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FBI veteran Roger Young ties pornographers to organized crime
Back in the 1970s, Joe "The Whale" Peraino was attacked in a mob hit ordered by his own brother, who thought Joe was taking more than his fair share of the profits from a porn film the Perainos had financed, produced and distributed. The film was the notorious "Deep Throat." The aptly named "Whale," whose weight was believed to be somewhere between 350 and 400 pounds, survived the attack because none of the nine slugs that tore into his enormous body reached a vital organ. Perhaps too much fat, for once, saved a life.
Retired FBI agent Roger Young tells this story to point up the central role played by ruthless organized criminals in the pornography business. He told it again at a conference in Little Rock in November 2004, sponsored by the Burbridge Foundation and American Mothers, Inc.
In his presentation, Mr. Young looked back over his quarter century of FBI service, from 1975 to his retirement in 2001. During that time, he wore the badge his father had worn before him. Homer Young was an FBI agent from 1940 to 1972. Both father and son played leadership roles in the Bureau's obscenity investigations during that span of some 60 years.
Roger Young gave the Little Rock conferees, members of Mothers, Inc., a distillation of what he has learned about pornography and the people who profit from it.
He said:
In the fight against obscenity, we must "seek the Truth and see the total picture."
There is no such thing as "just" a pornography case; other crimes are involved, including money laundering, skimming, bribery, extortion, drug trafficking, prostitution, robbery, arson, murder, sexual assault, rape, sexual exploitation of children, obstruction of justice, mail fraud and conspiracy.
Pornographers seek acceptance and legitimacy despite the criminal nature of their trade.
The American public has been misinformed about what we can do about pornography.
Morality in Media President Robert Peters followed Mr. Young with a presentation on "The role of law in reversing the floodtide of obscenity and indecency."
A videotape of these excellent presentations is available from Morality in Media.
Mr. Young spoke of "some important dates I think you ought to know":
In the early 1960s, organized crime established a west coast base of operations in the San Fernando Valley. My father watched this take place and investigated it. The Colombo organized crime family sent two people out with money to start their west coast operations. It became the very first pornography business that departmentalized and had different corporation names for the different parts of their business - distributing, producing, recruiting participants for the movies, filming, packaging, advertising, all had different corporation names to make law enforcement think it was all owned by different people.
In 1970, we had the Hill-Link report. Father Morton Hill, who started Morality in Media, and Mr. Link did a research project as members of the Presidential Commission on obscenity and pornography and reported to the Congress that pornography was very detrimental to American society and Congress, almost to the person, accepted that report. There was another report, the majority report of the Commission [which Congress rejected], that said that pornography had no effect whatsoever on any individual or society, and that's the report the press mass produced, and you could buy in airports. We'd do search warrants and find it in the porno stores.
In 1971 there was a meeting of the big three in Las Vegas, and this was the first time ever that pornographers organized their efforts and divided up our country. The big three at the time were Milton Luros of Parliament News in Los Angeles, Robert DeBernardo, a made member in the Gambino family from Star Distributors in New York, and from Peachtree Enterprises George Michael Thevis, who is still in federal prison today. Those three men in 1971, with their attorneys and entourages, cut up the United States and established distribution rights, production rights, and recruiting rights - who will do what, and how they will do it, and what defense attorneys would be set up in a national network to defend the pornographers in their areas.
In the mid to late 1970s, child pornography evolved out of adult pornography. When my father investigated pornography, there were no federal or state child pornography or child protection laws. We had to prove that child porn was obscene to make it illegal. When an underage person was involved it usually was double the penalty for the perpetrator. It was only because of citizens like yourselves got together and said, no, this isn't right. This is children. It's totally different, and finally, on February 6, 1978, a federal law was enacted removing the obscenity requirement from child porn, making it totally separate, and making child porn by itself illegal, so you did not have to use the obscenity test anymore. And then the states followed.
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