Washington Witch Hanging
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St. Deborah Jeane
Ding dong, the DC Madam is dead
Hanged from the rafters of her mother’s shed.
Hide under yer covers, Ye Dicks and Ye Johns!
Ye Senators and Prosecutors, Ye Media Cons!
There’s blood on yer hands, though you pretend to be clean,
Ye’ll always be haunted by the Ghost of Deborah Jeane…
The D.C. Madam wasn’t sentenced to death by hanging, but she might as well have been.
On May 1, 2008, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a.k.a. “Miz Julia,” a.k.a. The D.C. Madam, appears to have hung herself in the tiny shed next to her mother’s trailer in Florida. Of course, foul play is well within the realm of possibility. All of the Johns and Dicks she serviced, including apparently, U.S. V.P. Cheney, covered their guilty dickheads and looked the other way, as police, prosecutors and judges vilified, harassed and condemned her, turning her into a “red meat” sacrifice for the sadistic entertainment of the Religious Right in the Coliseum of the American Media. These Dicks, Johns and Political Buttheads, including at least a couple of war criminals, certainly were capable of having such an inconvenient woman killed, even if they didn’t actually pull the noose, as Geraldo Rivera and others are suggesting, in this case.
Seems high-profile hangings are all the rage. Saddam last January, Madam in May.
Hounded to Death
She was hanged, like the Witches of Salem were hanged. Some of those witches may have been hookers, or just lustful women who “tempted” the eyes of men away from God, proof of their hypocrisy. Her elderly mother found her corpse on the First of May, Beltane Day, one of the four High Sabbaths of the traditional witch’s calendar.
Most of the evidence points to suicide, including handwritten farewell notes and the word of confidants, like Dan Moldea, who claim she often said she’d rather die than go to prison, not to mention the difficulty (though not impossibility) of pulling off a quiet murder like that in a trailer park. So there will be no further police investigations into the life and death of the D.C. Madam or her famous and infamous clients. Case closed.
Whew! You can hear the sighs of relief echoing through the Beltway Halls of Power and Sanctimony, and in the joyless bedrooms of the Potomac, as the guilty cringe under their covers with their families and their homilies and their attorneys.
Woo-Woo! You can also hear another sound, the haunting moans of the Ghost of Deborah Jeane, spectral white with death black hair and a blood red mouth, holding up her Little Black Book like a Bible, condemning all her condemners as accomplices to her execution.
U.S. Senator David Vitter, R-La., and wife Wendy (who looks like she just saw the Ghost of Deborah Jeane)
First, there were her Johns and rumored Johns: Harlan “Mr. Shock and Awe” Ullman, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Randall “Pizza Lover” Tobias, Louisiana Senator David “The Serious Sinner” Vitter and Dick “The Prick” Cheney, among others, whose names we may never know, but who know who they are.
May your silence in the face of her suffering for your sins shame you for the rest of your lives.
Dick was one of her johns
Then there were her prosecutors, led by the Good Christian Witch Hunters, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel Butler and Catherine Connelly. Following in the footsteps of Ken Starr and Tomás de Torquemada, they fingered and bullied Palfrey’s former escorts into testifying against her, forcing them to expose their most private moments, making them answer questions like “what if you were menstruating?” Butler and Connelly succeeded in ruining at least a couple of women’s careers in the process, including a U.S. Navy officer, but never touching the Senator or Veep whose numbers were found so conspicuously on the D.C. Madam’s list.
No doubt Butler and Connelly had an “easy” target in Palfrey who seems to have naively assumed that if she never spelled out “SEX” when she arranged for her clients to meet with her “subcontractors” (even having the ladies sign contracts saying they weren’t having sex with her clients), that she wasn’t breaking any laws.
They couldn’t get her on prostitution, or even tax evasion (apparently, Madam or not, this good citizen paid her taxes!). So Butler and Connelly got a jury to convict her of “racketeering” and money laundering, forcing her to face up to 55 years in prison (though presumably she would “only” have to serve about 71 months). They did this despite or maybe because of the sickening sexism of Counselor Butler’s closing arguments, “When a man agrees to pay $250 for 90 minutes with a woman, what do most men expect in that time? In that context, it’s pretty clear. Most men want sex.”
