The phone at the law offices of Kibbey Wagner in Stuart, Florida, was ringing off the hook last week. More than 90 have been arrested in Indian River County, out of warrants issued. Talker: Angry about Jussie Smollett? Here's what you can do. This investigation, the arrests, amount to a hand grenade tossed into the living room of dozens β maybe hundreds β of local homes. Human trafficking is a very big deal, a huge moral stain.
But if this investigation extends to your own front porch, if it impacts our community by taking down people who have been trusted members of it, that's going to be a bigger deal. Kibbey, the attorney, said he's hearing from men who say they might have gone to the spas in questions but never paid for sex. Martin County Sheriff William Snyder rejected that: "We were able to determine with certainty that 9 out of 10 men who went into the parlors where we did the search warrants were there for sex.
There is a "community" of clients, of johns, who frequent businesses like this, who find out about them mostly online and often leave reviews of the "services" provided. Most likely, he said, they were repeat customers. And then you think β how's this happening in comparably sleepy and conservative! The big cities, sure. But this type of vice, in these type of towns? Where there's demand, even in your sleepy little community, there's supply. And it's always been that way, said Snyder, though it's easy to ignore β until something like this explodes all over the front page, then you can't ignore it anymore.
With Kraft's involvement, this story gets even bigger. Apparently, many live and sleep at the spa and are undoubtedly working without pay based on some fictitious debt that they incurred for being smuggled into the United States.
Some were discovered squatting at the back of the spa, cooking on a hot plate. We don't know all of the details yet, but let's be clear.
