orthodox Judaism in 1993 – a 'porn-again Jew' in Fordspeak – under the theological influence of right-wing Jewish talk-radio demagogue Dennis Prager (whose Web site Ford also runs).

As a result, Ford's site is not really a porn site at all. It's a daily chronicle of how devout Judaism and devout pornology play themselves out in one man's endless public arguments with himself. The basic premise: how can someone devote his professional life to an industry he believes is, in Ford's own words, 'profoundly destructive and hence immoral ... another form of rebellion against God.'

Ford is a religious Jew, not a cultural one, yet it is cultural Jews – 'non-Jewish Jews,' he calls them – with whom Ford's site is most invested, specifically all those non-Jewish Jews who get it on and buy and sell the getting-it-on in the porn industry. Like all of his polemics, Ford's essay on these Jews is a rambling collage of theories, interviews, and uncited historical references that never really coalesce into an identifiable argument.

Ford is less of an opinion maker and more of an archivist-chronicler, his agenda always buried beneath layers of deferral and ambiguity. In the piece, Ford turns the Jews-run-Hollywood riff into a Jews-run-porn riff, listing off the secret Hebraic roots of all the key players – Randy 'Andy Abrams' West, Barbara 'Stacy Mitnick' Dare. He also feeds the age-old anti-Semitic connection that Hitler turned into grounds for genocide in Mein Kampf – Jews as dirty, parasitic merchants of smut, disease, and moral pollution – by emphasizing the high number of Jewish porn publishers throughout smut's history."

Jews in pornography]. 2001

"Secular Jews play a disproportionate role throughout the sex industry ... Jews accounted for most of the leading male [pornography] performers of the 1970s and '80s ...

If the Torah [Pentateutch] command Jews 'to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,' and Judaism strongly opposes porn, why do Jews dominate porn? ... Pornographer Seymore Butts attributes the large number of Jews in porn to the desire for profits. Jews gravitate towards money ...

I have not yet met a Jewish guy who wasn't horny as a rabbit,' says [Jewish porn star] Nina Hartley, 'Culturally it's OK for Jews to act and for WASPs its different ... Plus, they get to have sex with all these beautiful blonde women ... Where else are you going to get a succession of shiksas [non-Jewish women] to bed you down?'"

Of Fraud and Sex.com. The Industry Standard, November 29, 2000

"Sex.com is one of the more lucrative properties on the Web. InternetNews cited 'some industry experts' as estimating its worth at $250 million. Reuters went with a guesstimate by 'lawyers' of $100 million, and added that court documents indicate that the site's former owner, Stephen Cohen, who had been running the site since 1995, took home $17 million in salary and holds stock options worth $100 million.

In the court case, filed in 1998, Gary Kremen accused Stephen Cohen of stealing the domain name that he, Kremen, had first registered in 1994. Cohen, who all the stories noted has done prison time for fraud, allegedly forged a letter that persuaded Network Solutions (dossier) to transfer the name to him in 1995. Cohen then built sex.com into a destination that attracts 25 million visitors a day, according to Reuters.

All the reporters noted that the judge had ordered Cohen to pay $25 million into a court-controlled fund until damages (if any) are determined, because the court feared that Cohen was hiding his assets offshore."

[Stephen Cohen should not be confused with BENJAMIN Cohen, of England, who, at 18 years of age, became a millionaire with the founding of JewishNet and has since founded cyberbritain (featuring huntforporn.co.uk and dotadults.com).

As mere sampling, other premiere Jewish Internet porn moguls include Seattle-based Seth Warshavsky, called "the Bill Gates of Smut" by the Los Angeles Times [Ehrman, M. 6-13-99, p. 26; read The Prince of Porn at wired.com] ; Jonathan Silverstein, the president of Cybererotica [Chairman: Ron Levi]; Peter Asher, the president of Vivid Entertainment Group (the "world's leading producer of adult films and videos" -- founded by Steven Hirsch and David James; read about the VEG porn team in Silicone Valley: When Porn Goes Public at the Industry Standard); and Danni Ashe, one of the major women entrepreneurs in the online porn field -- read the The Brains Behind the Boobs, at wired.com]

The Sordid Saga of Sex.com. wired.com, April 15, 1999

"Never mind the porn on Sex.com. If even half the allegations that [Gary] Kremen makes are true, the tale behind Sex.com is the most sordid in the short history of the Internet economy

[Stephen] Cohen was convicted in 1991 for posing as a lawyer in a bankruptcy court in a scheme to bilk an elderly woman's creditors out of $200,000. According to court records, Cohen assumed the identity of several attorneys, forged phony deeds and cashier's checks, and attempted to hide the woman's assets. Cohen was sentenced to 46 months. It was his second conviction. In 1975, he was found guilty of grand theft and check kiting ... Within eight months of his prison release, Cohen controlled the Sex.com domain name.

Cohen allegedly pulled off of the domain heist with a forged letter, dated 15 October 1995, to Network Solutions, the Net's registrar ... In an early interview, before Kremen raised his allegations, Cohen claimed that he had been using the Sex.com name since 1979, as part of The French Connection, an electronic bulletin board he founded for 'swingers, nudist camps, and alternative lifestyles.' BBSs were the primary source of digital porn before the Web. Back then, he said, Sex.com stood for 'Sex Communications ...

By the late '80s, Cohen had set up a real-world meeting place for French Connection swingers at a home in Orange County, California. Hundreds of couples met at 'The Club' on Friday and Saturday nights to swap partners. After neighbors complained, police arrested Cohen in 1990 on charges of operating a sex club in a residential zone. Cohen moved The Club elsewhere, and the charges were dropped ...

In late 1995, with Kremen temporarily stymied in his attempts to regain the domain, Cohen and four Orange County entrepreneurs dreamed up big plans for Sex.com. The grandest plan had little to do with the Internet. In January 1996, the group unveiled its bid to buy a Nevada brothel called Sheri's Ranch and transform it into a $100 million 'adult fantasy resort.' Named Wanaleiya, the Polynesian-themed resort would feature 500 exotic women who 'would not hesitate to see to your comfort and pleasure.'"

Criminal Enterprises: Pornography. Department of Criminal Justice and Police Studies, Eastern Kentucky University.

"Of the individuals indicted by the federal government in the MIPORN [Miami Pornography] operation, [Jewish porn mogul] Reuben Sturman was clearly the most important. Sturman presided over his business enterprises from his Sovereign News Company, headquartered in Cleveland.

Sovereign News was housed in a three-story, red-brick building, surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire and protected by the most modern and sophisticated electronic surveillance devices money can buy (Potter, 1986; Satchell, 1979). Sturman controlled pornography distribution warehouses in Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Denver, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Detroit. In addition, he was the principle owner of between 300 and 800 retail pornography stores around the country (May and Hosenball, 1981).

Sturman's Sovereign News Empire dominated the pornography industry and created an environment in which smaller operators and their distributors were dependent upon Sovereign News for their survival. A confidential FBI memorandum on the pornography industry said that [Sturman's business practices] have included the strong-arm shakedowns of other dealers, distributors, and suppliers throughout the United States, particularly on the West Coast."

Business Booms in Jail for Our Top Pornographer, Sydney Morning Herald [Australia],  January 30, 1995

"An American criminal, David Sturman, whose father was once the largest distributor of hard-core pornography in the world, has been able to gain a substantial slice of the Australian pornography industry while serving a jail sentence in California. By using Australians to act as owners of his businesses in Sydney and Canberra, Sturman avoided probity checks which are essential in gaining a licence to operate. Two years ago, Sturman and his American partner, Mark Franks, set up a group of companies to control the importation, sale and distribution of pornographic videos from outlets such as the Adam and Eve shop in Canberra."

Ruined Reps. Salon.com, June 7, 2000

"Israeli porn producers are hiring actors who look like Egyptian stars ... According to the Nasserist Al-Arabi weekly publication ... film producers are tracking down actors who look like current Egyptian stars, and using them to shoot porn flicks in Israel. The films are then imported to Egypt and screened for paying customers.

Appeal is broad for such materials, because Egyptian cinema is the most popular in the Middle East. Al-Arabi said the goal of the porn films was to 'tarnish the reputation of Egyptian film stars.' The original actors are, of course, not pleased with the alternative personas that have been handed to them ... Yusra Alawi told reporters she is asking her attorney to obtain copies of the films and to pursue legal action against those responsible."

Ron Jeremy: Porn Buddha. Austin Arts Downtown, May-June 2001

"People call Jeremy addicted (to food), a tightwad, a clown, a spotlight hound and a man who can maintain an erection longer than any man in pornography. He claims not to use Viagra. He was born Ron Hyatt into a Jewish family who don't seem too put off by his ultimate career choice, although after the first porn film, his dad told Ron not to use his last name ... We are talking about a man who can count a film called Blow it Out Your Ass, as a typical title among the 1600 or so films he has appeared in."

Meet A Nice Jewish Porn Star Ron Jeremy looks more like your Uncle Moe than a sex god, By Naomi Pfefferman, Jewsweek

"'I‘m just a nice Jewish boy with one vice,' says Queens native Ron Jeremy. 'Twenty-three years of porn films.' Scott J. Gill’s documentary 'Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy,' which opens in select cities this month, chronicles the life and times of the unlikeliest Jew in the world — and the unlikeliest porn star.

The 48-year-old Jeremy dotes on his family. They dote on him. His dad's a physicist. His brother's a Harvard-educated executive. Most everyone else in the family has at least a master's degree. Jeremy earned his master's in special education from Queens College in part to help his disabled mother.

He looks more like your Uncle Moe than a sex god. But while he’s not so easy on the eyes (he’s nicknamed 'The Hedgehog' because he’s short, fat and hairy), he’s been paid huge sums to bed more gorgeous women than James Bond. Gill’s hilarious film — in which Jeremy fans jubilantly declare, 'He’s Jewish!' — stands apart from other movies on the porn biz that have emerged in the past decade ... At its core, the flick poses the question, 'How did a hammy kid from Flushing become the most recognized male figure in adult film?'

Answers begin to emerge when the documentary shows home movies of the young Jeremy (born Ron Jeremy Hyatt) mugging for the camera while opening Chanukah presents. 'He’s always been a performer,' says his sister. 'From the time he was in elementary school ... he always wanted to be the center of attention' ...

His family wasn’t thrilled with his career choice, but staunchly supported his First Amendment rights when a film-related bust forced him to fight in court (it was illegal then to film porn in Los Angeles). 'Jewish families tend to be more liberal than Christian ones,' says the performer, citing the preponderance of Jewish men in porn. 'They aren’t obsessed by the fear of the devil or going to hell' ...

The garrulous Jeremy — who hopes to wed his girlfriend in a synagogue and raise their kids Jewish — is momentarily silent when asked how he’d feel if he had a daughter who wanted to do porn."

Rebel without Clothes. New Haven Advocate.

"To many people, Nina Hartley would appear to be the embodiment of contradiction: a feminist who's also a veteran porn star and damn proud of it. Further confounding stereotypes, she's a public speaker as comfortable in a college lecture hall as on a strip club stage and a politically aware progressive -- a 'third-generation socialist,' she called herself in a wide-ranging 1989 interview in Shmate, a now-defunct progressive Jewish journal.

She's a 1985 graduate of San Francisco State University with a B.S. in nursing. Magna cum laude, at that. She entered the sex business in 1982, working as a stripper at a San Francisco club while she was in college. Hartley, who estimates she has appeared in 360 movies or videos, made her first film in 1984 ... Hartley's emergence as one of porn's top stars coincided with a burgeoning public debate over the medium ...

The opinionated and articulate Hartley entered the fray and has become the foremost spokesperson for women working in the porn industry.

Brazilian Police Stake Out Diplomat Accused of Running Kiddie-Porn Ring.

Jerusalem Post, July 6, 2000

"Brazilian police continued to surround the Israeli consulate in Rio de Janeiro in the belief that Israeli vice-consul in Rio Aryeh Scher, wanted on suspicion of running a child pornography ring, had taken refuge there.

However Foreign Ministry officials said Scher has been en route to Israel for the past two days. Scher, who was at one point consul-general in Rio, was declared a fugitive by Brazilian authorities after a search of his apartment on Tuesday yielded what police officials described as evidence it was used for the manufacture of pornographic material, some of them involving underage girls ...

Brazilian authorities notified the Israeli embassy of plans to revoke Scher's diplomatic immunity on Tuesday, prior to the search. By the time police were able to obtain a warrant to search Scher's penthouse, the vice-consul was already on his way back to Israel, where he will face a Foreign Ministry inquiry ...

The investigation that culminated in the search of Scher's apartment began when a 17-year-old girl accused Georges Schteinberg, a 40-year-old Hebrew teacher of using her as a model in pornographic pictures and of distributing them on the Internet. Photographs of nude minors posed on a car with diplomatic plates were discovered in a search of Schteinberg's residence earlier in the week, in addition to massive quantities of pornographic material. Police then traced the car in the pictures back to Scher."

Brother Posts Bail in Porn Case, San Ramon Valley Times, January 5, 2002

"FEDERAL OFFICIALS SUSPECT A WALNUT CREEK MAN OF BEING A MAJOR DISTRIBUTOR OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY FROM RUSSIA.

A Walnut Creek man accused of being the 'best customer' of Russian child pornography kingpins is now himself suspected of being a 'major distributor' of illegal sexual materials, federal officials disclosed Friday.

As the investigation of Seth Bekenstein, 39, continues to evolve, authorities are diving deeper into the world of a man they believe trafficked in vast amounts of kiddie porn, said Elise Becker, an assistant U.S. attorney. 'At this time, we do actually think he is a major distributor both in the United States and abroad,' Becker told Magistrate Wayne Brazil during a bail hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. 'This has been his life for the past year.'"

Jewish Porn, World Union of Jewish Students

"After things like Jewish calendar, Jewish singles, Jewish dating, and Jewish festivals comes 'Jewish porn' in the list of top search keywords that GoTo.com provide. That is to say that 1000s of people are searching for Jewish porn. Why? ... Sam Stern is a guy. A guy who went on Young Judea year course in the early 90s. He lives in LA, spends his time making porn movies starring himself, and selling them on E-Bay. The guy is quite philosophical about his calling. Talks a lot about the strangeness of making porn on Yom Kippur, bits of guilt in the background, that sort of thing. Although mostly it really does seem that he is just kind of glad that he can make a living and have sex with porn stars. So, for circumcised hard-core porn, with a Jew in, find Sam."

Former N.J. Rabbi Admits Having Child Pornography, Newsday, February 26, 2002

"The former rabbi of a Morris County synagogue pleaded guilty Tuesday to having child pornography on his temple computer. Juda Mintz Jr., who now lives in Georgia, faces 27 to 33 months in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 ...

Mintz admitted that at that time he had at least 10 computer files containing photographs of minors engaging in sexual activity, including some images of children under 12. The synagogue said it cooperated with authorities. 'We deplore his actions and, indeed, relieved him of his duties because of them,' according to a statement released by synagogue vice president Jonathan Ramsfelder. 'During his tenure, (Rabbi Mintz) was viewed by many congregants as a warm, generous and dynamic rabbi and teacher. This was a loss.'"

Former Little League Administrator Faces Child Porn Charges, KFWB, March 6, 2002

"A former Long Beach Little League administrator is facing federal child pornography charges, according to the FBI. Signal Hill police and FBI agents arrested Laurent Blumenthal Tuesday after he was indicted on charges of possession of child pornography. Court documents allege the 65-year-old placed a hidden camera in his bathroom to secretly record young boys. The allegations were in an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant executed at Blumenthal's Signal Hill home on Jan. 14. Investigators also seized a computer at Blumenthal's home which allegedly had child pornography on the hard drive, according to the FBI."

Czechs Nix Plan to Shoot Porn Film at the Site of Terezin Transit Camp, JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), March 25, 2002

"Czech officials have quashed plans to shoot scenes from a porno film at the former wartime transit camp of Terezin. Officials banned the use of video cameras at Terezin after reports that a porn movie would be shot there.

'I did the only thing I could do,' Jan Munk, director of a monument to Terezin victims, said. Munk´s move came after the Czech tabloid Super reported Saturday that the film, starring top Czech porn star Robert Rosenberg, who is also the film´s producer, is set at the end of World War II and will tell the story of how women at the camp were raped by Nazis.

The ban might be too late, however, since Rosenberg has already filmed some parts of the camp. The paper that printed the original article on the film, which also printed a collage of a semi-naked woman posing in front of a picture of Terezin, said the film's working title is 'How it Was.'"

Porn Upsets Palestinians, The Advertiser, March 31, 2002

"Porn movies and programs in Hebrew are being broadcast by Israeli troops who have taken over three Palestinian television stations of Ramallah, irate residents of the besieged West Bank town have told AFP. The offices of three local television and radio stations were occupied by soldiers yesterday morning, a few hours after tanks and hundreds of troops stormed the town in Israel's biggest offensive against the Palestinian Authority and its leader Yasser Arafat.

The soldiers started broadcasting the porn clips -- considered extremely offensive by most Muslims -- intermittently this afternoon from the Al-Watan, Ammwaj, and Al-Sharaq channels, the residents said. 'The pornographic movies started on Al-Watan television at around 3:30 pm,' one 34-year-old Palestinian mother named Reema told AFP. 'I have six children at home, they have nowhere to go with what is going on here and can't even watch TV,' she said angrily. 'It's not healthy really. I think the Israelis want to mess with our young men's heads,' she said.

