Woman: I offered sexual services to pay my mortgage
Online sex ad draws police stings: Undercover officers snare woman twice
A Hartland woman who advertised her services on the free Web site Craigslist had run-ins twice this month with police after she offered sex to undercover officers for money, authorities said. Hartland police arrested Tonya M. Karimi, 31, on Aug. 13 on suspicion of prostitution. She bailed herself out of jail, and the case was referred to the Waukesha County district attorney. City of Pewaukee police gave her a ticket Aug. 2 that accused her of operating an escort service without a license. In both investigations, she offered sex for payment, authorities said…. Karimi told police she started her prostitution career in April to pay her mortgage, Rosch said. She had been through a divorce in 2006 and feared she would lose her home in the 1300 block of Highway 83. She recently had remarried, but her husband didn’t know about her activities, Rosch said. A child was in the home at the time of Karimi’s arrest, he said.
With the growing and seemingly inexorable contraction of the mortgage lending market in the US, a growing number of Americans are finding themselves saddled with mortgages they can no longer afford. Inevitably, I suppose, one of the unintended consequences of the crisis is that it’s showcasing good old American ingenuity. You and I might never think of turning to prostitution in order to make ends meet, but when it comes to keeping a roof over their head, some folks have become all about marketing their…um…assets.
OK, so technically prostitution is illegal. In this case, though, who’s being harmed? Ms. Karimi is simply using the resources she has available to her in order to keep a roof over her head. It’s not something that you or I might engage in, but at it’s most basic, this is an economic transaction we’re talking about. Ms. Karimi is providing a service for her paying customers. What harm is being perpetrated against society by her actions (and those of her customers)? I’m not about condoing illegal behavior, but I do think there needs to be at least a modicum of common sense applied to this sort of situation. The behavior Ms. Karimi has been engaging in has been around ever since men discovered that women have a certain utility. You don’t have to agree with the exchange of sexual services for money, but how is this fundamentally different from any other services-for-money transaction? Both parties to the transaction benefit, and normally no one is hurt. How is this a bad thing?
Again, this may not be the sort of behavior that you or I would choose to engage in, but what harm is being done to the interests of polite society? Ms. Karimi is simply using what she has available to her in order to make her mortgage payments. In doing so, she’s trying to ensure that one less foreclosure becomes a reality. She’s no on the dole, and she’s trying to take care of her own problems in her own way. Part of me thinks that we really should be applauding this sort of ingenuity…if not contributing to her customer base. Silly me; I always thought that America was the land of opporunity, and that entrpreneurs who were willing to take risks were rewarded.
So we’d really prefer that she go on welfare??