Oh, aren’t you clever, Mr. Butler? You too, Ms. Connelly! You wasted the tax payers’ money on a small-time broker of the exchange of cash for pleasure between consenting adults, and you managed to drive your victim to her death! Take pride in your cleverness as the image of her dead body hanging from the rafters swings through your conscience for the rest of your life. Your only salvation is resignation.
But of course, these assistant witch hunters won’t resign. They’ll get promoted, the D.C. Madam’s innocent corpse just another rung to step on as they climb the ladder to success.
She had been in prison before
Though I blogged a few words in her defense, I feel badly that I didn’t do more for her. In the much publicized lead-up to her trial, I wrote satirically about “Hookergate” and the hypocrisy of her two-faced Tartuffian johns. Her trial went unusually quickly, then suddenly she was convicted, and then, the news of her awful death, hanging from a nylon rope in her mother’s storage shed with suicide notes in her bedroom. I couldn’t help but break down in tears when I eulogized her on RadioSuzy1.
I believe that killing yourself is almost always the wrong way out, and I do not mean to glorify her suicide (if that is indeed what it was). But there is no doubt that Deborah Jeane Palfrey paid the ultimate price. If she did indeed take her own life on the public stage just shortly after her conviction, she put a curse upon her enemies. As she placed her head in the noose, she placed a Beltane witch’s hex, upon all the ruthless and hypocritical dicks and johns, cops and cowards, prosecutors and persecutors who drove her to the noose. She sacrificed herself. Perhaps she did it to escape the horrors of prison (which she knew all too well). But she also did it, I think, to make a point, to turn what most of us in the media – both the mainstream and the blogosphere – had treated as a bit of a farce into a real-life human tragedy.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, Age 2
Whether she killed herself or was murdered, she died as a martyr. Her sacrifice is just as powerful as that of a revolutionary who dies defending her cause. Unlike the Catholic Church which takes 100 years to recognize a saint, we here at the Dr. Susan Block Institute and Bonobo Way are ready to canonize her now as Saint Deborah Jeane, patron saint of sex workers and persecuted businesswomen.
R.I.P. Saint Deborah Jeane. May your persecutors be forever haunted by your face, hanging from the noose.
Green Porno
And now a nature sex film so cool I wish I’d made it: Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno
BONOBOWAY.COM tops 100! Pop the Champagne – Amrita or Cristal!
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03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:55 pm
What a patchwork quilt piece of an article. How can you get parts of it so right and still manage to screw up the final product by tying it up with the wrong conclusion? The right parts: DJP was persecuted by overzealous prosecutors when they should have been going after serious criminals who actually hurt people. The questions they asked were titillating and degrading for no good reason. They didn’t care who they hurt to put away such a “menace to society”. What the hell difference do the political leanings of a few clients have to do with things? Trust me, there were members of both parties on DJP’s client list. I’m neither REP nor DEM and in this case it doesn’t matter. So a few REPs weren’t called to testify (what difference would it make?). The DEMs (and most the REPs) weren’t even mentioned. One of the few right things in this kangaroo court. If it was up to the zealot prosecutors they would have named all the escorts they could find, even those that weren’t witnesses. Sick. None of the clients or escorts should have been named. Hell, no one should have been, including DJP. “But of course, these assistant witch hunters won’t resign. They’ll get promoted.” Unfortunately True and Maybe. Agree with you there. Then you ruin it all with this crap about “Saint Deborah Jeane”. Yes, she was persecuted. Yes, she should not have been tried because what they went after her for shouldn’t be a crime at all. But this was a mean, nasty, self centered person. Don’t you find it strange that none of the women had any guilt feelings about testifying? Most women who worked for her despised her. I’d bet not a single one of them shed tears during the trial though I know some were sad she died. She screwed over most the women who worked for her. She treated many like dirt and was vengeful at the smallest slight either real or imagined. She ruined women’s reputations out of vengeance and cost them their jobs by outing them to employers for no reason other than they decided to stop escorting for her. She spread lies about them to police and IRS; try “proving” to the IRS that your boss was lying when she said you made $1M in cash in one year as one of her escorts. None of these are capital offenses and she should not have died but to claim she was a righteous martyr is also a travesty of reality. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:55 pm