Anita, a 52-year-old mother of three children, complained about "the deliberate psychological damage caused by these broadcast.'. 'I am furious, these are the people who are shooting at us that also play this disgusting trick on us,' she said. 'We are desperate for news and constantly flipping channels and get these terrible pictures instead,' adding that videos of the intifada were also shown backwards with 'ideal terrorism' written in red across the screen. 'Luckily, there is no electricity in half of Ramallah,' she said from her house in east Jerusalem where the channels are also available.

A fourth local station, whose premises were not seized by the army, ran a written message across its screen letting people know it was the Israelis who were behind the graphic scenes. 'Anything currently shown on Al-Watan and other local TV channels has nothing to do with Palestinian programs but is being broadcast by the Israeli occupation forces, we urge parents to take precautions,' the message said. The Israeli military denied that it had anything to do with the pornographic programming and instead blamed the Palestinian leaders."

How David Asimov, the Biggest Child Porn Processor in California Skated Away from Federal Prison with a Little Help from His Friends, News Making News, March 29, 2001

"David Asimov, of Living Oak Court, Bennett Ridge, Santa Rosa, the son of the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, was sentenced on March 28, 2001 to six months' home detention with electronic monitoring and three years federal probation for possessing child pornography.

 U.S. District Court Judge Maxine M. Chesney sentenced Asimov after reviewing a series of sealed psychiatric reports, one of which was ordered by the court. Asimov who was charged with four federal counts of possession of child pornography with each count carrying a five year sentence, pled guilty to two counts in a plea bargain deal.

There was no forfeiture of any of Asimov's assets in this case, despite his owning a home in Santa Rosa purchased in 1996 for $375,000, and despite his receiving $3,000 per month from his father's estate.

How did Asimov, who possessed one of the largest stashes of pornography in California, skate away from federal prison? A look at the players yields the answer. Asimov's child porn stash was so big many child victims and perpetrators would have taken a fall, had Asimov been zealously prosecuted at trial."

Two actors face child porn charges, Salon.com, Nov. 16, 2002

"A year-old pornography investigation has led to the filing of criminal charges against two Hollywood actors: Paul Reubens, best known as Pee-wee Herman, and veteran character actor Jeffrey Jones of 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off.'

Reubens was charged with one misdemeanor count of possessing materials depicting children under the age of 18 engaged in sexual conduct, said Ana Garcia, a spokeswoman with the City Attorney's office. He surrendered to authorities Friday and was released on $20,000 bail ... Reubens, 50, and Jones, 56, are acquaintances and both cases stem from the same police investigation, said Los Angeles County District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons. ...

Reubens pleaded no contest to an indecent exposure charge in 1991 after he was arrested in Sarasota, Fla., for allegedly exposing himself in a movie theater. After that plea, Reubens' long-running 'Pee-wee Herman Show' was canceled and his star faded, although he has had supporting roles in a number of films since, including 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Blow.'"

Jewish Films To Watch at Sundance, [Jewish] Forward, January 17, 2003

"Andrew Jarecki brings to this year's Sundance [Film Festival] a new kind of legend — an indie who has already made a million ($388 million, to be exact, which is what AOL paid for his company, Moviefone, in 1999, keeping him on as CEO). The multitalented mogul, who has also penned and performed songs for the WB's late, lamented 'Felicity,' is showing his documentary 'Capturing the Friedmans,' one of several offerings topping the list of must-see films with Jewish themes ...

Buzz for 'Friedmans' is strong. In 1987, New York Newsday broke the story of Arnold Friedman, an upper-middle-class high school teacher from Great Neck, Long Island, who was arrested as part of a federal sting operation against mail-order pornography. Friedman's wife ran a childcare center from their home; Friedman was also a buyer of child pornography. As detailed in 'Capturing the Friedmans,' during the arrest agents began to suspect that children who came to the Friedmans' home for day care and after-school computer classes were being abused. Jarecki was given surprising access to the family's home videos, which he uses to sort through the various versions of the truth regarding the charges.

The Lady Is a Pornographer. Salon.com, June 26, 2000

""I'm the kink controller here at Click + Drag, which means I have to keep people in line,' says the 40-year-old [Abby] Ehmann. 'I make sure that nothing gets out of control -- just kinky' ... Ehmann has many titles in addition to kink controller. She is the 'editrix' of Extreme Fetish magazine -- dubbed 'The best alternative sex publication in New York' by TimeOut magazine. She is on the board of directors of Feminists for Free Expression, an organization that fights restrictions on free speech, and she is a writer and a performer. But for all her roles, Ehmann has only one mission: to satisfy the appetites of New Yorkers who are not sated by polite and sterile living ... She started a fanzine called Porn Free with the idea of giving away pornography. 'I thought, hey, there's a niche that no one is filling. Of course, it wasn't very profitable.' Ehmann gave up Porn Free after being approached in 1997 by D&L Enterprises, a publishing company, to be the editor of a fetish magazine. It was Ehmann's goal to create a sex publication that would provide fetishists with content suited to their needs. Each monthly issue of Extreme Fetish has a particular theme, such as latex, shoe fetishes or musclebound divas."

The Law of Return [from Israel: Whose Country Is It Anyway?, by well-known Jewish lesbian feminist Andrea Dworkin, 1990 [posted here at igc.org]

"You have to see it to believe it and even seeing it might not help. I've been sent it over the years by feminists in Israel--I had seen it--I didn't really believe it. Unlike in the United States, pornography is not an industry. You find it in mainstream magazines and advertising. It is mostly about the Holocaust. In it, Jewish women are sexualized as Holocaust victims for Jewish men to masturbate over.

Well, would you believe it, even if you saw it? Israeli women call it 'Holocaust pornography.' The themes are fire, gas, trains, emaciation, death ... . Monitin is a left-liberal slick monthly for the intelligentsia and upper class. It has high productions and aesthetic values. Israel's most distinguished writers and intellectuals publish in it. Judith Antonelli in The Jewish Advocate reported that Monitin 'contains the most sexually violent images. Photos abound of women sprawled out upside-down as if they have just been attacked.'

Or, in a magazine for women that is not unlike Ladies' Home Journal, there is a photograph of a woman tied to a chair with heavy rope. Her shirt is torn off her shoulders and upper chest but her arms are tied up against her so that only the fleshy part of the upper breasts is exposed. She is wearing pants--they are wet. A man, fully dressed, standing next to her, is throwing beer in her face. In the United States, such photographs of women are found in bondage magazines. For purists, there is an Israeli pornography magazine. The issue I saw had a front-page headline that read: ORGY AT YAD VASHEM. Yad Vashem is the memorial in Jerusalem to the victims of the Holocaust. Under the headline, there was a photograph of a man sexually entangled with several women. What does this mean--other than that if you are a Jewish woman you don't run to Israel, you run from it?"

Desmond embroiled in £8m tax wrangle, Media Guardian (UK), September 24, 2002

"Richard Desmond [also Jewish], the owner of Express Newspapers, is in dispute with the inland revenue over a £8m tax bill. His argument with the taxman began after a 1993 business deal when United Newspapers agreed to buy 10 of his magazines, resulting in a £12m windfall for the pornography publisher ... The Money Programme revelations could not come at a worse time for Mr Desmond, who is desperately trying to shake off his 'porn baron' tag. Only 10 days ago he went on the BBC's Ten O'Clock News to protest against the use of the word 'pornographer'. Demonstrating for the first time he is embarrassed by the P-word, Mr Desmond said of his critics: 'They use the word pornography... they use all sorts of nasty words.' Mr Desmond, who, according to his arch-rival David Sullivan, owns 50 top shelf titles and three porn TV channels, carried on: 'We don't publish pornography, we publish adult magazines.' He has been trying to sell his porn empire for the last two years but there have been no takers. The Money Programme confirms MediaGuardian.co.uk reports that Mr Desmond was also spurred into action by a Guardian investigation into one of his pornography websites that offered live lesbian sex as well as other images portraying pregnant women and women as old as 78. Deric Botham, who ran Mr Desmond's Fantasy Channel for five years, explained how within 24 hours of the article appearing he 'decimated' the site to prevent further media opporobrium."

Study Archive of Jewish Pornographers in Modern Societies

http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-pornography-archive.html

Towering Men and Stout-Hearted Sisters. Jerusalem Post, March 9, 2000
[Book review of Jewish scholar Jay Gertzman's Bookleggers an Smuthounds]
"A great many of the publishers and peddlers of what was variously called flagitious, pornographic, or erotic literature were Jews, and most of those were German Jews who had learned the printing trades in the old country. This fact of course fed right into the animosity of anti-smut crusaders who constantly decried the 'foreign, radical, corrupting' character of the smut peddlers. The main protagonists in this battle for the soul, if not the groin, of America were the patrician John Saxton Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and Samuel Roth, a writer, poet and genuine man of letters and an equally authentic purveyor of sleaze. Roth, for example, not only published (and often pirated) works by Lawrence, Joyce, Miller and legitimate classics, but also printed and peddled flip books, pornographic playing cards, albums of 'French postcards' and the vulgarities known as 'Tijuana Bibles.' Just to compound matters, during his various stints in prison Roth wrote works like Jews Must Live, a book of rabid anti-Jewish sentiment that Gertzman says still circulates in antisemitic circles today ... Gertzman himself acknowledges towards the end of his book that his uncle once ran the most notorious 'dirty bookshop' in Philadelphia. For that matter, Sam Roth's grandson is none other than Prof. James Kugel, the eminent Bible scholar at Harvard University. If there's a more complicated and surprising tribe on earth, I've yet to hear about it."

Porners Must Live. San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 25, 2000
"The story of the Web's most influential pornophile is nearly unbelievable: the son of an Australian Christian evangelist, Ford converted to Orthodox Judaism in 1993 – a 'porn-again Jew' in Fordspeak – under the theological influence of right-wing Jewish talk-radio demagogue Dennis Prager (whose Web site Ford also runs). As a result, Ford's site is not really a porn site at all. It's a daily chronicle of how devout Judaism and devout pornology play themselves out in one man's endless public arguments with himself. The basic premise: how can someone devote his professional life to an industry he believes is, in Ford's own words, 'profoundly destructive and hence immoral ... another form of rebellion against God.' Ford is a religious Jew, not a cultural one, yet it is cultural Jews – 'non-Jewish Jews,' he calls them – with whom Ford's site is most invested, specifically all those non-Jewish Jews who get it on and buy and sell the getting-it-on in the porn industry. Like all of his polemics, Ford's essay on these Jews is a rambling collage of theories, interviews, and uncited historical references that never really coalesce into an identifiable argument. Ford is less of an opinion maker and more of an archivist-chronicler, his agenda always buried beneath layers of deferral and ambiguity. In the piece, Ford turns the Jews-run-Hollywood riff into a Jews-run-porn riff, listing off the secret Hebraic roots of all the key players – Randy 'Andy Abrams' West, Barbara 'Stacy Mitnick' Dare. He also feeds the age-old anti-Semitic connection that Hitler turned into grounds for genocide in Mein Kampf – Jews as dirty, parasitic merchants of smut, disease, and moral pollution – by emphasizing the high number of Jewish porn publishers throughout smut's history."

Jews [in pornography]. lukeford.com [See above link], 2001
"Secular Jews play a disproportionate role throughout the sex industry ... Jews accounted for most of the leading male [pornography] performers of the 1970s and '80s ... If the Torah [Pentateutch] command Jews 'to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,' and Judaism strongly opposes porn, why do Jews dominate porn? ... Pornographer Seymore Butts attributes the large number of Jews in porn to the desire for profits. Jews gravitate towards money ... 'I have not yet met a Jewish guy who wasn't horny as a rabbit,' says [Jewish porn star] Nina Hartley, 'Culturally it's OK for Jews to act and for WASPs its different ... Plus, they get to have sex with all these beautiful blonde women ... Where else are you going to get a succession of shiksas [non-Jewish women] to bed you down?'"

Of Fraud and Sex.com. The Industry Standard, November 29, 2000
"Sex.com is one of the more lucrative properties on the Web. InternetNews cited 'some industry experts' as estimating its worth at $250 million. Reuters went with a guesstimate by 'lawyers' of $100 million, and added that court documents indicate that the site's former owner, Stephen Cohen, who had been running the site since 1995, took home $17 million in salary and holds stock options worth $100 million. In the court case, filed in 1998, Gary Kremen accused Stephen Cohen of stealing the domain name that he, Kremen, had first registered in 1994. Cohen, who all the stories noted has done prison time for fraud, allegedly forged a letter that persuaded Network Solutions (dossier) to transfer the name to him in 1995. Cohen then built sex.com into a destination that attracts 25 million visitors a day, according to Reuters. All the reporters noted that the judge had ordered Cohen to pay $25 million into a court-controlled fund until damages (if any) are determined, because the court feared that Cohen was hiding his assets offshore." [Stephen Cohen should not be confused with BENJAMIN Cohen, of England, who, at 18 years of age, became a millionaire with the founding of JewishNet and has since founded cyberbritain (featuring huntforporn.co.uk and dotadults.com). As mere sampling, other premiere Jewish Internet porn moguls include Seattle-based Seth Warshavsky, called "the Bill Gates of Smut" by the Los Angeles Times [Ehrman, M. 6-13-99, p. 26; read The Prince of Porn at wired.com] ; Jonathan Silverstein, the president of Cybererotica [Chairman: Ron Levi]; Peter Asher, the president of Vivid Entertainment Group (the "world's leading producer of adult films and videos" -- founded by Steven Hirsch and David James; read about the VEG porn team in Silicone Valley: When Porn Goes Public at the Industry Standard); and Danni Ashe, one of the major women entrepreneurs in the online porn field -- read the The Brains Behind the Boobs, at wired.com]

Windfall is Anticipated for Winner of Sex.com.
Mercury News, December 2, 2000
"When Gary Kremen bought the domain name sex.com in 1994, he didn't plan on being a purveyor of pornography. 'I thought it might be cool,'' he said. 'Maybe I'd get to meet the Dr. Ruths [Dr. Ruth is also Jewish] of the world.' He considered penning an advice column on what women should know about men. But he didn't get around to doing anything with the site. And a year later, it was taken over by a man named Stephen Cohen. For the past several years, the two men have been locked in a legal battle over the site -- a battle that ended Monday when a San Jose federal judge stripped ownership of the choice Web address from Cohen, ruling that he most likely stole the rights to the domain name from Kremen. Cohen, who turned the site into a popular portal to scores of X-rated Web sites, also was ordered to place $25 million into a federal court account until the litigation is completed. Kremen argued in court that the name was stolen from him ... As for the future of sex.com, Kremen hopes to change the site into something classier, focusing more on erotica than pornography."

The Sordid Saga of Sex.com. wired.com, April 15, 1999
"Never mind the porn on Sex.com. If even half the allegations that [Gary] Kremen makes are true, the tale behind Sex.com is the most sordid in the short history of the Internet economy ... [Stephen] Cohen was convicted in 1991 for posing as a lawyer in a bankruptcy court in a scheme to bilk an elderly woman's creditors out of $200,000. According to court records, Cohen assumed the identity of several attorneys, forged phony deeds and cashier's checks, and attempted to hide the woman's assets. Cohen was sentenced to 46 months. It was his second conviction. In 1975, he was found guilty of grand theft and check kiting ... Within eight months of his prison release, Cohen controlled the Sex.com domain name. Cohen allegedly pulled off of the domain heist with a forged letter, dated 15 October 1995, to Network Solutions, the Net's registrar ... In an early interview, before Kremen raised his allegations, Cohen claimed that he had been using the Sex.com name since 1979, as part of The French Connection, an electronic bulletin board he founded for 'swingers, nudist camps, and alternative lifestyles.' BBSs were the primary source of digital porn before the Web. Back then, he said, Sex.com stood for 'Sex Communications ... By the late '80s, Cohen had set up a real-world meeting place for French Connection swingers at a home in Orange County, California. Hundreds of couples met at 'The Club' on Friday and Saturday nights to swap partners. After neighbors complained, police arrested Cohen in 1990 on charges of operating a sex club in a residential zone. Cohen moved The Club elsewhere, and the charges were dropped ... In late 1995, with Kremen temporarily stymied in his attempts to regain the domain, Cohen and four Orange County entrepreneurs dreamed up big plans for Sex.com. The grandest plan had little to do with the Internet. In January 1996, the group unveiled its bid to buy a Nevada brothel called Sheri's Ranch and transform it into a $100 million 'adult fantasy resort.' Named Wanaleiya, the Polynesian-themed resort would feature 500 exotic women who 'would not hesitate to see to your comfort and pleasure.'"

Brazilian Jewry -- A Concise History. JewishGen: The Home of Jewish Genealogy.
"We now come of a very sordid period in Jewish history. Late in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews controlled the trade in white slavery, which is a polite way of saying prostitution. And they did so worldwide. Reputable historians claim Jews ran brothels in Shanghai, India, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil and New York City ... One unfortunate result of Jewish-controlled white slavery was that anti-semites in Europe used the information to paint all Jews as unworthy, as criminals, and deserving of expulsion from their country. Fortunately, Jewish communities that had been initially timid in dealing with this issue eventually rallied and worked throughout the world to stamp out this blemish, finally succeeding. So much so that today many Jews have not heard of this shameful episode in Jewish history."

