Why the foot soldiers and not the generals?

Jeffersonville police busted a massage parlor last week, and five women were arrested for prostitution. Their mug shots appear on OSIN’s website.

Five women arrested for prostitution in Jeffersonville; Owners of ‘massage parlor’ may face charges, by Matt Thacker (News and Tribune)

The owners of the business, Ivan Deleon, 36, and his wife, Jeana Kaufman, 37, of Floyds Knobs, will likely face charges for promoting prostitution, according to police.

In the abstract, an in a declining nation like ours that prides itself on limitless capitalism, there is no compelling reason to care about buying and selling sex, except that in reality, there are considerable elements of coercion, exploitation, human trafficking, drug addiction and sheer desperation present in the majority of these transactions.

Given this, it troubles me that in the aftermath of the police raid, it is the five women whose faces appear in the paper, even though at the moment, they only have been charged with a crime, and not yet convicted of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the massage business’s owners (i.e, the pimps), while named, avoid the ignominy of being photographed and placed in the equivalent of the public stocks for derision by stone wielders eager to find the glass houses.

But this is sex in America, after all , and as has been the case over long centuries, the Puritan imperative foisted on humanity by religious monopolists must be appeased by blaming the victims. It disturbs me.