I drove & dispatched escorts for some time and have a significant other who was a dominatrix & hooker, along w/ other friends and just today it hit me that The DC Madame is dead and Vitters is opining away as if nothing happened. No wonder “Reverend Wright” is spewing venom about this country – the hypocrisy is maddening. I have no idea what your organization exactly is, but the comment re: The Madame indicates I’d probably want to be a member of it. Later, Dave “D Og” Swan
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:55 pm
Your blog on the DC Madam is brilliant and beautifully written, not to mention honest. It’s funny, how many of your readers, judging by their comments, are absolutely certain that she was either murdered or committed suicide. But really, how do they know? None of them have convincing proof, just a lot of theories that don’t quite add up to a solution to the mystery, yet some are sooo sure of their position, either way. You have managed to do a balanced piece that still conveys the emotional outrage we all feel, and most importantly, honors the memory of Deborah Jeane. Thank you. RIP DJP
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:54 pm
I could never imagine that in a so-called civilised world such murders can happen! We must express more support for those of our kind. We must help each other, not just make fun of those killer baboons. Hope her death was not in vain; this must be a wake-up call for all those who love life, and freedom. I have a horrific feeling of deja-vu, since one of the women that initiated me in the art of having sex died in the hands of such a psycho: she was a part-time prostitute, not for cash (she had plenty of it) but just for the fun and joy of spreading love. We must help each-other, before it’s too late! We must live or lifes gloriously, in honour of their memory!
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:53 pm
This is for Michael Down Under,I don’t know if she was murdered. I do know that if she was tasered she would wake up the whole trailer park with screams of pain, rolling around the ground kicking and screaming. I also know this: in most American trailer parks, one side of the trailer is six feet from the next trailer and the other side is about 15 feet from the next one, and the trailers across the road are about twenty feet, if that. This makes for a Keystone Cops scenario as all the neighbors open fire on the team of strangers in the trailer park; many citizens of Florida are armed and dangerous! Then the SWAT team would arrive and fire off a thousand rounds and kill a few agents, people in the trailers and the whole place would go up in flames. A true American tragedy.I know you are down under and probably drinking a lot of that good Australian wine, but really there are better ways. Why not make her disappear and then kill her, after all some might think she skipped out on the trial. Was she murdered? It’s possible. Does anyone know the answer yet? No. Murder theories make for good radio and television, a less hysterical position with more facts might lead to the truth. Dr. Block was very balanced and certainly on her side.Cheers mate,Devon
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:53 pm
Susan, i remember reading (heard him also speak on Alex Jones) that her apartment block manager said that the handwriting on those suicide notes did not match the notes she had sent him over time. No, she wasn’t driven to it, though i take your point under consideration about her being in a well trafficked area and wonder just how she would have been nabbed unobserved. It may be that the rear of where her mother lived was fenced in sufficiently for the perps to need to let themselves in, having determined days beforehand how to do so silently, and knowing, by phone tapping, when she would be coming over to her mother’s. To avoid screams and struggle she may well have been tasered and then carried to the storageshed and assisted in her suicide. But how to ? Consider, a tiny electronic eye having been placed beforehand at the rear of the unit for when she came out to sit down and rest, read a little, and then put down the reading matter, doze a little, a sure signal for the perps to slither in silently and unobtrusively taser her as she is dozing ? Imagine being tasered while asleep !!! Her mother is plausibly having a sleep inside – as she herself has said. Customary ? Off course, as these reptiles are leaving they don’t forget to demount the electronic eye. Actually Susan, who better than a feminist to provide cover for the obvious assisted suicide of the DC Madam by choosing to focus on the heartlessness and vindictiveness of those persecutors and assorted high level customers who made life more miserable for her than could be borne, leaving the reader with the lingering impression that she may indeed have taken her own life ? Anyway, congrats on a fine diversionary piece, working on the doubt angle. Why not rehabilitate yourself with a follow up piece on being tasered while asleep, as may well have happened to DJP ?