Rape By Any Name. Citizens' Commission on Human Rights
"Dr. Jules Masserman, past president of the American Psychiatry Association, sexually assaulted four of his female patients during drug-induced sleep ... Although only ten percent of psychiatrists admit to sexually abusing patients, interestingly, 65 percent say new patients tell them of being abused sexually by their former psychiatrist." ["That vast apparative of putative concern, psychiatry, is largely a Jewish monopoly." -- Kahn, Roger. The Passionate People, William Morris, Inc., 1968, p. 53 / "All over the world, Jews are drawn to the profession of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy. The 1990 roster of the International Psychoanalytical Association reads like the membership list of a synagogue." -- Earl Hopper, Psychotherapy and the 'Jewish Experience.' European Judaism, Spring 1996, p. 17-25 / "An area of medicine which Jews have made almost their own is psychiatry, though it is perhaps still too early to say whether it constitutes a positive advance in human welfare." -- Chaim Bermant, The Jews, Times Mirror, 1977, p. 119]  

Porn Figure Sturman Dies. Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 29, 1997
"[Jewish] Pornography czar Reuben Sturman, who was the focus of a high-profile 1992 obscenity case in Las Vegas, died Monday at a federal prison in Kentucky, where he was serving terms for tax fraud in Cleveland and extortion in Chicago ... During his first trial in Las Vegas on obscenity and racketeering charges that ended in a mistrial in October 1991, news accounts described a jovial Sturman who laughed as jurors watched films of men and women having sex with animals ... In the 1980s, Sturman was identified by the Justice Department as the No. 1 distributor of hard-core pornography."

Criminal Enterprises: Pornography.
Department of Criminal Justice and Police Studies, Eastern Kentucky University.
"Of the individuals indicted by the federal government in the MIPORN [Miami Pornography] operation, [Jewish porn mogul] Reuben Sturman was clearly the most important. Sturman presided over his business enterprises from his Sovereign News Company, headquartered in Cleveland. Sovereign News was housed in a three-story, red-brick building, surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire and protected by the most modern and sophisticated electronic surveillance devices money can buy (Potter, 1986; Satchell, 1979). Sturman controlled pornography distribution warehouses in Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Denver, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Detroit. In addition, he was the principle owner of between 300 and 800 retail pornography stores around the country (May and Hosenball, 1981). Sturman's Sovereign News Empire dominated the pornography industry and created an environment in which smaller operators and their distributors were dependent upon Sovereign News for their survival. A confidential FBI memorandum on the pornography industry said that [Sturman's business practices] have included the strong-arm shakedowns of other dealers, distributors, and suppliers throughout the United States, particularly on the West Coast."

Business Booms in Jail for Our Top Pornographer, Sydney Morning Herald [Australia], [posted at lukeford.com], January 30, 1995
"An American criminal, David Sturman, whose father was once the largest distributor of hard-core pornography in the world, has been able to gain a substantial slice of the Australian pornography industry while serving a jail sentence in California. By using Australians to act as owners of his businesses in Sydney and Canberra, Sturman avoided probity checks which are essential in gaining a licence to operate. Two years ago, Sturman and his American partner, Mark Franks, set up a group of companies to control the importation, sale and distribution of pornographic videos from outlets such as the Adam and Eve shop in Canberra."

Hackers Put Pornography on Hamas Web Site.
FreeRepublic.com (from Reuters), March 26, 2001
"Hackers invaded the Internet site of the Muslim militant group Hamas to make it show pornography on Tuesday, after the fundamentalist organization claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed three Israelis. Web surfers trying to access www.hamas.org were re-routed automatically to a pay-for-view pornographic site offering a fare ranging from 'kinky co-eds' to 'Latina fetish.' Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the political wing of Hamas, accused Israeli intelligence of being behind what appeared to be the latest attack in an Israeli-Arab cyberwar on the sidelines of a five-month-old Palestinian uprising."

Ruined Reps. Salon.com, June 7, 2000
"Israeli porn producers are hiring actors who look like Egyptian stars ... According to the Nasserist Al-Arabi weekly publication ... film producers are tracking down actors who look like current Egyptian stars, and using them to shoot porn flicks in Israel. The films are then imported to Egypt and screened for paying customers. Appeal is broad for such materials, because Egyptian cinema is the most popular in the Middle East. Al-Arabi said the goal of the porn films was to 'tarnish the reputation of Egyptian film stars.' The original actors are, of course, not pleased with the alternative personas that have been handed to them ... Yusra Alawi told reporters she is asking her attorney to obtain copies of the films and to pursue legal action against those responsible."

Establishing Boundaries. High Profile Cases Refocus Attention on Sexual Misconduct.
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. December 15, 2000
"For those who look up to the American Jewish clergy, it has not been a good year. Last week, one of the Reform movements most prominent rabbis was suspended from the movement's rabbinical association for past sexual misconduct ... The news about [Rabbi Sheldon] Zimmerman came on the heels of several other widely publicized incidents involving Jewish clergy."

Months After HUC Resignation, Zimmerman Hired By Birthright,
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), April 5, 2001
"A rabbi recently suspended from the Reform movement's rabbinic organization because of sexual impropriety has been hired to a top position by a program that sends thousands of young Jews on free trips to Israel. Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, who resigned as president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in December, will become executive vice president of Birthright Israel USA, Inc., based in New York. He was recruited for the position by Michael Steinhardt, the hedge fund manager-turned-philanthropist who co-founded the Birthright program. Zimmerman's hire is raising some eyebrows in the Jewish community, though many leading figures praised the appointment ... Susan Weidman Schneider, editor of the feminist Jewish magazine Lilith, said, 'Although the specific nature of Zimmerman's actions have not been made public,' his hire 'seems to repeat a pattern in Jewish life where male rabbis known to have transgressive behaviors in their past have not often suffered professionally for it.' The appointment comes on the heels of another controversy surrounding the program: the fact that two of Birthright's top lay leaders wrote pardon letters on behalf of [fugitive] financier Marc Rich, who gave $5 million to the organization."

Sexual Abuse by Rabbis. Lilith [Jewish Womens' Magazine] No date.
"The denials and cover-ups by religious authorities in the case of Rabbi Baruch Lanner closely parallel a report Lilith Magazine has published, investigating accusations of sexual misconduct by the rabbi and popular singer Shlomo Carlebach. Lilith, the independent Jewish women's magazine, exposed 'The Paradoxical Legacy' of the late Rabbi Carlebach, known around the world for his neo-Chassidic spirituality, his charm and his music. Like Lanner's, Carlebach's alleged sexual misconduct was denied, ignored and covered up by his partisans. And like the Jewish Week's editor, Lilith's staff was beseeched not to publish, for fear that the allegations brought against Carlebach would undo all the ostensible good he had done." NOTE: Shlomo Carlebach didn't make the online journal Jewsweek's "Most Influential Jews in America" list, but it still publishes the following at their "Most Influential Jews" introduction page: "Why I Think Reb Shlomo Carlebach Should Be On This List, by David Sacks • Reb Shlomo is one the 50 most influential Jews, because he blazed a new path in serving G-d, thereby transforming the way Jews approach their spirituality today. The awareness that Judaism is spiritual is revolutionary enough. But most thought that aspect was the domain of the Hassidim only. Through Reb Shlomo’s melodies, and the Torahs he rescued from the vanished worlds of Kotzk, and Ishbitz, of Belz, Breslov, Karlin and Riminov (to name but a few) Jews from across the entire spectrum of religious observance are realizing that a Jew’s heart has to be on fire in the service of their Creator, that for a Jew to be superficial today is a criminal offense, that it’s not enough to define your Judaism by what you’re against—you have to be for something!"

Rabbi Robert Kirschner Apologizes.
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, October 18, 1996
"[Rabbi Robert] Kirschner was once a rising star in the Reform [Judaism] movement. While still in his 30s, he became the religious leader of one of the two largest synagogues in Northern California and the youngest rabbi ever to head such a sizable Reform congregation. He was destined for a major leadership role in the Reform movement. Some say he would have been on the short list of candidates to succeed Rabbi Alexander Schindler as president of the movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations. But after serving Emanu-El for 11 years, Kirschner suddenly resigned from his pulpit on New Year's Day 1992 amid accusations from three congregants and a temple employee that he had sexually exploited or harassed them. Eight other women later came forward to the temple board to complain about the rabbi's conduct, including members of his congregation and two students from the Graduate Theological Seminary in Berkeley. According to parties involved, at least three of the accusers later reached financial settlements with the temple's insurance company."

Bibliography of Sources on Sexual and Domestic Violence in the Jewish Community. Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse [linked from Women in Judaism, Winter 1999]. A listing of articles -- 25 paper pages long -- that addresses this subject.

No Longer Taboo. Jewsweek [from JTA], August 2001
"Orthodox pedophiles? For years, most people in the Orthodox world assumed their religious way of life and tight-knit communities insulated them from problems rocking the larger world, like sexual abuse. There is still a great deal of resistance to discussing the issue, and a lingering feeling among many victims and advocates that Orthodox institutions are more concerned with protecting the reputations of men accused of sexual abuse than with believing or helping victims ... In the wake of public allegations last year that a high-ranking professional in the Orthodox Union's National Conference of Synagogue Youth had sexually abused more than 20 teen-age girls, sexual abuse has become a household world among centrist Orthodox Jews ... Four years ago, at the request of the Brooklyn District Attorney, Ohel — which already treated Jewish survivors of sexual abuse — created the first- ever treatment program specifically for Orthodox sex offenders. More than 30 people, half referred through the criminal justice system and half through rabbis and Jewish communal leaders, have received evaluation or treatment through the program; more are on a waiting list ... In the aftermath of two publicized cases of pedophilia — one concerning a rabbi teaching at a day school and another concerning a kosher butcher — the Chicago Rabbinical Council recently created a special Beit Din, or rabbinical court, to address sexual abuse ... But there are certain aspects of Orthodox life that make such problems uniquely challenging. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is the wall of silence and denial."

Sex Scandal Shakes Ground Under Barak's Government.
The Independent [Great Britain], March 8, 2000
"First corruption allegations, then a defeat in parliament and now a sex scandal. The ground under Ehud Barak, Israel's Prime Minister, seems to be slipping by the day. The latest blow came yesterday, when the Transport Minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, who deputises for Mr Barak in his absence, suspended himself pending an investigation into accusations that he sexually assaulted a female civil servant."

Leading Journalist Arrested on Sex Charge.
Haaretz, [Israeli newspaper], August 15, 2001
"The director-general of the Israel Journalists' Union, Tuvya Sa'ar, has been arrested on suspicion of having intercourse with a minor and coercing her for sexual favors. Sa'ar, 65, a resident of Tel Aviv, was detained two days ago and remanded in custody yesterday ... The charges allege Sa'ar got to know the minor two years through an Internet chat room and they began meeting at his home and in hotel rooms in Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva. Although she was 15 years old at the time - a year below the age of consent - Sa'ar is suspected of having had intercourse with the minor and of using his position as a public figure to cajole and coerce her ... Sa'ar was previously director of Israel TV."

Selling Sex in Israel. Jewsweek, July 18, 2001
"This disturbing story unfolds all too often at the hotline for Migrant Workers, a Tel Aviv agency founded in 1998 to protect the human rights of foreign workers, victims of sex trafficking among them ... Director and co-founder Sigal Rozen, along with the group’s counsel, Nomi Levenkron, were in Washington, D.C. ... In an interview, Rozen called sex trafficking an 'unorganized crime,' based largely on personal networks of immigrants from the Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova. ... Those three countries alone accounted for 91 percent of the 474 women arrested in brothels and deported from Israel in 2000, according to figures compiled by hotline volunteers during visits to the Neveh Tirzah women’s prison. These statistics represent only a fraction of the problem. Police spokespersons have set the number of women brought into the country to work in the sex industry at 2,000-3,000 annually, the number of brothels at 250, Rozen said."

Human Rights Abuses Affecting Trafficked Women in Israel's Sex Industry.
Amnesty International, May 18, 2000 [MDE 15/017/2000]
"Although official statistics are not available, it is widely believed that in the past few years thousands of women, including some girls, from FSU [former Soviet Union] countries have been trafficked to Israel to work in the sex industry. Under Israeli laws, virtually all these women are illegal aliens. They are in Israel without work permits or with false documents, which makes them particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses at the hands of traffickers, pimps and others involved in Israel's sex industry. Amnesty International has received many reports of trafficked women being subjected to various human rights abuses, such as enslavement and other restrictions on their liberty, as well as torture, including rape and other forms of sexual abuse ... Amnesty International has received information indicating that in many instances women trafficked from FSU countries are literally bought and sold for large sums of money, often in auctions where they are purchased by the highest bidder. Some are held in debt bondage where they are forced to work to pay off large sums of money. Some women are kidnapped against their will in FSU countires or are lured to Israel under false pretences, and brought to work in the sex industry. Their 'owners' restrict their movements in order to prevent them from leaving. There are many reports of women being imprisoned by their 'owners' in locked houses and apartments and prevented from going out unaccompanied."

Prostitution in the Land of the Maccabees: Trafficking in Women in Israel.
Social Action, [socialaction.com], "a Jewish Online Magazine."
"Today, the prostitute in Tel Aviv is more likely to be named Olga than Rachel, and she's not an Israeli, or in Israel legally. She's one of the more than 2,000 to 2,500 women from former Soviet republics brought into Israel by international traffickers to feed a $450 million-a-year prostitution industry centered around Tel Aviv. The money paid for her body goes to the man she's been sold to. Assault and rape are common ways of keeping 'employees' in line in this business, and the only way a woman will leave Israel's sex industry is if she comes to the attention of the Israeli authorities who will deport her, penniless and traumatized, back to Eastern Europe ... Very rarely, a particularly horrific story will make its way from the Israeli press to American Jewish listserves. When the most recent of these motivated me to get out there and see what I could do to help, I discovered that there is apparently no Jewish organization in the United States or Canada working to raise awareness of trafficking issues in Israel, or bring American Jewish money and influence to bear on the situation. Why should this be an issue for the American Jewish community? After all, most of the women affected are not Jewish."

Factbook on Global Sex Exploitation: Israel.
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
"Traffickers and pimps earned US$50,000 - 100,000 a year from each prostituted woman, resulting in a US$450 million sex industry. ('A modern form of slavery,' The Jerusalem Post, 13 January 1998)
1,500 Russian and Ukrainian trafficked women have been deported from 1995-1997. (Michael Specter, 'Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women,' New York Times, 11 January 1998)
Russian women are bought and sold by pimps in Israel for prices ranging from US$5,000 to $20,000. (Police sources, ''Invisible' Women Shown In Russia's Demographics,' Martina Vandenberg, St. Petersburg Times, 13 October 1997)
A small brothel with ten women can make up to 750,000 shekels a month (US $215,000). (Michael Specter, 'Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women," New York Times, 11 January 1998)
Women trafficked from Eastern Europe, were stripped and sold naked as slaves to Tel Aviv traders for US$500-1,000.
Smuggling, fraudulent documents, collaboration between police and brothel owners are involved. There are routine brutal beatings and sexual abuse. (New York Times 11 January 1998)."

BGU Publishes First Study of local Prostitutes. Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2001
"A first-ever Israeli academic study on the medical and emotional condition of prostitutes has found that most risk HIV and hepatitis C infection through unprotected oral sex, and many suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder ... They reported in private interviews of having an average of 12 clients a day during the week, and during peak days (weekends and holidays) about 30 in a 24-hour period. Two-fifths worked daily except for a single day off a month. They earned a monthly average of only $1,285, and those with family abroad sent most of it to support them, while their personal expenses were paid by the brothel owners."

Ron Jeremy: Porn Buddha. Austin Arts Downtown, May-June 2001
"People call Jeremy addicted (to food), a tightwad, a clown, a spotlight hound and a man who can maintain an erection longer than any man in pornography. He claims not to use Viagra. He was born Ron Hyatt into a Jewish family who don't seem too put off by his ultimate career choice, although after the first porn film, his dad told Ron not to use his last name ... We are talking about a man who can count a film called Blow it Out Your Ass, as a typical title among the 1600 or so films he has appeared in."

Meet A Nice Jewish Porn Star Ron Jeremy looks more like your Uncle Moe than a sex god,
By Naomi Pfefferman, Jewsweek
"'I‘m just a nice Jewish boy with one vice,' says Queens native Ron Jeremy. 'Twenty-three years of porn films.' Scott J. Gill’s documentary 'Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy,' which opens in select cities this month, chronicles the life and times of the unlikeliest Jew in the world — and the unlikeliest porn star. The 48-year-old Jeremy dotes on his family. They dote on him. His dad's a physicist. His brother's a Harvard-educated executive. Most everyone else in the family has at least a master's degree. Jeremy earned his master's in special education from Queens College in part to help his disabled mother. He looks more like your Uncle Moe than a sex god. But while he’s not so easy on the eyes (he’s nicknamed 'The Hedgehog' because he’s short, fat and hairy), he’s been paid huge sums to bed more gorgeous women than James Bond. Gill’s hilarious film — in which Jeremy fans jubilantly declare, 'He’s Jewish!' — stands apart from other movies on the porn biz that have emerged in the past decade ... At its core, the flick poses the question, 'How did a hammy kid from Flushing become the most recognized male figure in adult film?' Answers begin to emerge when the documentary shows home movies of the young Jeremy (born Ron Jeremy Hyatt) mugging for the camera while opening Chanukah presents. 'He’s always been a performer,' says his sister. 'From the time he was in elementary school ... he always wanted to be the center of attention' ... His family wasn’t thrilled with his career choice, but staunchly supported his First Amendment rights when a film-related bust forced him to fight in court (it was illegal then to film porn in Los Angeles). 'Jewish families tend to be more liberal than Christian ones,' says the performer, citing the preponderance of Jewish men in porn. 'They aren’t obsessed by the fear of the devil or going to hell' ... The garrulous Jeremy — who hopes to wed his girlfriend in a synagogue and raise their kids Jewish — is momentarily silent when asked how he’d feel if he had a daughter who wanted to do porn."

