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.

But child porn grew right out of adult pornography. It was all one and the same. The worst years in our country were '73, '74, '75 and '76, when you could go in just about any porno store and buy kids depicted on lamp shades engaged in sex acts, on the back of playing cards, and in movies, with each other, with adults, with animals, whatever. It was just all part and parcel of the total pornography industry.

In 1977, the FBI launched a major case called MIPORN. Two FBI agents went undercover and established a business called Gold Coast Specialties and foreign bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, and set up a warehouse in Miami and then went across the country and into Hawaii, meeting with major pornographers and purchasing what they believed to be obscene material. They had it all shipped to their warehouse in Miami. All the cases involved the organized crime strike force in Miami. On Valentine's Day 1980 we did simultaneous search warrants at 54 locations across the country.

In 1986, the Final Report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (The "Meese Commission") was followed by a book titled "How the Meese Commission Lied." It was total propaganda, untruth put out by the pornographers and their attorneys, and it sold in bookstores and airports and everywhere. Not only that, but members of the Meese Commission were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union with money from the pornographers. I can remember donating to Dr. James Dobson's legal defense fund because he had no money to fight the suit. After all kinds of expenses had been incurred by Dr. Dobson and others, the ACLU dropped the suit.

In 1987, the FBI began a case called Blue Darcy to go after the wealthiest, most prolific producer and distributor of pornography in history, Reuben Sturman of Cleveland, Ohio. Sturman wound up serving time for tax related felonies, obscenity and racketeering in Federal prison in Kentucky, where he died in 1997.

In 1989, the FBI initiated a case called Woodworm, targeting all major producers and distributors of pornography in the San Fernando Valley.

In 1995, Congress authorized $10 million a year for Internet crimes against children, based on the FBI's "Innocent Images" investigations.


Mr. Young noted that President Reagan met with leaders of all major religious faiths in 1983, and that "it's time for such a meeting to occur again with President Bush."

The Reagan meeting, he said, was attended by the directors of the FBI, the Postal Inspection Service and Customs, along with the religious leaders, and that this meeting led to the enactment of a law that "placed interstate transportation of obscene matter under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute - RICO."

[Editor's Note: In 1984, Morality in Media general counsel Paul J. McGeady recommended to Congress that legislation be introduced to make federal obscenity violations "predicate crimes" under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law. Enacted that year, the RICO-obscenity law allows the Government to confiscate the assets of convicted pornographers. The Supreme Court upheld the law, and many states have added obscenity offenses to their RICO laws.]

We could treat pornography cases like drug cases," Mr. Young said. "We could seize all the assets of the business, the property, the building, the cars, the boats, the airplanes - everything, just like a drug case. When my father did these cases, the only thing he could touch was the owner, or the clerk, or the person carrying the material in interstate traffic. He could put the owner in jail, but he couldn't touch the business, and the owner could still run the business from prison. Do you think the pornographers and the American Civil Liberties Union screamed to the high heavens when this law was signed? Absolutely. They put out a barrage of negative publicity and tried to get Congressmen to reverse this law. But it's still strong today."

Mr. Young had this advice for anyone selected for jury duty in an obscenity case:

Try to use common sense. In one of the MIPORN cases in Miami, a film showed foreign objects being inserted into a body cavity of a woman. Defense attorneys argued that this had scientific value because it showed elasticity of female muscles of this particular body cavity. The prosecutor, a woman who happened to be seven months pregnant at the time, asked the ladies of the jury, 'How many of you have had babies? How many of you needed to see a film like this to learn about your elasticity?' The defendant was convicted.
The defense doesn't want you to use common sense. The defense doesn't want the word pornography to be used in court. They want to say "adult material" or "sexually oriented material." They want to confuse you. They want to create doubt.


Mr. Young noted there has been an explosion of pornography and sexually oriented businesses. He said 86% to 88% of porn comes from the San Fernando Valley of California, just outside Los Angeles; 40 to 50 porn producers there distribute two movie releases per week for sale through the Internet and porn video shops.

"Why the explosion of porn?" he asked, and answered: "Court decisions in the 1960s supporting freedom of 'expression' and 'adult' entertainment. We will have porn until we bring it to the attention of investigators and prosecutors and complain."

FBI Agent Roger Young is now an adjunct professor in the Criminal Justice Department of the University of Nevada. He teaches an upper division course on "How to Investigate Obscenity, Prostitution and the Sexual Exploitation of Children."

Mr. Young notes, "I investigated pornography for 23 and a half years and today the worst stuff I've ever seen in my life is on the Internet."

He and another veteran obscenity fighter, former Indianapolis Police Detective Lieutenant Tom Rodgers, are consultants to Morality in Media and its website, www.obscenitycrimes.org, which was launched in June 2002. This website provides citizens with a means to report what they believe may be obscene material on the Internet. MIM forwards reports to the U.S. Justice Department in Washington and to each U.S. Attorney where a report originated. In the first three and a half years of its operation (June 2002 through December 2005), www.obscenitycrimes.org processed more than 50,000 such reports from citizens in all 50 states.

Andrew Oosterbaan, Chief of the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), has said reports from Morality in Media's web site and two other sources - the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - "have served as the basis for a useful and comprehensive criminal intelligence database and numerous obscenity investigations... "

i better put out a hit on this guy with my mobster connects.

Hey shaddap youz!

If you cant stand the heat, get out of the business. Adult/porn is not the place to go for good mainstream reviews or recognition

Interesting reading, thanks for sharing.

That was a really good read Jay thanks - Just bought miporn.com

there is no shady characters in this business..we are all internet geeks :)

"In one of the MIPORN cases in Miami, a film showed foreign objects being inserted into a body cavity of a woman. Defense attorneys argued that this had scientific value because it showed elasticity of female muscles of this particular body cavity."

hahhahah Kudos to the laywer who thought that defense up. :)