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:53 pm
Brilliant and moving eulogy for an innocent businesswoman. Thank you, Dr. Suzy.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:52 pm
Doubtless, Deborah Jeane was murdered, but you really ought to interview Alex Jones, who is informed and was one the last radio talk show host to speak with her. If Cheney were not on her ‘client’ list, would she still be alive??
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:52 pm
I’m (hopefully!) a reasonably healthy and intelligent male. I’m an ex-Brit now living in Canada. I lived for a few years in the centre of the ‘red light’ district of Sheffield and knew many ‘sex workers’ personally, but not professionally.I could never understand the whole prostitution thing, but all of the ‘workers’ I knew were basically decent people with, what to me, was a strange job, and I valued their friendships and enjoyed their companionship over many a beer.Here’s where I have problems with the issue. It always seems that there is someone ready to exploit people in this line of business. I find it hard to be sympathetic with anyone who exploits other people’s vulnerabilities for their own ends.Something to think about?
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:51 pm
Dr. Block: as ever an excellent article barbed with humor that pricks the usual dicks and suspects. One point, however, Bealtaine may be a Sabbath of “traditional witches,” whatever they are, but as a word dates back in its literate form to the 5th century and orally to the Iron Age. It is the Irish language name for “the Irish May Festival, as well as the Modern Irish word for the month of May. “Her elderly mother found her corpse on the First of May, Beltane Day, one of the four High Sabbaths of the traditional witch’s calendar.” Belatiane is also a day that is associated with ancient Irish Druidic and pre-Christian rituals. To this day, the phrase” idir dá teine Lae Bealtaine: (pron. ijir chineh lay baltaane) both means “in a dilemma” and comes from the old practice of driving cattle between two fires ( dá teine) to purify them and keep them free of disease, bad spirits, etc. Many of these practices were allowed under early Celtic Christianity, but purged by the English Puritan and Williamite conquerors, and the rigid Catholic hierarchy that replaced the old Celtic Church. I might point out that no witches were burnt in Ireland during the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries when the practice swept Europe and the British puritan colonies. The whole country was burnt at the stake, in a sense. The Irish language, religion (old Celtic Catholic), and spiritual practices were associated with so-called witchcraft, when in fact they were ancient women’s healing and religious rites. Anyway, good article. many so-called modern witches have expropriated real Celtic and Irish rituals, words, feast days etc. and taken for their own, deracinating them from their ancestral roots. What else is new? Anglo- white people have been stealing from the colonized for centuries. Again fine article. Slan, Dan Cassidy
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:50 pm
Dear Dr. Susan, I cannot tell you the sorrow I have for this person that I have known only from news and internet articles. From all I know I could tell that Deborah Palfrey was an intelligent, charming person who was also a very upright, very principled human. She sought perfection in all she did. She was a person, any intelligent person, would love to have as a neighbor. Yet she was destroyed. What shocks me is that you could get a collection of “peers” to convict her. What shocks me that only a handful of people came to defend her.What shocks me the most is that they –judges, jury, snoops,… — destroyed a woman in this way. Mafia would not do such a thing. All she did was standing her grounds. Perhaps she knew something, but that would not affect the gears in the system (again judges, jury, etc.) A man who is upright and principled knows the price. Dr. King knew that he would not retire of old age. He was assassinated, yet I am proud of him. I am not sad. If I was in his place knowing the price, I would not back up. I am a man. Witch hunts in the dark ages were different. The witch trial consisted mostly in the search of the Devil’s Sign which according the the Witch Hammer (a trial manual) was any birth-mark, a dark spot on skin.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:50 pm
myspace, facebook, the senate. these are all corrupted marketing schemes.bonoboway is more…authentic. raw. real. made of an energy that can’t be bought or sold. viva la revolution.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:49 pm
great blog, demonstrating yet another reason why we are regarded as kooks by much of the world.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:49 pm
Good on you, Dr. Susan! Just wanted to say I enjoyed your article on Jeane Palfrey. Really tragic. I felt her pain when Susie Bright interviewed her this past year.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:49 pm
Dear Dr. Block,I enjoyed your piece on Jeane.Best,Bill KeislingTo read our tribute to Jeane Palfrey paste this link into your browser: http://www.yardbird.com/reform_usa_Farewell_Deborah_Jeane_Palfrey.htm
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:48 pm
My dear Suzy, I love your elegance and eccentricity intertwined into one… What style, baby! what finesse… Oooohhh la la.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:48 pm
Great poem and article Susan…
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:47 pm
I think the witch analogy is a good one….But while I am sympathetic to the plight of sex workers, I am also sympathetic to many principled lawyers who try to help the poor and the powerless struggle against the power of the state and those who control it, I do not feel much sympathy for those who choose to represent, and otherwise make arrangements for, the rich and powerful, ’cause that’s where the money (and power) is….