Rebel without Clothes. New Haven Advocate.
"To many people, Nina Hartley would appear to be the embodiment of contradiction: a feminist who's also a veteran porn star and damn proud of it. Further confounding stereotypes, she's a public speaker as comfortable in a college lecture hall as on a strip club stage and a politically aware progressive -- a 'third-generation socialist,' she called herself in a wide-ranging 1989 interview in Shmate, a now-defunct progressive Jewish journal. She's a 1985 graduate of San Francisco State University with a B.S. in nursing. Magna cum laude, at that. She entered the sex business in 1982, working as a stripper at a San Francisco club while she was in college. Hartley, who estimates she has appeared in 360 movies or videos, made her first film in 1984 ... Hartley's emergence as one of porn's top stars coincided with a burgeoning public debate over the medium ... The opinionated and articulate Hartley entered the fray and has become the foremost spokesperson for women working in the porn industry.

Dr. Block's Little House of Sexual Horrors. Salon.com, February 18, 1999
"There must be an explanation for the scene taking place just five feet away. A blond, large-breasted woman and a massive black man are fornicating with methodical, casual self-consciousness, like two body-builders pumping iron after an injury. He is on top, banging away unhurriedly, holding himself away from her with two knuckled fists planted on either side of her hips. She doesn't touch him but fidgets with a silver vibrator while preening at the small live audience and the roving, carnivorous camera. The peanut gallery continues with its kibitzing, trying to make sense of how such an explicitly sexual spectacle -- the climax to an evening of broken taboos -- can be so deeply, utterly unsexy. The event seemed too good to pass up. Dr. Susan Block, a [Jewish] sex celebrity who is, among other items on a groaning rйsumй, an advice columnist, a maker of videos bearing such titles as 'The Fine Art of Fellatio,' the author of 'The 10 Commandments of Pleasure,' the holder of a doctorate in philosophy, a radio and cable access talk-show host and the cleavage-friendly poster child for all things sex-enlightening and self-promoting, was throwing a Valentine's Day party to celebrate the opening of her new sexual institute, located in an old 1920s speakeasy in the heart of downtown L.A.'s art, fashion, financial and convention district ... Max, Susan Block's self-declared publicist, footman, butler, husband and sex slave, offers to show me the art ... 'We've got everything,' he says proudly, then segues into interview mode. 'I'm the most prosecuted publisher in America. I've been prosecuted 20 times and I've spent 18 months in jail.' He ticks off the charges on his fingers. 'Industrial espionage, rack ordinances (I put the first pair of tits on the streets of L.A.), conspiracy to publish.'" Block's online sex shop and altar to hedonistic self-indulgence is The Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts and Sciences.

Cantor Charged in Prostitution Ring. Jerusalem Post, January 31, 2000
"Members of Chicago's Jewish community are expressing shock and dismay about the arrest of a former synagogue cantor and his wife of a few weeks. The two were charged in connection with a prostitution ring. Joel Gordon, 51, who has served at several Chicago-area synagogues, was charged November 21 with keeping a house of prostitution following a police raid on three massage parlors, operated out of private apartments in the northern suburbs. His wife, Alison Ginsberg, 23, was charged with prostitution and keeping a house of prostitution. Gordon was most recently the cantor and spiritual leader of Congregation Shirat Emet, a now-defunct synagogue in the Chicago suburb of Buffalo Grove, Illinois."

Brazilian Police Stake Out Diplomat Accused of Running Kiddie-Porn Ring. Jerusalem Post, July 6, 2000
"Brazilian police continued to surround the Israeli consulate in Rio de Janeiro in the belief that Israeli vice-consul in Rio Aryeh Scher, wanted on suspicion of running a child pornography ring, had taken refuge there. However Foreign Ministry officials said Scher has been en route to Israel for the past two days. Scher, who was at one point consul-general in Rio, was declared a fugitive by Brazilian authorities after a search of his apartment on Tuesday yielded what police officials described as evidence it was used for the manufacture of pornographic material, some of them involving underage girls ... Brazilian authorities notified the Israeli embassy of plans to revoke Scher's diplomatic immunity on Tuesday, prior to the search. By the time police were able to obtain a warrant to search Scher's penthouse, the vice-consul was already on his way back to Israel, where he will face a Foreign Ministry inquiry ... The investigation that culminated in the search of Scher's apartment began when a 17-year-old girl accused Georges Schteinberg, a 40-year-old Hebrew teacher of using her as a model in pornographic pictures and of distributing them on the Internet. Photographs of nude minors posed on a car with diplomatic plates were discovered in a search of Schteinberg's residence earlier in the week, in addition to massive quantities of pornographic material. Police then traced the car in the pictures back to Scher."

Yeshiva Teacher Accused of Molesting Students.
Jerusalem Post, January 12, 2000
"Police three weeks ago launched an investigation into alleged sexual abuse by a teacher at Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav yeshiva 14 years ago ... In mid-December, police were alerted to accusations by three men - now in their late 20s - who studied at the yeshiva in their teenage years and said they were sexually molested by the man. Police then began investigations into other men who reportedly were also sexually abused, but did not come forward ... The head of the yeshiva, former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Avraham Shapira, was alerted to the complaints several months ago in an anonymous letter and soon after in an anonymous phone call ... Senior National Religious Party figures, meanwhile, reacted to reports that Shapira attempted to silence those who made the allegations of sexual misconduct ... This is not the first time that Shapira has been suspected of trying to prevent a police inquiry into the improprieties of yeshiva teachers. Last year, he received a warning letter from Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein after he was said to have tried to cover up the illegal sexual behavior of Ze'ev Kopolevitch, formerly head of Jerusalem's Netiv Meir Yeshiva, who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison."

Federal Prosecutors Try to Keep Boca Rabbi Jailed, Calling Him a Menace.
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, July 20, 2001
"Responding to a jailed rabbi's appeal that he be allowed to await trial in a psychological program, federal prosecutors this week argued that Jerrold Levy remains a threat to the community and a flight risk ... Prosecutors said they have developed additional evidence that Levy distributed child pornography to other people, received child pornography from a minor contacted in an Internet chat room, and pursued other minors ... In their response to Levy's appeal, prosecutors said there is 'overwhelming' evidence against Levy to support their existing nine charges of child pornography and using the Internet to entice a juvenile. Last week, Levy, a former associate rabbi at Temple Beth El in Boca Raton, filed an emergency motion for release from prison as he waits to hear about an appeal."

Lanner Indicted on Sex Abuse Charges. Jewish Week, March 16, 2000
"Nine months after The Jewish Week reported on allegations that Rabbi Baruch Lanner had abused teenagers in his charge for three decades, a Monmouth County, N.J., grand jury indicted him Wednesday on six criminal charges. The rabbi faces two counts each of aggravated criminal sexual conduct, criminal sexual conduct and endangering the welfare of a child. The crimes are second-, third- and fourth-degree offenses. A second-degree offense carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison ... The first woman, now 19, alleged that Rabbi Lanner sexually abused her almost daily in his office at the yeshiva when she was a 14-year-old ninth-grader there in 1995 and 1996."

Arrest of Ex-Employee Sparks Concern. compcocity.com [originally from Edmonton Jewish Life], [Undated, 1990s]
"A former employee of Calgary Jewish Community Council has been charged with possession of child pornography, sexual assault and sexual interference with a child under 14 years of age. David Webber, 35, was arrested on February 22. On that date, police executed a search warrant on his apartment. In the search, they seized a large number of Polaroid photographs of nude boys aged 10 to 14 and written materials. Several children have already been interviewed and are alleged to be victims of sexual assault ... Before moving to Calgary, Webber was youth director of the Beth Israel Synagogue in Edmonton. In 1990, he was charged with sexual assault in Edmonton, but the charges were subsequently dismissed."

Synagogue Sexton Guilty of Pedophilia. Haaretz [Israel], June 22, 2001
"A garbage truck driver with a part-time job as a synagogue sexton in a town in the center of the country was convicted yesterday by a Jerusalem District Court for sexually assaulting children who went to synagogue to pray with him ... At least three children were involved, with one, the 13-year-old, being the son of another synagogue official. That boy was so disturbed by the sexual abuse that he took up drugs, and the sexton then exploited that knowledge to blackmail the youth into more sexual intercourse. The other two children were subject to his fondling, often on the back porch of the synagogue during prayers, in exchange for sweets."

'Healer' Convicted of Sexual Assault and Rape.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], June 4, 2001
"A 44-year-old man from Ma'aleh Efraim who passed himself off as a rabbi and healer was yesterday found guilty by the Tel Aviv District Court of sexually assaulting two women and raping one of them ... Cohen claimed to have been blessed by God with healing powers and met with people suffering from a variety of ailments, physical and otherwise, twice a week in a room in a house in Rosh Ha'ayin."

Miss Universe Rapist Receives 16-Year Sentence.
Jerusalem Post, December 29, 1999
"Shlomo Nur, who was convicted this fall of raping Miss Universe beauty queen Linor Abergil, was sentenced today to 16 years in prison by a Tel Aviv district court. Shlomo, who was convicted on two counts of rape and another two counts of sodomy, received a suspended sentence of another four years. Shlomo raped Abergil while the beauty queen was in Italy last year working as a model after receiving her crown. The judges, legal observers said, were persuaded that Shlomo had entrapped the young woman unwillingly at a period when she was alone in a foreign country and vulnerable to his approaches."

Atlanta Strip Club Scandal Marks Return of 'Our Gang.'
[Jewish] Forward, June 29, 2001
"Our boys are still out there, I'm very proud to say,' said Alan Block, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Pittsburgh and a noted authority on Jewish organized crime in America and overseas. They're running penny-stock scams and providing support for Colombian drug cartels, Mr. Block said. And they're still, in many cases, chummy with the leaders of the old time Italian mob. That is certainly what federal prosecutors are alleging against the flamboyant bar owner Steve Kaplan in the United States district court in Atlanta ... Prosecutors are trying to prove that the flashy 40-year old used his popular Atlanta strip club, the Gold Club, as a front for a prostitution ring that provided high-priced hookers to big name athletes, laundered money and paid protection money to the Gambino crime family in New York ... Over the past several years, Jewish names have surfaced in connection with penny stock scams, in which gangs of aggressive young mobsters corner the market on low-valued stocks, then drive prices up before unloading them ... The ability to adapt has made Jewish mobsters a more difficult target for organized crime investigators ... That sense of internationalism, Mr. Block said, has always been an ace-in-the-hole for Jewish crime syndicates ... Although Jewish mobsters are not immune federal prosecution ... investigators ... have tended to overlook Jewish connections in organized crime, Mr. Block said. The result, he said, is that the Jewish American syndicates have been pretty much free to continue their work in a kind of comfortable anonymity."

Heidi Fleiss Gets 3 Years. E Online, January 7, 1997
"A Los Angeles judge gave 'Hollywood madam' Heidi Fleiss 37 months for federal charges of tax evasion and money laundering today, far less than the 7 to 9 years asked by prosecutors. She'll also perform 300 hours of community service and pay a $400 fine ...Since her arrest, Fleiss has opened a legitimate business, a lingerie company. On the other hand, she was also busted for violating probation by using methamphetamine ... Fleiss still faces state charges of pandering (she was convicted in state court in 1994 but ordered to stand trial again after juror misconduct came to light) ... The feds claimed that Fleiss laundered at least $300,000 in illicit income through her family's bank accounts. Her father, pediatrician-to-the-stars Paul Fleiss, pled guilty to income tax evasion for his role in the scheme."

The Fleiss Family Bed. LA Weekly, April 27-May 3, 2001
"'Children are our ultimate investment,' Los Feliz pediatrician Paul Fleiss says at a signing for his newly released book, Sweet Dreams: A Pediatrician’s Secrets for Your Child’s Good Night’s Sleep. 'We want them to grow up strong and smart. Most importantly, we want them to take care of us.' This wish hasn’t always come true for the gray-, curly-headed Fleiss, the father of notorious Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss. Four months after Heidi was convicted on felony pandering charges, authorities charged him with hiding the profits from his daughter’s call-girl ring and with acting as the go-between in the purchase of her home, a $1.6 million spread once owned by Michael Douglas [son of Jewish actor Kirk Douglas]. Dr. Fleiss pleaded guilty to making false statements to the IRS and conspiracy, and received a sentence of three years’ probation and community service, which included volunteering at the Los Angeles Free Clinic. In addition, the medical board put him on probation for one year."

The Still-Happy Hooker. Moment, February 1, 2001
"[Xaviera Hollander] invited me to Amsterdam to perform, telling me that she, too, was the child of a Holocaust survivor. When I heard that, I was speechless. I remembered Xaviera Hollander as a blonde, long-legged shiksa, the author of a sexually explicit tell-all book—the most famous prostitute in the world. As it turns out, Hollander (her nom de plume, an homage to her birthplace; she was born Xaviera De Vries) is no shiksa. Her father was a Dutch Jewish psychiatrist ... She took a job at a New York call-girl agency to augment her meager salary, eventually becoming a full-time prostitute. But it was not just an economic decision: 'I loved having sex,' she says. 'Since I was sleeping around every night anyway, I figured I might as well get paid for it.' That’s when a business opportunity came along, and she grabbed it, spending her entire savings—$10,000—on the client list of a retiring Park Avenue madam. She began running a high-end brothel out of a brownstone on the Upper East Side, where her clients included a man who asked a lot of questions, soon arousing Hollander’s suspicion. The man turned out to be Eric Kohn, a Jewish journalist researching a book. The two decided to collaborate on an autobiographical account of Hollander’s life, and one year later The Happy Hooker exploded onto the scene—eventually selling 16 million copies ... She even lived for a while with Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. But shortly thereafter she came under the scrutiny of the Knapp Commission, which had been set up by Mayor John V. Lindsay to investigate malpractice and corruption in the New York City Police Department. (The commission was investigating cops who had gone to Hollander’s brothel.) Hollander decided to move to Canada to avoid prosecution ... Addicted to diet pills and unable to control her kleptomania ('I got orgasms from stealing,' she says), she was arrested for stealing a $40 nightgown. That theft, coupled with the fact that she was a confessed criminal in the States, led to her eventual deportation and divorce."

Dicked Around. Metroactive, February 8-14, 1996
"Today [Melvyn] Rosenstein, one of the first and most famous penile enlargement surgeons, faces the end of his career. As of Jan. 25, Rosenstein's medical license was restricted, to protect 'public health and safety' pending a medical board hearing. The celebrated surgeon of schlongs faces permanent suspension from the California Medical Board based on complaints from patients--including Ron Nance--whose enlargements have gone wrong. Ron Nance's story may mark the beginning of the decline of the man they call Dr. Dick ... Melvyn Rosenstein is one of few doctors in the country with his own public relations office ... There is no doubt that Rosenstein, who once bragged of performing up to 10 surgeries per day (he now claims to do five or six), has done more penile-enlargement surgeries than anyone else in the known universe. And Rosenstein has worn the 'Dr. Dick' mantle as only a man who believes he holds the power to bestow manhood in a man's world can. The cocky doctor has shelves filled with phallus fetishes. Ron Nance claims to have seen a sign in Rosenstein's office that read, $56 million in two years!"

The Lady Is a Pornographer. Salon.com, June 26, 2000
""I'm the kink controller here at Click + Drag, which means I have to keep people in line,' says the 40-year-old [Abby] Ehmann. 'I make sure that nothing gets out of control -- just kinky' ... Ehmann has many titles in addition to kink controller. She is the 'editrix' of Extreme Fetish magazine -- dubbed 'The best alternative sex publication in New York' by TimeOut magazine. She is on the board of directors of Feminists for Free Expression, an organization that fights restrictions on free speech, and she is a writer and a performer. But for all her roles, Ehmann has only one mission: to satisfy the appetites of New Yorkers who are not sated by polite and sterile living ... She started a fanzine called Porn Free with the idea of giving away pornography. 'I thought, hey, there's a niche that no one is filling. Of course, it wasn't very profitable.' Ehmann gave up Porn Free after being approached in 1997 by D&L Enterprises, a publishing company, to be the editor of a fetish magazine. It was Ehmann's goal to create a sex publication that would provide fetishists with content suited to their needs. Each monthly issue of Extreme Fetish has a particular theme, such as latex, shoe fetishes or musclebound divas."

When a "Nice Jewish Girl' Gets Embroiled in a Scandal.
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, January 30, 1998
"Monica Lewinsky, the 24-year-old former White House intern whose allegations brought on the worst political crisis of the decade, is one of our own. Will a "nice Jewish girl" from a wealthy upwardly mobile family bring down the Clinton White House? The question is too titillating to ignore, too unnerving to bear. This is a question we in the Jewish community must come to grips with on our own. We know this young woman. She is us, a product of our homes. She is our daughter. She is our younger, more naive selves. Don't be fooled by the $1.6 million price tag on the house where she was raised, or the $20,000 vacations or the fancy cars ... In fact, on the surface, America seems not to know or care about Lewinsky except as a variation on a Clinton theme. The tabloids have been kind to date: I have seen not a single mention of Lewinsky's Jewish roots including her start in Los Angeles' Conservative Sinai Temple Hebrew school, where her mother, now called Marcia Lewis, did her turn assisting at Purim and Passover programs. As with Heidi Fleiss ['Madam to the Stars'] and Ron Goldman [murdered with Nicole Simpson, allegedly by OJ Simpson], code words are today used to imply what once would have been explicitly named. 'Beverly Hills' or 'wealthy doctor father' have been allowed to suffice. And yet, this very lack of cultural specificity is dangerous, for a Jewish community that still doesn't know who it is. We have yet to accept our history for its good and its ill. We have yet to find a way to discuss constructively the personal cost of the 20th century on our psyches and our homes: the diaspora, the pogroms, the constant uprooting only to strive again. Silence is deafening. 'There's no Jewish issue here,' I heard over and over the past week. Instead, the Jewish community is shutting down. A Jewish community leader told me he was wearing his gold saxophone pin, hoping the scandal will blow over. On America Online's Jewish Community (keyword: JEWISH) chat last week I repeatedly heard this script: 'Monica's Jewish?' 'Then how Jewish?' 'Does she belong to a synagogue?' 'Well, then does she keep kosher?' This is the kind of denial that can turn into blindness. I understand the impulse. I, too, want this scandal to end. In fact, I am prepared to argue that Clinton's sex life, even with a nice Jewish girl, is his own business. But I'd also argue that the character and lack of judgment of that nice Jewish girl is our business."

