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US State Department in Crisis: “Endemic” Sexual Assaults, Prostitution by Clinton’s Security Detail, Unnamed Ambassador Implicated (+video)

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Photo Credit: Medill DC

Uncovered documents show the U.S. State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal behavior ranging from sexual assaults to an underground drug ring.

CBS News reports that is has unearthed documents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), an internal watchdog agency, that implicate the State Department in a series of misconducts worldwide.

The memo, reported by CBS News’ John Miller, cited eight specific examples, including allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” with foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”

Former State Department internal investigator Aurelia Fedenisn told CBS News, “We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.”

Often times, other DSS agents were simply told to back off of investigations of high-ranking State Department members. Fedenisn told CBS that “hostile intelligence services” allow criminal behavior to continue.

Read more from this story HERE.

Man, 75, Accused of Running Prostitution Ring in New Jersey Senior Housing Complex (+video)

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Photo Credit: //ZEROA 75-year-old resident of a New Jersey senior citizen housing complex is suspected of running a prostitution ring that employed some elderly residents as sex workers, NBC 4 New York has learned.

The suspect, James Parham, 75, was also accused, along with Cheryl Chaney, 66, of allowing residents and visitors to use crack in their apartments, police said.

Both are charged with possession of drug paraphernalia and maintaining a nuisance, and Chaney is also charged with possession of crack cocaine.

In Parham’s case, the nuisance charge relates to allowing prostitution in his apartment and in Chaney’s case, it relates to allowing drug use in hers.

Englewood Police Chief Arthur O’Keefe told NBC 4 New York on Tuesday that Parham ran the prostitution ring through his apartments, and employed a mix of young women and older residents.

Read more from this story HERE.

DC Sex Workers Prepare for Huge Influx of Inauguration Partiers

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When Steve Baker talks about the inauguration, he gets a little giddy. For the company he works at, Hire Party Strippers, which does exactly what its name suggests for clients in the Washington DC area, inauguration weekend means a big boost in business.

“Oh my God, it’s bananas,” says Baker, describing the interest he’s had so far. Hire Party Strippers does about double the business on inauguration weekend, during which he can boost rates about 25 percent. This means $650 to $700 for “two girl fantasy shows”; $350 for one girl; and $300 for one male stripper, though demand is never as high for men as women. “It’s going to be really, really busy,” Baker says. “We have a lot of people coming [to DC] from out of town, and they want to have adult entertainment in their rooms. It’s crazy.”

Strippers, escorts, dominatrices, and even sugar babies looking for sugar daddies are planning for a jam-packed — and potentially quite lucrative — weekend across the greater DC area. Despite the inauguration party scene shaping up to be much quieter this year than Barack Obama’s first in 2009, it doesn’t sound like anyone is planning to cut back on erotic recreation — from the tourists looking to party in DC that weekend, to the locals craving sex-themed merriment while their city is overwhelmed by outsiders.

Baker doesn’t have a lot of clients on the books yet, but knows he will once the Friday before the inauguration rolls around. “People call me last minute saying, ‘hey hey hey, can you send some girls out?'” Hire Party Stripper will ensure entertainers are on-call in anticipation of this “high volume” weekend.

One escort I talked with via email lamented that she wouldn’t be in DC around the inauguration, but expected most of the business for escorts to come from areas surrounding the city. “My educated guess would be that it gets busy in the OTHER parts of town so clients don’t have to fight the crowds. Like for example, I always schedule work in NYC during the XMas tree lighting at the Rockefeller center, but I go to the SOUTH end of Manhattan because I know the locals or clients won’t want to be anywhere near the Rockefeller Center,” she explained. “If I were to be here inauguration weekend, I bet Arlington will be hopping — or Tysons.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Service director suspected of lying to Congress about prostitution scandal

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An investigation for the agency that oversees the U.S. Secret Service suggests Director Mark Sullivan lied during his congressional testimony in the Colombia prostitution scandal that ensnared 13 of his agents, multiple law enforcement officials and congressional sources tell FoxNews.com.

Investigators with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) have completed their investigative report, which will be referred to the Department of Justice along with a memorandum of activity that lists potential criminal actions. The report indicates Sullivan may have obstructed Congress by lying about the criminal associations of prostitutes involved in the scandal. The report also alleges Sullivan may have manipulated a report requested by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the sources said.

DHS OIG uncovered the evidence — including specific incidents of alleged perjury, making false statements and impeding Congress — during their ongoing probe into the scandal surrounding agents’ misconduct prior to President Obama’s trip to Cartagena, Colombia last April, sources told FoxNews.com. Sources said Sullivan may have violated statute 18 USC § 1505 — obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees — and investigators are now handing the case over to federal prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.

DHS OIG has been in talks with Justice Department prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section for months, and met with them late last week about the potential charges against Sullivan, sources said. The OIG, however, declined to discuss details of its investigation.

“The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General is conducting an ongoing investigation, requested by Congress, of the United States Secret Service regarding its actions during a presidential visit to Cartagena, Colombia, earlier this year,” Charles Edwards, acting inspector general, said in a written statement. “The department and the Secret Service have cooperated with the OIG’s investigation thus far. However, as a matter of policy, the OIG does not discuss its ongoing investigations.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Sex trafficking now an ‘epidemic’ in US

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Six months ago, Barbara Amaya said she was watching a story on television about teenage girls being trafficked for sex in her Northern Virginia neighborhood when she realized that she, too, had been the victim of sex trafficking — four decades earlier.

“I didn’t know I had been trafficked,” she told an audience during a panel discussion on human trafficking sponsored by the Universal Peace Federation and the Women’s Federation for World Peace at The Washington Times. “I viewed myself as a prostitute.”

Ms. Amaya, now 56, said she was a 13-year-old runaway from Fairfax when she was sold into sex trafficking at 14th and Eye Streets in the District and later was taken to New York City where she was trafficked for eight years. Like a lot of girls forced into sex trafficking, she said she had been abused as a child and at 12, began running away from home.

“I was a walking target,” she said. “I didn’t have low self-esteem, I had no self- esteem.

“I was raped so many times, I can’t remember. I became addicted to heroin and numb to what happened to me,” she said, adding that her trafficker dumped her when she was “no longer valuable to him.”

Read more from this story HERE.

United Nation’s Commission wants to legalize prostitution, IV drug use worldwide

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A report issued by the United Nations-backed Global Commission on HIV and the Law recommends that nations around the world get rid of “punitive” laws against prostitution – or what it calls “consensual sex work” — and decriminalize the voluntary use of illegal injection drugs in order to combat the HIV epidemic.

The commission, which is made up of 15 former heads of state, legal scholars and HIV/AIDS activists, was convened in 2010 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and is jointly backed by the United Nations Development Programme and UNAIDS – the Joint U.N. Programme on AIDS/HIV.

The commission recommends repealing all laws that prohibit “adult consensual sex work,” as well as clearly distinguishing in law and practice between sexual trafficking and prostitution.

The report–“HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Health”–cites a recommendation by the International Labour Organization, which recommends that “sex work” should be recognized as an occupation in order to be regulated “in a way that protects workers and customers.”

Specifically, the commission wants to: “Decriminalise private and consensual adult sexual behaviours, including same-sex sexual acts and voluntary sex work.”

For other actions that the UN commission wants to take, please read more from this story HERE.