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:47 pm
I’ve appreciated your articles since I found them on Counterpunch but have not yet made it to LA to see your operation.Regarding Ms Palfrey, I was shocked by her death. I had hoped from the beginning that her “black book” would bring ruination to a bunch of scumbags but I guess I was naive to think that men had the balls to face up to the truth that prostitution or escort service would not exist without us horndogs. In other crimes there are co-conspirators, aiders and abetters, accessories and what-not, but in sex cases it’s only the woman, that “devil woman”, who is the cause, perpetrator, and just over-all nasty person. I just can’t believe that with all the other deplorable activities attributed to him and having his name in that poor woman’s book, that Dick Cheney is still walking around free as if he’s human.Personally, I’m all for paid sex, escort services and anything else that allows a woman who couldn’t care less about me pretend that she does, and to even have sex with me, although I haven’t partaken in a really long time. Let’s face it, why should a good looking young woman have sex with some schmuck just because he wants her to? Obviously we should pay for that gracious service instead of the traditional and repulsive method of forcing ourselves on her.As for that asshole prosecutor who thinks no one would pay $250 for 90 minutes with a woman unless he expected sex, I have news for you jocko, I’ll pay that and more for a normal date with a pretty woman and if she wants to have sex afterward, that’s fine, if not then I’m off to bed. The same logic applies: why would a pretty young woman want to be seen with an invariably fatso type in public without getting paid for it? Where do these bastards get the idea that they’re such a great catch that any woman would be happy to be seen with them.It is disgustingly amazing that the scum and hypocrites don’t get what they deserve but I guess one can’t expect too much from a sex- phobic society that wants it, gets it, is afraid to talk about it, and in return punishes anyone who gives it to them, although the punishment often takes the form of marriage.For real punishment however, I would transport the do-gooders, bonafide hypocrites, and general scum to Holland or Denmark and force them to watch unfettered sex-worker operations in action and not be able to scream for the police of some two-bit prosecutor to “do something”.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:47 pm
Hello Dr. Block: According to her condo manager, she had made arrangements for her condo fees to be paid for the next 6 years. That doesn’t sound like the type of arrangement a suicidal person would make. Secondly, she told Alex Jones on his radio show 2 weeks prior to the event that she would never commit suicide. Thirdly, if she did, do you seriously think she would go to her elderly mother’s house and leave her to find her daughter? Does that sound plausible to you? Either way, she’s another casualty of 9/11 and it’s aftermath. Read Wayne Madsen, he firmly believes she was murdered and he was just put through hell at Reagan Int. Airport on Sunday for his views on this. Keep up the great writing.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:46 pm
Thanks for a very good article. In a recorded interview I did with Jeane last June, we already made the analogy of the witch-hunts, comparing her plight and that of other madams like Jody Williams (the high-tech madam), we both got it then. That’s because it’s accurate. Maybe you’re familiar with my writing, I wrote on and for Jeane from April-May of last year until recently, though I stopped when I became a member of her defense team. Jeane approached me in all of this, not the reverse, I never sought her out as all of the opportunists you’re going to be hearing from soon did. Names like Wayne Madsen, Larry Flynt, Sam Deskin (an LA attorney) come-to-mind, and there are so many others. But Jeane encouraged the media firestorm surrounding her, and the literary agent mentality–she revelled in the attention, the fame, and the perks that it brought her, briefly. She was no saint, but the many of the privileged men who used Pamela Martin & Associates were most certainly demons in a patriarchal system runk amok. Here’s something that I take issue with: “I believe that killing yourself is almost always the wrong way out, and I do not mean to glorify her suicide (if that is indeed what it was).” You use this aside that she might have been murdered–this is wrong, and it contradicts some of the previous sections of your piece: she was stoned-to-death by the legal system. You should have stuck to that, the asides don’t do any good, and I can assure you that she committed suicide. On February 28th of this year, she forwarded this e-mail to myself and the rest of the defense team (I did general research, not legal): Jason… let’s put it like this, the bastards aren’t going to take me alive. Of course, anytime that you want to do an interview – I will make myself available. However, I doubt that I will be doing any interviews once I am in D.C., for the trial. –Best, JeaneMatt Janovic @ http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:46 pm