Innocent Until ..., by Andrew Sullivan, New Republic, August 30, 2001
"I hate to interrupt a thoroughly enjoyable lynching, but what exactly has [Congressman] Gary Condit done wrong? I know I must be deranged not to appreciate his obvious guilt, venality, loathsomeness, and every other human failing now pinned to his blow-dried head. But bear with me. The case against him comes down to two essential points. The first is that Condit impeded the police investigation into the disappearance of Chandra Levy. The second is that, since he was her adulterous, secret lover, he is rightly a prime suspect in any foul play that may have occurred. Hence it is legitimate for the media to pursue him as part of the story of the missing intern. Neither of these claims bears scrutiny ... The second question is why Condit is the only suspect we ever hear about. Levy appears to have had many affairs. The dynamic of the media coverage has prevented this vital background from being discussed. The preordained story has a naive young girl betrayed by a predatory adulterer. But Levy was not naive. In high school, she interned at the Modesto Police Department, where, according to a source cited by [Talk magazine's Lisa] DePaulo, 'she did a lot more exploring than the program was designed to handle.' She reportedly dated one married man for several years. According to DePaulo, an intimate 'knew that she'd had lots of relationships--including several with other cops and several with other married men.' If you parse DePaulo's story closely, as the writer Bob Somerby has, it suggests that Levy had at least four separate married lovers before Condit. And she was 23 when she first locked eyes with the congressman. I'm not criticizing her; Levy had every right to have an adventurous sex life with married men. But if such a person suddenly disappeared, would there be only one possible suspect?"

Sex and the Single JAP, by Elissa Silverman.
Washington City Paper, July 20-26, 2001
"Monica [Lewinsky] and Chandra [Levy] —with their Jewish, upper-middle-class California upbringings, complete with oncologist fathers and gardeners and hours clocked at Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale's—take a blowtorch to the stereotype of Jewish American Princesses being frigid in bed and uncomfortable with sex. Finally. At last, we've truly assimilated. In fact, America seems downright entranced with our sexual exploits and indiscretions. First Middle America embraced bagels, and then Seinfeld and klezmer and Joe Lieberman. Now we've seamlessly insinuated ourselves into our country's political sex scandal obsession. Bimbo dyed blondes like Donna Rice and Gennifer Flowers have been pushed aside, of late, in favor of Semitic, thick-haired brunettes like Monica and Chandra. God bless America. Is it good for the Jews? Some say so. Though many within the Jewish community have expressed embarrassment at these tabloid gems, others see liberation. In January 1998, Lewinsky's sexual relationship with President Bill Clinton made headlines right as then–Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat were meeting at the White House. But Clinton was too preoccupied by the stained blue dress to force Netanyahu to give up land for peace in the Middle East."

Youth Pilgrimages to Poland.
World Jewish Congress [Policy Dispatches, No. 44], December 1999
"It is the often boisterous, raucous behavior of Israeli students and even teachers [who visit Poland on yearly tours to old concentration camps] that has attracted more attention than the trips themselves, and raises questions far deeper than the wisdom of sending thousands of Israeli youth to Poland every year. In recent years Israeli Army officers were criticized for playing cards on a bus carrying them to an official visit to Auschwitz; Israeli tour operators advertised a trip to casinos in Poland with an Auschwitz-visit option; and an Israeli rock group wanted to stage a concert on the site of the death camp. In November, when it was revealed that students from a kibbutz group had invited strippers (both male and female) to perform before them in their hotel rooms, Israeli society, and especially the survivor community, were scandalized at what they saw as behavior that dishonored Israel and the Jewish people; and moreover, indicated that they had neither understood, nor respected, the unspeakable tragedy of the Holocaust. The same week in which the behavior of the kibbutz youth was revealed, the press was filled with headlines about Israel's crushing 5:0 defeat in a soccer match against Denmark. It was suggested in the media that the sluggish performance of the Israeli squad was in part due to the fact that the Israeli athletes had spent the night before the match dallying with local prostitutes who came to their hotel rooms. Again there was indignation about the dishonor brought to the Jewish state by its representatives. These two unconnected events can be seen as flagrant examples of a malaise that plagues Israeli society ... Symptomatic of this is the widespread use of drugs in Israeli high schools and the increasing level of violence, including rape."

The Law of Return [from Israel: Whose Country Is It Anyway?, by well-known Jewish lesbian feminist Andrea Dworkin, 1990 [posted here at igc.org]
"You have to see it to believe it and even seeing it might not help. I've been sent it over the years by feminists in Israel--I had seen it--I didn't really believe it. Unlike in the United States, pornography is not an industry. You find it in mainstream magazines and advertising. It is mostly about the Holocaust. In it, Jewish women are sexualized as Holocaust victims for Jewish men to masturbate over. Well, would you believe it, even if you saw it? Israeli women call it 'Holocaust pornography.' The themes are fire, gas, trains, emaciation, death ... . Monitin is a left-liberal slick monthly for the intelligentsia and upper class. It has high productions and aesthetic values. Israel's most distinguished writers and intellectuals publish in it. Judith Antonelli in The Jewish Advocate reported that Monitin 'contains the most sexually violent images. Photos abound of women sprawled out upside-down as if they have just been attacked.' Or, in a magazine for women that is not unlike Ladies' Home Journal, there is a photograph of a woman tied to a chair with heavy rope. Her shirt is torn off her shoulders and upper chest but her arms are tied up against her so that only the fleshy part of the upper breasts is exposed. She is wearing pants--they are wet. A man, fully dressed, standing next to her, is throwing beer in her face. In the United States, such photographs of women are found in bondage magazines. For purists, there is an Israeli pornography magazine. The issue I saw had a front-page headline that read: ORGY AT YAD VASHEM. Yad Vashem is the memorial in Jerusalem to the victims of the Holocaust. Under the headline, there was a photograph of a man sexually entangled with several women. What does this mean--other than that if you are a Jewish woman you don't run to Israel, you run from it?"

Dick Morris' Wife Walking Out After 20 Years.
The News Times [from Associated Press], January 6, 1997
"Former [Bill Clinton] presidential adviser Dick Morris [also Jewish] , who resigned after a $200-an-hour prostitute said she had a longtime affair with him, said he is saddened his wife has decided to leave him ... Shortly after her husband resigned in August, Ms. McGann, 48, appeared at his side during a news conference at their Connecticut home. But she was further scandalized by a subsequent report of another Morris infidelity, this one involving a 15-year relationship with a Texas woman that produced a child ... A top political advisor to President Clinton, Morris resigned when Washington prostitute Sherry Rowlands claimed he had hired her many times. She said he even shared sensitive information with her and let her listen in on phone calls with the president."

Bedrooms and Politics: As America Becomes More Forgiving, Honesty May Be the Best Policy When It Comes to Sex Scandals ... Even Gay Ones.
The Advocate, March 17, 1998
"When U.S. representative Barney Frank [also Jewish] heard the allegations that Bill Clinton had had an affair with a young White House intern, he must have felt a touch of empathy. The openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts was once embroiled in his own sex scandal, involving a young male prostitute who had launched an escort service out of the basement of Frank's Washington, D.C., town house. When Frank, who had a sexual relationship with the hustler, discovered the enterprise in 1987 -- the same year he made his sexual orientation public -- he threw the man out of his home. Two years later the prostitute, Steve Gobie, went public with the story, plunging Frank into a scandal that many predicted would cost him his political career. But nine years later Frank has been reelected by his suburban Boston district four times and is one of the most powerful and highly regarded members of Congress."

Save Your Life. Sing in Drag. Salon.com, October 10-17, 2000
"In career No. 2, I became executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, a national organization of queer doctors that addressed issues like the plight of HIV-infected health care workers, lesbian health and homophobia in organized medicine. I wrote position papers on AIDS and gay issues for Bill Clinton, boosted my profile in the talking-head food chain and survived the joys of executive director roundtables ... So for several years I passed during the day as Ben Schatz, earnest and well-spoken Important Gay Leader, while blossoming into Rachel, slutty chanteuse with the Kinsey Sicks at night ... Still, it took me years to find the lunacy to give up a secure and well-paid Meaningful Job to try to make a go of a singing drag queen career. For one thing, as a single gay man with a love life already on life support, I did not relish the thought of having to tell prospective dates I was a professional singing drag queen. (But who knew? Now that I have the time to go to the gym 17 days a week, lots of men seem willing to lower their standards and go out with me.)"

Mia Farrow Slams Woody Allen in Tell-All Book. CNN, February 5, 1997
"Mia Farrow's long-awaited memoir on life with Woody Allen hit bookstores Wednesday, painting the director-comedian as more neurotic than anyone he ever played in one of his films. Forget Valentine's Day. In 'What Falls Away,' Farrow wrote a poison pen letter accusing Allen of bizarre behavior culminating in his seducing one of her adopted daughters and possibly sexually molesting another ... Farrow said that in her years with Allen, 'There were three of us in the relationship: Woody, his shrink and me. No decisions were ever made without her. He didn't even buy sheets without talking to her. I know that part of several sessions went into his switch from polyester-satin to cotton.' In the book Farrow described her shock at first discovering Allen had taken pornographic photos of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn and then that he was having an affair with the 17-year-old. Farrow also wrote of her 7-year-old daughter Dylan, accusing Allen of sexually molesting her -- a charge Allen strongly denied. He was never charged. Farrow described Allen as being obsessed with Dylan, saying, 'He whispered her awake, he caressed her and entwined his body around her as she watched television, as she played on the floor, as she ate, as she slept. He brought her into bed when he was wearing only his underpants. Twice I made him take his thumb out of her mouth.'

H.G. Lewis Goreography. dvdtalk.com April 27, 2000
"It was when [Herschell Gordon Lewis] answered the siren's call to filmmaking, that his life began to follow a weird-wild path through America's drive-ins. He partnered with exploiteer David F. Friedman for his feature debut in 1960 with The Prime Time (as producer), which chronicled a young woman's quest for excitement at the cost of her virtue. And for the next three years, the duo made many of these sexploitation pictures, of those, only a half-dozen survive today. It was a decidedly prolific genre, and Lewis happened upon a notion that would take he and Friedman along a divergent path, one not merely less traveled, but one completely uncharted. The idea was simple: graphic, on screen G-O-R-E in screaming color. The film was Blood Feast (1963) and it would FOREVER change the horror genre." FURTHER CONTEXT: Not noted here is that Lewis, "an ex-college professor with a Ph.D in English and the self-styled 'Wizard of Gore,' lost most of his capital in the courts when he was arrested for his part in a fraudulent car rental agency, along with a series of other mail fraud convictions, including a fake abortion referral agency and a phony gas-saving device. The arrest brought his filmmaking career to an abrupt end." [BROTTMAN, M., OFFENSIVE FILMS, TOWARDS AN ANTHROPOLOGY of CINEMA VOMITIF, Greenwood Press, 1997, p. 180]

Once, in the Jungle: Tobias Schneebaum Confronts His Memories of Going Native, New York Times Magazine, March 25, 2001
"After a while, meat was removed from the fire. Portions were passed around, one by one, to each member of the group. Eventually, a piece was placed in [Tobias] Schneebaum's hands. He put the human flesh in his mouth and ate it ... The vision of liberation is clearly what attracted Schneebaum to the [Peruvian] jungle in the first place [in 1956] ... 'I'm not an anthropologist, and I didn't go to Peru to gather information,' he says with mild distaste. 'I wanted to meet people and have a good time. I never thought about if I was exploiting anybody. I was doing something that thrilled me, and that was the only thing in my mind' ... He lights up when asked about his days with the Arakmbut. 'To have made the first contact with an indigenous group of people -- one that was naked -- was the most exciting thing that ever happened in my life,' he says. 'I ached with pleasure' ... The raid, however, taught Schneebaum the limits of his sylvan fantasy. Although he went into the jungle to escape the oppressive mores of Western culture [Schneebaum is homosexual], he has struggled ever since with the fact that he broke one of its biggest taboos [cannibalism] ... 'I can't remember the taste,' he says. 'All I'll say is that I like my meat well done, and this wasn't ... In 1973, he went on the first of many sojourns in New Guinea. Schneebaum spent several years living (and sometimes sleeping) with men of the Asmat tribe ... Schneebaum's story is the only personal account of ritual cannibalism on record ... Last Fall, Patrick Tierney condemned anthropologists in his book 'Darkness in El Dorado' for turning the Amazon into a playground for their personal fantasies' ... One suspects that if [Schneebaum] was growing up today, he wouldn't feel compelled to escape to the jungle to express his desires. It's too facile, however, to attribute his interest in the exotic with his sexuality."

Sex Sting Nabs Man in Yonkers. Westchester News 12, 2001
"Another person is nabbed in the Westchester District Attorney's undercover online sex sting. Steven Gary Cohen of Warburton Avenue in Yonkers is the 43rd person accused in the two-year-old sting operation. He's charged with soliciting someone he thought was a 14-year-old boy for sex. But that 'boy' was really an undercover agent."

Steven Berkoff to Face Rape Rap. Totally Jewish, August 16, 2001
"Actor and playwright Steven Berkoff will face a rape trial in a rare civil action after he lost his battle to have the case dismissed on a legal loophole. Mr Berkoff, 64, will have to fight a Ј500,000 damages claim brought by an actress who alleges that he sexually assaulted her in 1994. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claims the Jewish performer raped and racially abused her."

A Cry for Help that Went Unheeded. philly.com, April 6, 2000
"Prosecutors say the Kensington man repeatedly raped and sodomized two girls whom his wife was baby-sitting at their rowhouse. He allegedly employed a plastic baseball bat on one occasion. But the ugliness of the details is not all that makes the case stand out. Philadelphia police were called in four years ago, when the attacks allegedly began. One of the girls, then 8, described the assaults in graphic detail. But the sex-crimes unit closed the case after a cursory investigation. Investigators did not interview the man, Samuel Cohen, or inform child-welfare authorities of the allegations against him, The Inquirer has learned. Cohen continued assaulting one of the girls, then 7, for five more months, police now say. One of the assaults was so brutal that the child was taken to a hospital with vaginal injuries, records show."

Man Sentenced to at Least 45 Years in Child Sex Cases.
Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 4, 2000
"A 41-year-old man with a prior felony conviction for child molestation was sentenced Monday to a minimum of 45 years in prison. In March, Russell D. Cohen pleaded guilty to one count each of sexual assault with a minor under 14, sexual assault with a minor under 16, and use of a minor in producing pornography. Incidents involving about 10 victims were combined into the three charges. Cohen was arrested in August and accused of forcing two boys into sex acts. Authorities said Cohen met young boys by employing them to distribute fliers throughout the Las Vegas Valley and then took them to his home, where they were sexually abused. Shortly after news of Cohen's arrest was circulated in the Las Vegas media, police received a videotape in the mail that showed a man engaging in sex acts with several male juveniles. In October, additional charges were filed against Cohen in connection with the videotape."

Man with History of Badgering U Women Arrested.
daily.umn.edu, June 26, 1991
"Since 1984, Bruce Cohen has been asking University women for dates, but he doesn't seem to take no for an answer. University Police say Cohen allegedly swore at and sometimes pushed at least 10 of the women who turned him down. He has pleaded guilty to at least one of the charges. Cohen, 29, was charged Tuesday with fifth-degree assault in connection with the most recent incident, according to University Police. The maximum penalty for fifth-degree assault -- a misdemeanor -- is 90 days in jail or a $700 fine. In a June 3 incident in Diehl Hall, Cohen asked a woman for a date, then swore at her and shoved her against a brick wall when she declined his offer, said University Police Officer Larry Anderson."

Bloomberg Sexual Blind Spot, Village Voice, October 31-Novembe 6, 2001
"[New York mayoral candidate Michael] Bloomberg's comments are drawn from one of three sexual harassment lawsuits that have dogged him since 1996, all of which contended that 'a hostile environment of persistent sexual harassment and the general degradation of women' existed at the 8000-employee company of the same name that Bloomberg founded and ran. In addition to his uninformed testimony about rape, Bloomberg also displayed a chilly indifference to sexual harassment laws and guidelines during the deposition ... The [Sekiko] Garrison case focused on a claimed pattern of gender discrimination, with several women quoted in court documents as saying that they'd 'lost lucrative portions of their sales territory, were denied business opportunities and received inferior bonuses' once they got married or had children. Garrison alleged that Bloomberg told her twice to 'kill it' when she informed him she was pregnant, adding 'Great! Number 16,' a reference to the number of women then on maternity leave."

