Word: pimp
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...particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe. As a following piece, we focused on a particularly terrible aspect of the problem, child prostitution. Our primary exhibit: a set of photographs taken in Moscow by freelance Russian photographer Alexey Ostrovskiy. Distributed first by Agence France-Presse, they purport to show a pimp named Sasha and two 11-year- old boys soliciting tricks near the Bolshoi Theater, an infamous pick-up spot. Some of the pictures, which showed the boys made up as girls, were too explicit to publish. The ones we did publish were awful enough, haunting and unforgettable...
...long after our cover story was published we began hearing ominous charges that they were not, charges emanating in particular from the photo editor of the Reuters bureau there, Richard Ellis. Soon the doubts were published as facts: that the boys were not prostitutes; that Ostrovskiy had paid the pimp and the boys to pose; that TIME had been duped...
Naturally, we had reported on the pictures' background before we published them: five independent sources had confirmed to our Moscow correspondents that Sasha is a pimp, that young boys are part of his "ring," that they work in the Bolshoi Theater area and other places. We could not then speak to the boys, who were said to be out of Moscow. But later the boy Marik (at left in both pictures) confirmed to our Moscow bureau that, yes, he did work with Sasha as a prostitute and, yes, some of his customers liked him to dress up as a girl...
Winston Churchill called Russia "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Certainly it seems so in this case. Why would someone find it in his interest to insist he is a pimp for young boys? Why would Reuters' Ellis -- who claimed to be acting in the interest of journalism -- attempt to induce someone to change his story for money? We may never get to the whole truth of the matter, but we will continue...
...days' walk from Katmandu, Manju was 12 when her mother died. Unable to cope with three children, her father handed her over a few months later to two strangers: she thought she was going to Bombay to work as a housemaid. When the two men sold her to a pimp for $1,000, "there was nothing I could do," she says. "I was trapped." She is never allowed to set foot outside the brothel. Moreover, she is expected to repay her full purchase price. Rent, food and clothing are also deducted from her wages, so that seven years later...