On Tuesday, Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was arrested and will be charged with the sex trafficking of more than a dozen young men. Two associates of Jeffries were also arrested. The arrests came after a lengthy investigation by the FBI.
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Jeffries, his partner Matt Smith and a third man, Jim Jacobson, are accused of operating an international sex trafficking and prostitution business that recruited young men for parties in the U.S. and abroad, according to a 16-count indictment.
The former retail executive and Smith relied on their vast financial resources, Jeffries’ power as the CEO of Abercrombie, and numerous people, including Jacobson and a network of employees, contractors and security professionals, to run a business “that was dedicated to fulfilling their sexual desires and ensuring that their international sex trafficking and prostitution business was kept secret,” the indictment alleges.
Sex trafficking and human trafficking, in general, have been much in the news of late, and it’s understandable; the mess that is our southern border and the abandonment of any pretext of border enforcement by the Harris/Biden administration have largely focused our attention on that quarter. But this is an issue that occurs across the socio-economic spectrum, as this case so clearly illustrates.
Federal prosecutors said the trio allegedly paid dozens of men to travel around the world to engage in sex acts over at least a seven-year period, starting in late 2008. The indictment mentions 15 alleged victims, identified as John Does #1-15. Jeffries allegedly recruited, hired and paid a slate of household staff to “facilitate and supervise the Sex Events.” Prosecutors and the FBI believe there are many more victims and asked them to come forward.
Jacobson allegedly traveled throughout the United States and internationally to recruit and interview men for the so-called sex events, according to prosecutors. During “tryouts” of potential candidates, Jacobson required that the candidates first engage in sex acts with him, prosecutors said.
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The baffling thing about all this is that, on some level, Jeffries and his co-conspirators had to have thought that they were going to get away with it.
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Jeffries had been the subject of civil lawsuits on this same issue.
Jeffries, who was the chairman and CEO of the powerhouse teen fashion brand from 1992 to 2014, has been accused in civil lawsuits of exploiting young men for sex at parties he hosted at his Hamptons estate in New York, London, Venice and elsewhere with his partner, Smith.
One of the plaintiffs, David Bradberry, a former crewman on the reality series “Below Deck,” said Jeffries made Abercrombie successful by the “oversexualization of young men.”
Take another look at that last sentence. It has a familiar ring to it, doesn’t it? The hyper-sexualization of young people isn’t really all that new; it goes back to Roman times, after all. But it seems to be undergoing a sick kind of renaissance today, now, in the United States, and this just seems to be another symptom of this societal illness. There may not be an easy solution for the root causes of this; but as we see in the case of Mike Jeffries, there is a way to deal with the symptoms.
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