The Terminator, Phoenix New Times, June 17-23, 1999
"Step inside the 'Vaginal Vault,' Dr. Brian Finkel's nickname for the clinic where he performs more than 2,000 abortions a year. Finkel's clinic, the Metro Phoenix Women's Center, feels more like a pawn shop. Elvis Presley collectible plates and Native American rugs cover the walls, fertility goddesses and a steer skull crowd the hallway. The place is wired: security cameras, auto-lock doors, alarms. John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band croons over the piped-in stereo system after work on a recent Wednesday ... Finkel doesn't merely revel in his work. He rubs your nose in it. He's the Joe Arpaio of abortionists, and his self-promoting antics, chauvinism and gallows humor are enough to make a devout pro-choicer queasy ... His father is Jewish and his mom was Irish Catholic, so they decided to raise their four kids without formal religious training ... Finkel says he's been estranged from his entire family for years. 'My mother's dead, but I'm looking forward to being an orphan. I can't wait for that nasty son of a bitch to die, so I can go piss on his grave,' he says of his father ... Years ago, [pro-life activist John] Jakubczyk got hold of Finkel's confidential file at the Arizona Board of Osteopathic Examiners and began handing out shorthand descriptions of complaints that were never substantiated. It took a large law firm and thousands of dollars to stop him and keep the board's staff from doing it again. 'I have this law firm that works for me, I call them the eight gnawing Jews -- Sacks Tierney -- and they just . . . bit their ass for me,' Finkel says."

About 40 Accusing Doctor of Sexual Abuse,
Arizona Republic, October 26, 2001
"The number of women accusing a Phoenix abortion doctor of sexual abuse more than tripled Thursday, a day after the doctor was jailed involving misconduct with patients going back eight years. Nearly 40 women have now told authorities that Dr. Brian Finkel, 51, inappropriately touched them before or during examinations and abortions, authorities said Thursday ... Finkel, owner of the Metro Phoenix Women's Clinic, faces 16 counts of sexual abuse, including fondling patients' breasts and genitals, as well as one count of sexual assault involving oral contact with a patient's genitals."

Traffic Jam, Jerusalem Post, July 13, 2000
"Women who are being forced to work as prostitutes against their will are considered criminals rather than victims. Kidnapping, threats, forgery, assault, pimping, rape, and holding prisoners. These are the charges against 18-year-old Boris Yasser from Ashdod, who was remanded last week by Ramle Magistrate's Court. He is accused of helping his father smuggle four women into the country from the Ukraine and forcing them to work as prostitutes. The women (aged 19 to 22) who were subjected to these acts were also arrested. Their crime was entering the country illegally and holding false IDs. That they were victimized while they were here does not mitigate the fact that they violated Israeli law by entering the country illegally, Central District Police Spokeswoman Ch.-Supt. Sivan Kedmi said ... The women told police that they had been offered jobs as saleswomen. Upon accepting the jobs, they were brought here from the Ukraine via Cyprus. They were smuggled into Haifa Port on April 31. Their employers then confiscated their passports and gave them fake IDs, which listed them as Jewish Israelis. Two of the women were 'sold' to a brothel in Tel Aviv for $3,000 each. The other two were imprisoned in a Rishon Lezion apartment and forced to work as prostitutes. Customers would call the apartment to order prostitutes. Yasser would drive the women to various locations to serve between 15 and 20 customers a day. The women were virtual prisoners and did not receive a share of the money the pimps collected from customers. One of the women was severely beaten when she tried to escape. She later managed to telephone her parents in the Ukraine to ask for help. Her parents contacted the Ukrainian Embassy here, which passed the complaint on to police this week."

A Pair of Congressmen Get Snookered By Argentine School of Scandal,
Insight on the News, December 7, 2001
"Cries of anti-Semitism and human-rights abuse sprang from Congress last February when a yoga school was shut down by the Argentine government. Its defenders claimed it was being closed because 50 percent of those involved were of the Jewish faith. U.S. Reps. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) were quick to express concern, accusing the Argentine government of grossly abrogating due process. In a toothless 'Sense of Congress' resolution Towns drafted last February (H.Res.51) he airily called for an end to discrimination against yoga enthusiasts by the Argentine government. In the resolution he linked the bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires six years ago to a long pattern of Argentine anti-Semitism. Towns called on the Argentine government to lay off the Buenos Aires school, whose court case has been pending for more than a year. But, according to new information obtained by Insight, the congressmen may have been snookered by those accusations of anti-Semitism. Their lofty resolution failed to mention some of the other 'practices' of the Escuela de Yoga. According to reports, the learning center, run by a certain Juan Percowicz, teaches lessons that are sui generis,' in that they involve practices that most people would call 'sexual freedom.' There even have been some allegations of child exploitation, which local police were compelled to investigate ... ." Since its founding in the 1980s, the school has been raided by the police more than 300 times ... Capitol Hill sources were shocked that U.S. congressmen could have been so easily manipulated."

Rabbi Jailed. Instructor at Cheder Menachem Grade School Accused of Molesting Boys, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 14, 2001
"A rabbi accused of molesting three boys at a Chabad elementary school was arrested Dec. 3 and remained at the L.A. Men’s Central Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail as The Journal went to press. Rabbi Mordechai Yomtov’s arrest on 10 felony counts of committing lewd acts with children came following an investigation by the LAPD after three boys, ages 8 to 10, reported last month that Yomtov was keeping each of them alone in the classroom and molesting them while the other children were at recess. Yomtov, 36, an Australian-born rabbi with a wife and four children, pleaded not guilty. A preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court is set for Dec. 17. Yomtov has taught 8- to 10-year-olds for six years at Cheder Menachem, a school with 220 boys, kindergarten through eighth grade, on Melrose Avenue in the Beverly Boulevard-La Brea Avenue neighborhood. The school issued a written statement following the arrest: 'Due to the sensitivity of the issues involved and to protect the privacy of our students, parents, teachers and staff, the school will be making no public comment.' The statement went on, 'We request that our privacy be respected. The school is cooperating fully with all applicable authorities.'"

Scout 'Perv' Might Go Free, New York Post, December 19, 2001
"The accused pedophile scoutmaster of the Upper East Side's Boy Scout Troop 666 will seek a no-jail deal today - and the young sodomy victim's anguished family is furious. 'He is a wolf of the worst kind under that sheep's clothing,' the victim's mother said of the since-fired scoutmaster - married Upper East Sider Jerrold Schwartz, 42. 'Anything less than the maximum sentence would be unfair to my son,' the mother - whose name is being kept confidential - said in a Dec. 13 letter to the judge, who will consider a possible plea deal today in Manhattan Supreme Court. Prosecutors say a total of five credible victims have accused Schwartz - who also ran a Colorado-based youth travel company - of turning Troop 666 into Boy Scout hell through a pattern of winning kids' trust, tempting them with overnight ski and camping trips - and then molesting them. 'I say 10 minutes in a room with me - that's a fair sentence,' one of these alleged victims, a now 30-year-old Queens man, angrily responded when informed of the negotiations yesterday. But Schwartz is only charged with sodomizing one boy - a total of 36 times - because the statute of limitations has run out on the other cases. That boy is now 20 years old. He's in in-house rehab for cocaine addiction and alcoholism, his parents wrote the judge. He bathes compulsively 'because he feels so dirty,' they said. He also has nightly nightmares, and self-mutilates."

Boy, 11, Suspected in Rape of 4-Year-Old Boy, by Amit Ben-Aroya,
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], December 21, 2001
"An 11-year-old boy from central Israel is suspected of raping and sexually assaulting another boy just shy of four years of age. Two of the suspect's friends are believed to have witnessed the rape but did not stop it. According to his own testimony, the suspect says that the idea for the acts stemmed from watching pornographic films. No charges will be brought against the suspects because of their young age ... [Ayalon Police Station chief Irit] Amer described the suspects as 'ordinary children' with good communication skills. 'They did not express any regret,' she noted."

Ruling a Setback for U.S. Couple in Dog Mauling, Reuters, January 6, 2002
"A San Francisco couple facing charges in a grisly dog mauling has suffered a major legal defeat when a judge opened the door to testimony on allegations they were involved in everything from animal sex to racist prison gangs. Superior Court Judge James Warren also ruled that Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller must face trial together, denying their bid to separate the proceedings. The trial -- which has grabbed international headlines with bizarre accounts of bestiality, illegal dog breeding rings and a vicious attack in one of the city's most luxurious neighborhoods -- is due to start next week in Los Angeles, where it was moved because of extensive publicity. Knoller and Noel, a husband-and-wife team of lawyers, owned the giant Presa Canario attack dogs that savaged and killed 33-year-old Diane Whipple in her own apartment building last January 26 ... Prosecutor Jim Hammer, in arguments on Monday, said Noel and Knoller 'blurred the boundaries between dogs and humans' and cited statements from Knoller that the larger of the two dogs, a 125-pound (53 kg) male named Bane, had responded to Whipple as if she were 'a bitch in heat' ... The judge also emphasized that lawyers for both sides remained bound by a gag order. 'You can't put the words sex and dog in the same sentence without causing a sensational response in the media,' he said." [See also next article]

Killer-Dog Owner's Comments Irk Holocaust Survivors, Jewish Bulletin,
"A case loaded with peculiar twists and turns grew even stranger last weekend, when the owner of the massive dog that killed a San Francisco woman last month compared a surprise police search of his apartment to Gestapo tactics, angering several survivors. San Francisco District Attorney Terrance Hallinan 'chose a time when we were out of town to come over and kick down the doors of a Jewish home,' Robert Noel was quoted as saying in the San Francisco Chronicle. 'My relatives went through this in Germany.' The allegation comes on the heels of a number of questionable public statements by Noel. He and his wife, Marjorie Knoller, owned the 120-pound Presa Canario dog that mauled neighbor Diane Whipple to death in the hallway of their Pacific Heights apartment building Jan. 26. Noel had previously speculated that Whipple may have brought the attack on herself by wearing a pheromone-based perfume or using steroids. Hallinan's spokesman, Fred Gardner, said the D.A.'s office has declined to comment on Noel's accusations of anti-Semitism. But the dog owner's latest comments in this highly publicized case caught the eye of Bay Area Holocaust survivors and survivor advocates, whose reactions ranged from shock to anger to disbelief ... Several survivor advocates questioned Noel's rationale for raising accusations of anti-Semitism considering he and his wife recently adopted a 38-year-old inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison, who prison officials believe is one of the leaders of a white-supremacist prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood."

Brother Posts Bail in Porn Case,
San Ramon Valley Times, January 5, 2002
"FEDERAL OFFICIALS SUSPECT A WALNUT CREEK MAN OF BEING A MAJOR DISTRIBUTOR OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY FROM RUSSIA. A Walnut Creek man accused of being the 'best customer' of Russian child pornography kingpins is now himself suspected of being a 'major distributor' of illegal sexual materials, federal officials disclosed Friday. As the investigation of Seth Bekenstein, 39, continues to evolve, authorities are diving deeper into the world of a man they believe trafficked in vast amounts of kiddie porn, said Elise Becker, an assistant U.S. attorney. 'At this time, we do actually think he is a major distributor both in the United States and abroad,' Becker told Magistrate Wayne Brazil during a bail hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. 'This has been his life for the past year.'"

Jewish Porn, World Union of Jewish Students
"After things like Jewish calendar, Jewish singles, Jewish dating, and Jewish festivals comes 'Jewish porn' in the list of top search keywords that GoTo.com provide. That is to say that 1000s of people are searching for Jewish porn. Why? ... Sam Stern is a guy. A guy who went on Young Judea year course in the early 90s. He lives in LA, spends his time making porn movies starring himself, and selling them on E-Bay. The guy is quite philosophical about his calling. Talks a lot about the strangeness of making porn on Yom Kippur, bits of guilt in the background, that sort of thing. Although mostly it really does seem that he is just kind of glad that he can make a living and have sex with porn stars. So, for circumcised hard-core porn, with a Jew in, find Sam."

Suspect in '86 Slaying' Nabbed,
New York Daily News, February 10, 2002
"A wealthy New York bar owner who vanished after standing trial for the 1986 murder of his boyfriend's new lover in 1988 has been captured in Panama, authorities said. Louis Katz, 72, former owner of a chain of Uncle Charlie's gay bars in New York, was arrested Thursday night in Panama City by federal agents who flew him to Miami on Friday, according to law enforcement sources. Katz fled New York after his first trial in 1988 — on charges of fatally slashing his 20-year-old lover's new companion, Michael Moriarty, 37, and wounding Moriarty's roommate — ended in a mistrial. Defense attorney Jack Litman, who argued that the slaying was in self-defense, persuaded the court to set a relatively low bail of $400,000. Katz, then 58 and a millionaire who had sold his bars, his swanky Park Ave. apartment, his Mercedes-Benz and his palatial Fire Island home, then disappeared."

Synagogue Cantor Arrested on Sexual Abuse Charges,
Newsday, February 20, 2002
"The longtime cantor at one of the nation’s largest and most prominent Reform synagogues was arrested in New York on Wednesday on charges that he sexually abused a nephew, a prosecutor said. Howard Nevison, 61, of Congregation Emanu-El, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, was arrested at his apartment, said Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. Police in Lower Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia, charged Nevison with sexually assaulting the boy on three occasions between 1993 and 1997 while the boy was 3 to 7 years old. 'Like anyone else, we in law enforcement tend to believe that religious figures are beyond reproach. You want to make very sure before you go accusing one,' Castor said. Police have known about the allegations since about 1998 but did not pursue charges until the victim, who was undergoing therapy, was ready to confront the uncle, Castor said. 'He had terrorized the child to the point that, in the judgment of his parents, his therapists and our investigators, he was too traumatized to go forward,' Castor said."

In 2 Communities, Concern Over the Arrest of a Cantor,
New York Times, February 22, 2002
"The proper, prosperous residents of the Upper East Side of Manhattan and of the Main Line Philadelphia suburb of Lower Merion Township stood united yesterday in sheer disbelief over the same sordid tale — a synagogue cantor accused of molesting his prepubescent nephew. The lawyers, investment bankers, politicians and other prominent members of Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan struggled to square their image of the cantor, Howard Nevison, the golden-voiced tenor who led them in prayer for 23 years, with the Lower Merion police's description of him as a violent sexual abuser of a child. The imposing temple at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, said to be the largest synagogue in the world, is home to one of the nation's most prominent reform congregations. It counts among its members the new mayor of New York, the Manhattan district attorney and familiar names from the media and the arts."

Porn Pusher Has 'Screw Loose' with Trial Blow-Up,
New York Post, February 22, 2002
"The harassment trial of Al Goldstein [founder of 'Screw' magazine] turned from profane to contemptible yesterday when the porn baron was handcuffed for a bizarre outburst in court. While he was being cross-examined by Assistant DA David Cetron regarding an editorial that ran in Screw magazine - suggesting someone 'slam a 747' into the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes - the portly pornographer lashed out in a tirade. 'Haven't you heard of the First Amendment? That's protected speech!' he said, slamming his hand on the table. 'My First Amendment rights will not be squelched . . . How dare you!'"

Selling Sex in Israel, Jewsweek, February 22, 2002
"They come to Israel from the Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova looking for freedom. Instead they are sold as sex slaves. And you thought Israel was holy ... Their names are Natalya, Oxana or Svetlana. They come to Israel, as immigrants do, for a better life. But their dreams of working as a waitress, nurse, or au pair turn nightmarish upon their arrival. Their fellow countryman who met them at the airport, speaking the language of home, takes them to a locked apartment with barred windows and a phone that only takes incoming calls, where they are forced to provide sexual services to strangers. Those who rebel risk being raped, beaten, or starved. Even those who knew they were going into prostitution are shocked by the stark conditions, the pay of roughly 20 shekalim ($5) a day or less for their labor ... Police spokespersons have set the number of women brought into the country to work in the sex industry at 2,000-3,000 annually, the number of brothels at 250 ... [F]ew pimps involved in trafficking ever face a judge, with the majority of prostitutes deported without ever facing a trial that might involve their testimony against their pimps. Out of 459 women deported in 1998, only 35 cases went to trial; out of 253 in 1999, a scant five ended up in the courtroom. Judicial indifference is compounded by police complicity, [Nomi] Levenkron argued. The 18-year-old Moldovian, it turned out, had at one point in her misadventures, found herself in a Tel Aviv police station where some of the officers, who were her clients, recognized her and moved to call her pimp."

Waterford Dentist Pleads Guilty to Sex Crimes,
Detroit Now News (ABC, Channel 7), February 20, 2002
"A dentist accused of betraying patients in the worst way issued his own verdict before the case had a chance to go to trial. Dr. Kenneth Friedman pleaded guilty to more than a dozen sex crimes. He admits molesting patients while they were in his dentist chair. Most of the victims are patients, but two of them actually worked in the dentist's office. Wednesday they were all in court as the judge ordered the dentist to spell out exactly what he did to them: 'I touched the woman's breast over the drape, over the plastic drape,' Dr. Friedman explained. 'All the women that you mentioned?' the judge asked. 'Yes.' 'And in all those cases did you know that the victim was mentally incapacitated and physically helpless?' 'Yes.' Without benefit of a plea bargain, the doctor pleaded guilty to 15 counts of criminal sexual conduct, sparing a dozen victims the additional trauma of taking the stand."

Formal Charges Filed Against OKC Rabbi,
Channel Oklahoma (Channel 5), February 27, 2002
"Prosecutors filed 11 criminal charges against a rabbi Tuesday, alleging lewd acts with two girls who attended a religious school and sexual battery involving two women who worked there. Richard Marcovitz, 64, was arrested last week and was freed on $80,000 bond. He has been placed on administrative leave from Emanuel Synagogue, where he has worked for the past six years."

Former N.J. Rabbi Admits Having Child Pornography,
Newsday, February 26, 2002
"The former rabbi of a Morris County synagogue pleaded guilty Tuesday to having child pornography on his temple computer. Juda Mintz Jr., who now lives in Georgia, faces 27 to 33 months in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 ... Mintz admitted that at that time he had at least 10 computer files containing photographs of minors engaging in sexual activity, including some images of children under 12. The synagogue said it cooperated with authorities. 'We deplore his actions and, indeed, relieved him of his duties because of them,' according to a statement released by synagogue vice president Jonathan Ramsfelder. 'During his tenure, (Rabbi Mintz) was viewed by many congregants as a warm, generous and dynamic rabbi and teacher. This was a loss.'"

