Court Opinion

ID: 9493762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:18:48.892051+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:01.670528
License: Public Domain

SILVERMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
It is difficult to understand how the majority can equate (1) a woman who is intentionally tricked into leaving her home in a foreign country on the promise of a legitimate job, and then — in the words of the plea agreement — “forced to line up for selection by male customers to accompany them to private ... rooms” and there, “made to provide sexual services,” with (2) a professional prostitute who willingly agrees to travel across state lines for the purpose of prostitution. Both are covered by the Mann Act, but the majority holds that the former is no more a “vulnerable victim” than the latter. This is obviously wrong, and therefore, I respectfully dissent.
The majority derives its conclusion from the premise that “economic hardship” is typical of women victims in Mann Act cases. Even assuming that to be true, the majority completely overlooks the fact that *984this case involves much more than ordinary economic vulnerability.
The victim in this case was tricked into leaving a foreign country on the promise of a legitimate job.
As a direct result of this deception, she was stranded in a foreign country and, as found by the district judge, “couldn’t just pack up and go home.”
Because the victim was an indentured nonresident alien worker under Northern Mariana Islands law, she could not work elsewhere.9
She was forced to participate in the prostitution activity.
In these important respects, this case is unlike any of the cases cited as “typical” by the majority. In United States v. Sabatino, 943 F.2d 94 (1st Cir.1991), the women who worked as prostitutes in the defendant’s escort business did so knowingly and willingly. They were interviewed, hired, and then trained in “effective prostitution techniques”. Id. at 97. True, many of the women were unwed teenage mothers in need of a job, but they were not deceived. They knew the job description.
Likewise, it may be true that “runaway status, homelessness and economic exigency” are typical of some women and girls who turn to prostitution, United States v. Footman, 66 F.Supp.2d 83, 96 (D.Mass.1999), but the victim in the present case did not turn to prostitution because of homelessness or economic exigency. She did not turn to prostitution at all. The victim was lured to Saipan on false pretenses, trapped there, then forced to provide sexual services to the defendant’s customers. It is important to recognize that it was the defendant’s conduct, including her misrepresentations, that created the economic plight in which the victim found herself. None of the cases cited by the majority deals with anything remotely resembling this scenario. This is an entirely different situation.
The legislative history quoted by the majority is interesting but irrelevant. For one thing, the statute was completely rewritten in 1986. The legislative history cited by the majority concerns the original 1910 version. Whatever the intent may have been in 1910 with respect to white slavery, the current statutory language no longer speaks in terms of the transportation of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or with intent and purpose to induce, entice, or compel such woman or girl to become a prostitute or give herself up to debauchery, or to engage in any other immoral practice.” White-Slave Traffic (Mann) Act, ch. 395, 36 Stat. 825 (1910). The statute now broadly prohibits the interstate transportation of any individual (of either sex) with the intent that such individual engage in prostitution or other sexual crime. See 18 U.S.C. § 2421.
The present statutory language covers more than just white slavery cases. It is broad enough to encompass the transportation of professional prostitutes as well as innocent victims. In United States v. Pelton, 578 F.2d 701 (8th Cir.1978), the defendant was convicted of several Mann Act violations for sending three professional call girls from St. Louis to Chicago “to ‘work’ [the] boat show”, and for sending another call girl from St. Louis “to work at Penny’s Cozy Corner, a house of prostitution in Winnemucca, Nevada.” Id. at 705.
My colleagues in the majority would see no legal difference between the “victims” in Pelton and the unfortunate woman in this case who was inveigled to leave her home and come to a foreign country on the *985false promise of a legitimate job. Because I do, I respectfully dissent.

. Nonresident Workers Act, 3 N. Mar. I. Code §§ 4411-4452 (Jan. 1997), (Add.1-33). Under the Act, “the employment of nonresident workers [is] temporary and generally limited to the duration of the specific job or employment for which the alien was recruited.” Id. at § 4411(a), para. 2, (Add.l). Such a worker "shall not be permitted to perform any services or labor within the Commonwealth for any employer other than the employer for whom the [Department of Labor and Immigration] has approved an employment contract with such worker, ...” Id. at § 4437(e), (Add.21-22).