Former Little League Administrator Faces Child Porn Charges,
KFWB, March 6, 2002
"A former Long Beach Little League administrator is facing federal child pornography charges, according to the FBI. Signal Hill police and FBI agents arrested Laurent Blumenthal Tuesday after he was indicted on charges of possession of child pornography. Court documents allege the 65-year-old placed a hidden camera in his bathroom to secretly record young boys. The allegations were in an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant executed at Blumenthal's Signal Hill home on Jan. 14. Investigators also seized a computer at Blumenthal's home which allegedly had child pornography on the hard drive, according to the FBI."

Czechs Nix Plan to Shoot Porn Film at the Site of Terezin Transit Camp,
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), March 25, 2002
"Czech officials have quashed plans to shoot scenes from a porno film at the former wartime transit camp of Terezin. Officials banned the use of video cameras at Terezin after reports that a porn movie would be shot there. 'I did the only thing I could do,' Jan Munk, director of a monument to Terezin victims, said. Munkґs move came after the Czech tabloid Super reported Saturday that the film, starring top Czech porn star Robert Rosenberg, who is also the filmґs producer, is set at the end of World War II and will tell the story of how women at the camp were raped by Nazis. The ban might be too late, however, since Rosenberg has already filmed some parts of the camp. The paper that printed the original article on the film, which also printed a collage of a semi-naked woman posing in front of a picture of Terezin, said the filmґs working title is 'How it Was.'"

Sex Abuse by Clerics -- A Crisis of Many Faiths,
Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2002
"The wave of clergy sex scandals now engulfing the Roman Catholic Church has battered other denominations as well, producing an uneven record of response that ranges from the Episcopal Church's aggressive and detailed policies to the Southern Baptist Convention's widespread lack of written standards ... The Conservative [Judaism] movement is currently working on policies, and the Orthodox movement has been recently rocked by a case involving Baruch Lanner, a nationally known youth official who was indicted last year in New Jersey on charges of sexually abusing teens. The case was first reported by the New York-based Jewish Week newspaper in stories that detailed allegations by scores of teens of sexual, physical and psychological torment. It has forced the resignation of the Orthodox Union's top official and led to the development of new policies. At least one Jewish researcher says that sexual misconduct is still routinely covered up by rabbis. Charlotte Rolnick Schwab, a New York psychotherapist and author of a forthcoming book on rabbis and sex abuse, said she has received hundreds of complaints from women across all movements and still sees rabbis denying them publicly. Congregations themselves sometimes exacerbate the problems, she said. In one recent case involving a Florida rabbi convicted of using the Internet to find boys and sexually abuse them, congregant support prompted the judge to sentence him to six years in prison instead of the maximum 60 years, Schwab said. 'It's outrageous.'"

Porn Upsets Palestinians,
The Advertiser, March 31, 2002
"Porn movies and programs in Hebrew are being broadcast by Israeli troops who have taken over three Palestinian television stations of Ramallah, irate residents of the besieged West Bank town have told AFP. The offices of three local television and radio stations were occupied by soldiers yesterday morning, a few hours after tanks and hundreds of troops stormed the town in Israel's biggest offensive against the Palestinian Authority and its leader Yasser Arafat. The soldiers started broadcasting the porn clips -- considered extremely offensive by most Muslims -- intermittently this afternoon from the Al-Watan, Ammwaj, and Al-Sharaq channels, the residents said. 'The pornographic movies started on Al-Watan television at around 3:30 pm,' one 34-year-old Palestinian mother named Reema told AFP. 'I have six children at home, they have nowhere to go with what is going on here and can't even watch TV,' she said angrily. 'It's not healthy really. I think the Israelis want to mess with our young men's heads,' she said. Anita, a 52-year-old mother of three children, complained about "the deliberate psychological damage caused by these broadcast.'. 'I am furious, these are the people who are shooting at us that also play this disgusting trick on us,' she said. 'We are desperate for news and constantly flipping channels and get these terrible pictures instead,' adding that videos of the intifada were also shown backwards with 'ideal terrorism' written in red across the screen. 'Luckily, there is no electricity in half of Ramallah,' she said from her house in east Jerusalem where the channels are also available. A fourth local station, whose premises were not seized by the army, ran a written message across its screen letting people know it was the Israelis who were behind the graphic scenes. 'Anything currently shown on Al-Watan and other local TV channels has nothing to do with Palestinian programs but is being broadcast by the Israeli occupation forces, we urge parents to take precautions,' the message said. The Israeli military denied that it had anything to do with the pornographic programming and instead blamed the Palestinian leaders."

Queens Yeshiva Boss Is a Molester: Boy's Mom,
New York Post, March 31, 2002
"Sara Leven found her 17-year-old son Daniel blue-faced, hanging from the shower curtain rod - a tie pinched around his neck. The vision gnaws at Leven's heart because the rabbi she claims molested her boy when he was 5 - which she believes drove her son to suicide - is free and teaching kids at a Queens yeshiva. The 57-year-old Canadian has pursued Rabbi Ephraim B. Bryks, 49, since her son's death in 1993. Winnipeg. Montreal. Queens. 'It never goes away,' said Leven in a shaken voice. 'It's unfinished business. He's never been brought to justice and I live with it every day. He's alive. He's thriving. I have to reveal who he really is.' Bryks, a respected scholar, a Queens religious-court judge and a Renaissance man in the city's Orthodox community, was never charged after investigations by police, a social-service agency and Orthodox Jewish leaders here and in Canada. 'She's chasing him," said Rabbi Shlomo Nisanov, administrator at the Yeshiva Berachel David-Torah HS in Flushing, which Bryks created and operates. 'The accusations are baseless, they keep coming up. He is not an animal.' Yet there have been at least three other known child-molestation allegations against Bryks, in Winnipeg, Canada, dating to 1988 when he ran a yeshiva attended by Daniel Leven. A claim by a 14-year-old girl spurred a 1988 investigation by Winnipeg Child and Family Services, which cleared Bryks of any criminal wrongdoing but criticized the rabbi for tickling, hugging and letting students sit on his lap. The report also noted that accusers faced a backlash so intense in the close-knit Jewish community, it 'might prevent any child from coming forth with the disclosure.'"

Selling Innocence,
NBC 6, November 8, 2001
"Skimpy clothes, camera close-ups, and grown-up poses. Barely legal, experts say, but a growing industry on the Internet called child erotica. And a major player is right here in South Florida, where many of the pictures are taken. Our investigation found a Fort Lauderdale company called Webe Web runs eight child modeling Web sites. The same company also sells sex online, having operated at least 14 sites that market adult pornography. Webe Web is run by Marc Greenberg and Jeff Libman. Libman photographs the girls and even appears in one of the videos. We went undercover to meet Libman and learn more about his web sites. His most popular child site features a 12-year-old nicknamed 'Little Amber.' Libman told us her site is purely professional."

A Paradoxical Legacy: Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's Shadow Side,
rickross.com, (originally from Lilith, Spring 1998)
"Described as a musical genius, Rabbi Carlebach's melodies, including Adir Hu, AmYisroel Chai, and Esa Ena, are sung throughout the world in Hasidic shteibels and Reform temples alike; have sunk so deeply into Jewish consciousness that many don't realize these are not age-old tunes ... It is an alarming paradox, then, that the man who did so much on behalf of women may also have done some of them harm. In the three years since Rabbi Carlebach's death, at age 69, ceremonies honoring his life and work have been interrupted by women who claim the Rabbi sexually harassed or abused them ... Among the many people Lilith spoke with, nearly all had heard stories of Rabbi Carlebach's sexual indiscretions during his more than four-decade rabbinic career. Spiritual leaders, psychotherapists, and others report numerous incidents, from playful propositions to actual sexual contact. Most of the allegations include middle-of-the-night, sexually charged phone calls and unwanted attention or propositions. Others, which have been slower to emerge, relate to sexual molestation."

Good Priests, Bad Rabbis,
Ukrainian Archive
"Jewish control of the media permits Jews to launch a preemptive disinformation strike at others for sins of which they themselves are most guilty. For example, when Jews themselves have been among the leading war criminals throughout the interval of living memory, they stage show trials featuring the exaggerated or imagined war criminality of others. What the evidence presented in the present letter suggests is that Jewish clerics find themselves in an extremely vulnerable position. Rabbinical sex crimes are widespread and egregious. Rabbinical doctrines and practices would, if exposed to Western eyes, be considered more backward and savage than those of the Taliban. And rabbinical economic crimes are staggering. The response of Jews to their high, and perhaps increasing, vulnerability is not to reform themselves, but to attack others. Already losing their war against Islam, Jews launch a second front against Christianity — one might think an ill-advised tactic, but given the flight of their intelligentsia away from Judaism, those Jews who still remain find themselves without the intellectual resources to devise a superior plan."

Petaluma rabbi pleads no contest to charges of sexual misconduct,
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, February 21, 1997
"The Petaluma rabbi accused of sexually molesting a bat mitzvah student has pleaded no contest to the charge and faces up to eight years in prison. Rabbi Sidney Goldenberg, formerly of Petaluma's Congregation B'nai Israel, entered his plea at Santa Rosa Municipal Court Tuesday to a felony charge of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under the age of 14. The sexual misconduct allegedly took place over several months late last year while Goldenberg was tutoring the victim, a 12-year-old girl, for her bat mitzvah. Police said Goldenberg, 58, took the girl into his office, made lewd remarks, touched her breasts and asked that she put her hands into his pockets ... Several women from New York have contacted the Santa Rosa district attorney's office claiming to have been molested by Goldenberg while they were teenagers, Medvigy said. Their calls came amid national media attention to the case."

Trafficking Women in Israel, by Sigal Rozen,
National Council of Jewish Women, Fall 2001
"Each year, an estimated two to three thousand women are brought from the former Soviet Union to work in the Israeli sex industry – a business of modern slavery that puts millions of dollars a year in the pockets of pimps and traffickers. For the last decade, this buying and selling of women has been conducted in Israel with almost no interference ... Most trafficked women arrive in Israel from countries formerly in the Soviet Union. According to a Hotline survey of 392 prostitutes arrested and deported from Israel in 2000, 91 percent of the women come from only three countries: 46 percent from Ukraine, 28 percent from Russia, and 17 percent from Moldova – statistics that reflect the good relations between traffickers in Israel and those countries. The remaining 9 percent are from other former Soviet republics. Initially, traffickers transported the women to Israel as tourists through the airport. But a crackdown by authorities forced the women to travel on ships stopping overnight at Haifa. The women would go ashore, deposit their passports with the border police, and disappear. Traffickers provided them with forged identities of Jewish immigrants, or arranged marriages with Israeli citizens – granting pimps the further benefit of economic aid offered by the Israeli government ... Upon arrival in Israel, such women are routinely sold to pimps to whom they must repay their debts (i.e. their cost) before earning money for themselves. Four to five clients a day soon become fifteen or twenty, some with perverse requests. If the women are not cooperative, if they fail to clean the room on time, if they try to leave without permission – they have to pay 'fines'or worse, they are sold to another pimp who wants to recoup his investment. And the cycle begins again. If the women stop cooperating altogether, the pimp “arranges” for the police to pick them up."

Song of Sorrow,
New York, April 15, 2002
"Joel's parents were as baffled as they were horrified. Almost a year would pass before they'd come to understand the source of his demons, a year in which their curly-haired boy was frequently suicidal and obviously terrified. In therapy over the subsequent months, he slowly started revealing the torments he'd endured at the hands of his own family. He'd been sexually abused by his uncle Larry (his father's older brother, who confessed in 1999 and is currently in prison), and also by Larry's adult son Stewart, who pleaded guilty and served a year before being released on parole. Finally, the boy charged, he was sexually abused by his uncle Howie (his father's oldest brother, fourteen years Henry's senior). Uncle Howie is better known to New Yorkers as Cantor Howard Nevison, part of the rabbinical hierarchy at Congregation Emanu-El, the city's most prominent Reform Jewish synagogue, for 23 years. In the early-morning hours of February 20, police arrested him in his Upper West Side home. On April 17, a preliminary hearing will determine whether there is enough evidence for the case to go to trial. He is contesting the charges. 'Howard Nevison is innocent, and we are confident he will be exonerated,' says his attorney, Ralph Jacobs. These accusations are very different from the suddenly ubiquitous stories of priests molesting parishioners. This is strictly a family affair ... .But for Nevison, the blow had been coming for years; the cantor first learned he was a suspect not long after Joel's parents initially approached the police in 1998. Linda Fairstein, former longtime chief of the New York district attorney's sex-crimes-prosecution unit, says she's "stunned" that it took so long to file charges against the cantor. "I've never heard of that," she says. "It's quite extraordinary that people who already gained the trust of a child for the prosecution of relatives couldn't then also elicit his consent in prosecuting another one at the time." Why the delay? Joel, according to the Pennsylvania district attorney bringing the charges, was too afraid to testify against the cantor, allegedly the most terrifying of the three men accused of molesting him. In the affidavit of probable cause that resulted in Howard Nevison's arrest, the boy describes him as 'a big man with a mean, powerful voice and frightening glare,' who threatened to kill him if he spoke up ... Some parents were outraged to learn that the temple leadership had known since 1998 about an investigation of the Nevison family yet continued allowing the cantor to meet with boys and girls preparing for their bar mitzvahs."

Orthodox Rabbi Issues Warning on Sexual Abuse,
[Jewish] Forward, May 3, 2002
"The rabbi of a prominent Manhattan synagogue is using the occasion of the Catholic Church's sex scandal to warn that Orthodox institutions are often "dismissive" of abuse complaints. Rabbi Ari Berman, the religious leader of the Jewish Center, a well-heeled Modern Orthodox congregation on the Upper West Side, issued the warning last weekend during a Saturday morning sermon. Berman said the Orthodox community needs to learn from the sex abuse scandal racking the Catholic Church. While asserting that sexual abuse cases are far more common in the Catholic community than in Orthodox circles, Berman criticized Orthodox institutions for dismissing many of the claims that do arise in their own backyard. "Perhaps in the outside world there might be an exaggerated tendency to launch a witch hunt, to fire people and prosecute immediately," said Berman, whose predecessors at the Jewish Center include Rabbi Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, and Rabbi J.J. Schachter, dean of a Modern Orthodox think tank in Brookline, Mass. 'But in the Orthodox world we have the opposite tendency: to circle the wagons and deny wrongdoing. The concern for the reputation of the teacher or school is given greater weight than the child's words ... 'ust a short time ago, a much publicized case of abuse and negligence in the Modern Orthodox world raised this issue in the public consciousness," Berman said, in an apparent reference to the Lanner scandal. 'I wish I could say that these were the only cases that I have heard in our community, but they are not. There are others, and some with tragic endings.' To hammer home his point, Berman told the story of a pre-teen child who claimed he had been molested by a rabbi at summer camp. According to Berman, even though the rabbi had been the subject of previous complaints, the camp rejected the allegation, and a teacher at the child's school told the student "to stop making up stories, to forget about it and to move on." The family was ostracized, Berman said, and had trouble enrolling the child in another school ...[E]ven when rabbis are dismissed or leave their job under suspicion, they often manage to find educational work in another city. "

Long Run Ends for Ira Einhorn, Wanted in U.S. for '77 Killing,
Washington Post, July 21, 2001
"After 20 years on the run, former Philadelphia counterculture guru Ira Einhorn was returned to the United States in shackles yesterday to face a possible new trial for the 1977 bludgeoning death of his girlfriend, Holly Maddux. The man who counted radicals Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman among his friends stepped onto the tarmac of Philadelphia International Airport in a bullet-proof vest at 4 a.m. He was escorted to a waiting car and taken to the maximum security Graterford State Prison ... His story -- replete with drugs, sex and a manhunt across Europe -- was no less incredible than the rambling essays he used to pen under the name 'the Unicorn' for an underground newspaper before his days as a fugitive. Ultimately tracked to the south of France, he was living an idyllic life with another woman as Maddux's grieving family clamored for justice. Einhorn met Maddux in 1972 at the Philadelphia bistro La Terrasse, where he liked to hold court. He was a local celebrity, a former University of Pennsylvania instructor who had allegedly stripped naked and passed marijuana around a classroom, and first made headlines when he helped organize Earth Day in 1970."

How David Asimov, the Biggest Child Porn Processor in California Skated Away from Federal Prison with a Little Help from His Friends,
News Making News, March 29, 2001
"David Asimov, of Living Oak Court, Bennett Ridge, Santa Rosa, the son of the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, was sentenced on March 28, 2001 to six months' home detention with electronic monitoring and three years federal probation for possessing child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge Maxine M. Chesney sentenced Asimov after reviewing a series of sealed psychiatric reports, one of which was ordered by the court. Asimov who was charged with four federal counts of possession of child pornography with each count carrying a five year sentence, pled guilty to two counts in a plea bargain deal. There was no forfeiture of any of Asimov's assets in this case, despite his owning a home in Santa Rosa purchased in 1996 for $375,000, and despite his receiving $3,000 per month from his father's estate. How did Asimov, who possessed one of the largest stashes of pornography in California, skate away from federal prison? A look at the players yields the answer. Asimov's child porn stash was so big many child victims and perpetrators would have taken a fall, had Asimov been zealously prosecuted at trial."

Undercover Police Bust Country's Largest Prostitution Ring,
Ha'aretz (Israel), May 20, 2002
"An undercover police agent who paid NIS 50,000 to purchase rights to use three women from Moldavia as sex workers, led to the exposure of what police called Sunday the 'largest prostitution network' to be found in Israel. Counting this latest sting operation, Tel Aviv police have busted five prostitution networks in 2002. The major police crackdown in recent months has tracked down suspects along the entire 'food chain' that thrives on the exploitation of sex workers. The prostitution racket starts in the CIS; middlemen fly the women to Egypt; the women are smuggled without any snags across the border to Israel, where traders wait for them in Eilat; these salesmen, the last links in the global chain, bring the women to massage parlor owners in the center of the country. The women, who are usually in their 20s, get passed from one handler to the next, and undergo physical abuse and torments which often involves rape perpetrated by traders who want to check their 'merchandise.'"

Woman Says Einhorn Attacked Her,
Find Law (Associated Press), October 9, 2002
"A woman testifying in the trial of a hippie guru accused of murdering his girlfriend 25 years ago said the defendant smashed a bottle over her head and nearly strangled her in 1966 after she told him their relationship was over. Prosecutors rested their case on the same day that Judith Sabot described the March 1966 attack at a friend's apartment, where she had agreed to meet Ira Einhorn. 'Ira came out from behind the door and smashed me over the head with a bottle; I was bleeding and I reeled across the room,' she testified Tuesday. Sabot, who was 20 at the time, needed stitches to close her head wound. She said Einhorn 'came at me with his hands and started to choke me with his thumbs over my windpipe.' 'I felt and believed I was dying,' she said, choking back tears ... Einhorn is charged with bludgeoning Holly Maddux in 1977 because she wanted to break up with him. Her mummified corpse was found in a steamer trunk in his closet 18 months after he said she went to the store and never returned. The 1970s counterculture figure fled on the eve of his 1981 trial and was tracked down in 1997 living in a French village."

Indictments break up prostitution circuit,
St.Petersburg Times (FL), August 8, 2002
"'The Circuit' had something for everyone in the market for a high-priced prostitute, federal prosecutors say. Tall women. Short women. Blondes or brunettes, curvy or skinny. Customers placed their orders and the women hopped on planes, prosecutors say, bouncing between glitzy brothels in Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago and half a dozen other cities. But now 'the Circuit' is gone, prosecutors say. A series of indictments has broken it apart, the broadest coming this week in Miami, where prosecutors announced the indictment of 13 people in Florida, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The indictment paints a tableau of jet-setting debauchery. The prostitutes made $350 an hour when they met customers at brothels and $400 an hour to meet them elsewhere. A prostitute shipped in from Milan, Italy, allegedly made $10,000 a week. When the prostitutes were in Miami, they lived and worked in $1,600-a-month suites at the swanky Four Ambassador Suites Hotel. In New York, they hung out at a penthouse brothel. But the prostitutes are not the ones facing indictment, though the Washington Post quoted unnamed sources as saying many of them testified before a grand jury under immunity grants. Instead, prosecutors have focused primarily on the alleged madams accused of running the brothels and manipulating the nationwide network ... Judy Krueger, 58, is accused of running the Miami outpost of the Circuit along with her lover Eli Tish, 70, who also was indicted Monday."

Desmond embroiled in Ј8m tax wrangle,
Media Guardian (Great Britain), September 24, 2002
"Richard Desmond [also Jewish], the owner of Express Newspapers, is in dispute with the inland revenue over a Ј8m tax bill. His argument with the taxman began after a 1993 business deal when United Newspapers agreed to buy 10 of his magazines, resulting in a Ј12m windfall for the pornography publisher ... The Money Programme revelations could not come at a worse time for Mr Desmond, who is desperately trying to shake off his 'porn baron' tag. Only 10 days ago he went on the BBC's Ten O'Clock News to protest against the use of the word 'pornographer'. Demonstrating for the first time he is embarrassed by the P-word, Mr Desmond said of his critics: 'They use the word pornography... they use all sorts of nasty words.' Mr Desmond, who, according to his arch-rival David Sullivan, owns 50 top shelf titles and three porn TV channels, carried on: 'We don't publish pornography, we publish adult magazines.' He has been trying to sell his porn empire for the last two years but there have been no takers. The Money Programme confirms MediaGuardian.co.uk reports that Mr Desmond was also spurred into action by a Guardian investigation into one of his pornography websites that offered live lesbian sex as well as other images portraying pregnant women and women as old as 78. Deric Botham, who ran Mr Desmond's Fantasy Channel for five years, explained how within 24 hours of the article appearing he 'decimated' the site to prevent further media opporobrium."

Porn Star!,
BBC, September (year not posted)
"Friend to the stars and owner of Express Newspapers and OK! magazine, Richard Desmond has made a name for himself as a successful businessman. But where does his money come from? The Money Programme investigates. Porn Star! ... Richard Desmond is no stranger to controversy but even this colourful press baron is likely to be embarrassed by revelations of his brushes with the New York mafia and details of a battle with the Inland Revenue over millions of pounds of disputed tax. The revelations are contained in a BBC2 Money Programme special that sheds new light on Desmond's business activities ... Desmond's brushes with organised crime came in the early 1990s, almost a decade after he secured the franchise to publish the UK version of Penthouse ... It is said the cash was later delivered in bags to an Italian restaurant in London's Soho, although Desmond categorically denies giving any money to the Gambino crime family at all."

Widower of TA Arts School principal held over sex charges,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 4, 2002
"The Tel Aviv Magistrates Court rejected Sunday night an appeal by Ya'akov Ha'elyon to be released from custody, after police detained him for questioning on suspicion of raping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. The girl filed an official police complaint against Ha'elyon - the widower of Yael Ha'elyon, founder and principal of the prestigious Tel Aviv Arts School - for sexual assault. Yael Ha'elyon was found dead at the foot of her apartment building on Shaul Hamelech Boulevard in Tel Aviv last month, and police believe she jumped to her death from the eighth story after hearing that her husband was to be accused of assault."

11% of women have been beaten at home in a widening cycle of violence,
by Ruth Sinai, Ha'aretz (Israel), November 4, 2002
"R.K. is one of 214,000 battered Israeli women - 11.2 percent of the women in the country - who have been assaulted by their husbands. About 142,000 of them were beaten this year, 40,000 required medical treatment and 15,000 were hospitalized. Some 146,000 women were raped at least once and 2 percent of these were threatened with murder in the past year, according to the most comprehensive report to date on domestic violence in Israel. The report was compiled by the Minerva Center for youth research in Haifa University with the participation of 2,841 women and 510 men. It was released by Labor and Welfare Minister Shlomo Benizri. The findings on child abuse are even worse than those on violence against women. Some 417,000 children up to the age of five (57 percent of the children this age) have suffered moderate corporal punishment such as being shaken, pushed or slapped, while 46,000 - 6.3 percent - suffered more harsh punishment including blows from fists or being beaten with a stick or belt. Of the six to 18 year olds, more than 550,000 - 39 percent of all the children - suffered moderate violence in past year, while 115,000 (8 percent) suffered severe violence. Professor Zvi Isikovitz and Professor Gidon Fishman, who conducted the research, say the use of harsh violence toward children increases with age. Isikovitz says he was less shocked by the findings about the scope of violence than the willingness of the victims to justify it." ... Benizri asked Education Minister Limor Livnat to increase education about violence from a very young age, and especially to make children understand that women are not a punch bag for men, and to undermine the tendency of women to justify violence against them."

Two actors face child porn charges,
Salon.com, Nov. 16, 2002
"A year-old pornography investigation has led to the filing of criminal charges against two Hollywood actors: Paul Reubens, best known as Pee-wee Herman, and veteran character actor Jeffrey Jones of 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off.' Reubens was charged with one misdemeanor count of possessing materials depicting children under the age of 18 engaged in sexual conduct, said Ana Garcia, a spokeswoman with the City Attorney's office. He surrendered to authorities Friday and was released on $20,000 bail ... Reubens, 50, and Jones, 56, are acquaintances and both cases stem from the same police investigation, said Los Angeles County District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons. ... Reubens pleaded no contest to an indecent exposure charge in 1991 after he was arrested in Sarasota, Fla., for allegedly exposing himself in a movie theater. After that plea, Reubens' long-running 'Pee-wee Herman Show' was canceled and his star faded, although he has had supporting roles in a number of films since, including 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Blow.'"

Israel: Brisk trade in 'sex slaves',
News 24, December 8, 2002 [same story here at The Globe and Mail]
"About 3,000 women, mainly from the former Soviet Union, are sold each year into a brisk Israeli sex industry that takes in about $1bn annually, a parliamentary report said on Sunday, slamming the justice system for being lax on punishments. The women, seeking to escape poverty at home, are usually smuggled in by traffickers who promise them legitimate jobs. Once in Israel, they are sold for between $3 000 and $6 000 each. They receive $25 - $30 per customer, of which the pimp takes between 80 and 90%, the preliminary report said. The women work about 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week and receive an average of 10 to 15 clients daily, it added. Often, the women live in dismal conditions and sometimes they are physically abused or live in fear of their pimps, the report said. Israeli courts generally reach a plea bargain with the pimps and sentence them to either a few months of community service or up to an average of two years in prison, punishments which the committee said are too weak to serve as deterrents. It suggested that these crimes should have minimum prison sentences to deter the sex traders, who sexually exploit the women and often jail, blackmail and enslave them. In July 2001, a US State Department report placed Israel in the third section of its 'black list' on countries whose laws don't meet US criteria for dealing with this crime and threatened economic sanctions."

Jewish Films To Watch at Sundance,
[Jewish] Forward, January 17, 2003
"Andrew Jarecki brings to this year's Sundance [Film Festival] a new kind of legend — an indie who has already made a million ($388 million, to be exact, which is what AOL paid for his company, Moviefone, in 1999, keeping him on as CEO). The multitalented mogul, who has also penned and performed songs for the WB's late, lamented 'Felicity,' is showing his documentary 'Capturing the Friedmans,' one of several offerings topping the list of must-see films with Jewish themes ... Buzz for 'Friedmans' is strong. In 1987, New York Newsday broke the story of Arnold Friedman, an upper-middle-class high school teacher from Great Neck, Long Island, who was arrested as part of a federal sting operation against mail-order pornography. Friedman's wife ran a childcare center from their home; Friedman was also a buyer of child pornography. As detailed in 'Capturing the Friedmans,' during the arrest agents began to suspect that children who came to the Friedmans' home for day care and after-school computer classes were being abused. Jarecki was given surprising access to the family's home videos, which he uses to sort through the various versions of the truth regarding the charges. The filmmaker also examines the Great Neck community that turned against the Friedmans and the legal system that baffled them. A Friedman figures in another Sundance documentary — Andrei Friedman, who dropped his Hungarian-Jewish name for the more dashing moniker Robert Capa when he immigrated to Paris from Budapest. In 'Robert Capa: In Love and War,' acclaimed filmmaker Anne Makepeace re-creates the life and work of this legendary war photographer. When Friedman first arrived in Paris, 'Robert Capa' was wholly imaginary — a rich American photographer that he and his collaborator girlfriend invented to gain credibility. The ruse was quickly uncovered, but his work was so good that the young photographer took on the persona of Capa and went on to document the Spanish Civil War, the Sino-Japanese War, World War II and Israel's War for Independence."

Porn King's Ex in Mansion-Standoff Drama,
New York Post, December 31, 2002
"An ex-girlfriend of porn publisher Al Goldstein, armed with several of his licensed handguns, barricaded herself in a room at his Pompano Beach, Fla., home and threatened to kill herself, police said. Kathleen Pustay, 36, surrendered to cops Sunday after a five-hour standoff and was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Goldstein, who publishes Screw magazine and hosts 'Midnight Blue' on cable TV, said he flew his old flame - whom he calls Katherine - from her home in Pittsburgh to Florida because 'New Year's is a bad time for her.' Unbeknownst to the smut magnate, she holed up in the guest room of his 15-room house and called a counselor, threatening to kill herself, Goldstein said ... The Miami Herald reported yesterday Pustay was named in a federal indictment in April regarding a ring of high-priced hookers called 'the circuit.' Goldstein, who was convicted earlier this year in Brooklyn for harassing an ex-employee, returns to New York in January to face trial on aggravated harassment charges brought by his ex-wife."

Cosmetics heir charged with rape was aspiring porn producer, attorneys say, Court TV (from Associated Press), January 3, 2002
"Attorneys for cosmetics heir Andrew Luster say he was an aspiring producer of pornography when he videotaped himself having sex with three women he is accused of raping. Defense lawyers said Thursday that excerpts of Luster's homemade movies, including one entitled 'Babes and Waves,' should be shown to jurors when his rape trial begins next week. Luster, the 38-year-old great-grandson of cosmetics magnate Max Factor, was arrested in July 2000 after a woman told authorities she was drugged at a Santa Barbara bar, then raped at his Ventura County beach house. Detectives said they found videotapes of Luster engaging in sex acts with two other women who appeared to be unconscious."

Max Factor heir 'flees' sex trial. Mr Luster was allowed out of jail on $1m bail,
BBC News, January 7, 2002
"Police in California are hunting an heir to the multi-million dollar Max Factor cosmetics fortune. Andrew Luster, who faces 87 charges relating to date rape, has disappeared in the middle of his trial. The 39-year-old has been declared a fugitive after he jumped his million-dollar bail over the weekend. Ventura County District Attorney Gregory Totten said in a written statement that police suspected Mr Luster had fled after he failed to check in with a probation officer on Friday night, as required under the terms of his house arrest. A search revealed he had disappeared from his beachfront home along with his dog, his car and many of his personal possessions, Mr Totten added. Mr Luster faces multiple rape charges and stands accused of drugging his victims and then videotaping his assaults ... The great grandson of Max Factor, Mr Luster was arrested after a woman he met went to the police alleging he had spiked her drink with the so-called 'date rape' drug, Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate (GHB). When detectives raided his home, they say they found 17 videotapes or Mr Luster having sex with apparently unconscious women, many of whom have yet to be identified."

Stuck in traffic. Hundreds of women are smuggled into Israel each year and turned into human property, and hundreds of criminals take part in this chain of commerce that begins in Eastern Europe and usually ends in a Tel Aviv brothel. Pitted against them are a handful of police officers, state prosecutors and judges, all of whom are staggering under an impossible burden,
by Aviv Lavie, Ha'aretz (Israel), January 5, 2002
"The traffic in women, a thriving sector of the Israeli economy over the past decade, would apparently have continued to flourish unchecked if not for three things that took place in quick succession in 2000: Amnesty International published a report that was very critical about the situation in Israel in this sphere; the women's lobby did the same; and, finally, Gal Gabai aired a bloodcurdling report on Channel Two's 'Ulpan Shishi,' in which traffickers were caught on hidden camera checking out candidates for purchase, as if the women were chattel at a slave market. Many Knesset members felt that something had to be done ... Shortly after it got to work in July 2000, the commission received a further incentive for its activity, from Capitol Hill in Washington. Every year, the U.S. State Department presents a report to Congress that describes the efforts being made by different countries to combat the traffic in human beings, so this can be taken into account when foreign aid is being discussed. The 2001 Trafficking in Persons Report dealt Israel a big blow: The country plummeted to the lowest possible rating, Tier 3, a group described as 'not making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with the standards of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.' Albania, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Pakistan were some of the countries with which Israel shared this dubious distinction ... The police speak with frustration about the feeble efforts that are all they are capable of making against the crime lords. And when they do manage to haul them in, they end up watching the State Prosecutor's office strike plea bargains with them. For their part, representatives of the State Prosecutor's office claimed that the plea bargains were the maximum that could be achieved, given the severe backlog in the courts. A court system representative confirmed that the system is jammed and on the verge of collapse. The picture presented by the protocols is nothing short of appalling: Hundreds of women are smuggled into Israel each year and turned into human property; hundreds, if not thousands, of criminals of various ranks take part in this chain of trade, which begins in Eastern Europe and usually ends in a Tel Aviv brothel. On the other side are a handful of police officers, a few diligent state prosecutors and judges who are staggering under an impossible burden. What chance do they have of prevailing? ... At the same meeting, the police representatives brought up another painful matter: the fate of the women enlisted by the police to testify against the drug dealers and pimps. It turns out that these women are housed in a hostel where the conditions are barely satisfactory and no protection is provided."

[Is Joe Francis Jewish? Francis is a common enough Jewish surname ... ]
State: Girls Gone Wild Filmed at Least 35 Minors in Panhandle,
Tampa Tribune, September 4, 2003
"The "Girls Gone Wild" staff filmed at least 35 girls exposing themselves during spring break in the Panama City Beach area, prosecutors said. State Attorney Jim Appleman also said during a hearing Wednesday that additional charges are possible against the producer of the videos, who was arrested in April on racketeering and drug charges after parents complained to police he told underage girls to say on camera that they were 18. If convicted of all charges, producer Joe Francis could face 30 years in prison. "We'll be able to prove our case," Appleman said during the hearing before Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet. Francis has maintained his innocence. The video series that Francis created has made millions by filming college-age women revealing their breasts at parties and spring break sites. Appleman said he is leery of turning over to the defense the tapes, which include the alleged minors performing sex acts, because it would be illegal for him to give contraband to anyone. Defense attorney Jimmy Judkins argued that the tapes "contain a wealth of evidence that will exculpate Mr. Francis and will disprove the government allegation that Mantra Entertainment is a criminal enterprise." Another defense attorney, Aaron Dyer of Los Angeles, asked that all "flashing" scenes on the tapes be declared legal. "It doesn't become child pornography when you're just dealing with nudity," Dyer said ... The charges are based largely on about 175 hours of tapes Bay County sheriff's deputies seized during a raid at a condominium rented by the "Girls Gone Wild" staff."