Hear, hear! A shocking but unsurprising tragedy. May the spectre of Saint Deborah Jeane haunt those bastard hypocrites for eternity…
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:45 pm
I believe there’s a good chance she was murdered. She wouldn’t have gotten that many years in prison, certainly not the 55 years or so the media kept talking about. I highly doubt she would have received that many years. She obviously had information on the many “johns” that used her service. Somebody didn’t want their name leaked out there. Maybe it was a Senator, a Congressman, or even a Supreme Court Justice. Somebody didn’t want her to talk. Perhaps, someday the names in her black book will be exposed. Where is her list of clients anyway? Are they keeping it in a vault somewhere? Somebody needs to get a copy of it to Howard Stern.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:45 pm
Your compassion is only surpassed by your clarity of purpose.Add McCain and Giuliani to the list along with dozens of CIA higher-ups. It was murder.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:44 pm
I would love to join the bonobo society. I really believe that their example is the salvation of mankind. Being both hetero and homo, they are our closest relatives, so there must be a similar gene pool in homo sapiens. Population growth is the scourge of mankind. We are going to populate ourselves to death of all species if we do not stop reproducing, all at the expense of all other living creatures on earth. The bonobos have the answer. So I say, more power to the bonobos, but is anyone listening? M McCann MD
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:44 pm
In the state of Victoria, Australia, where I live, prostitution was legalised long ago. The U.S. has some catching up to do – the religious right has too much influence
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:44 pm
Thanks for blogging. I really have nothing to add. At this point anything I say will be either preaching to the choir or falling on deaf ears. It is a sad state of affairs to say the least. Thanks again for this fantastic eulogy.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:43 pm
Thank you! DJ’s death has not made big headline in the DC area… shameful that ‘we’ just sweep shit under the carpet….
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:43 pm
Thank you for the eulogy for Jeanne. I felt for a while like her mother and I were the only ones who cried not only for Jeanne – but for the martyr she’s now become for trying to take a stand in this issue. I was friends with Jeanne – a fact I couldn’t reveal during her lifetime as we originally met as I did an outreach to her through Sex Workers Anonymous. I was once in her shoes over a high profile arrest much like hers once in the 1980’s. I feel the only reason I escaped being killed by cops who were upset I had videotape of their illegal acts (at the time LAPD had not been exposed for such things yet), was because I took the plea bargain, refused to talk to the media, refused to release the tapes, and went and hid out at my grandmother’s house until I got fat enough to not be recognized on the street anymore by the cops who would sit for days in front of her house waiting for me to come out. When the couldn’t get anything on me – they arrested my mother to force me into a plea of guilty and to ensure I didn’t just skip the country. A fact I’ve seen them repeat with many others like Heidi for example. For this reason – I was deeply worried about Jeanne and also cautioned her I felt she should shut up, take the plea, and to save herself lay low like I did. She refused saying she wanted to make a point about what was going on with our government and escort services – and that this was not about prostitution. She also felt Brandy Britton’s death was not a suicide. She knew she was risking serious federal time and even death by taking the stance she did – and well in fact she did pay the ultimate price. She was braver than I was – and I’m deeply griefed at her death. I talked to her mom after the news – and her mom knew who I was. Which meant Jeanne had talked to her about my concerns – and even my offers to “hide her out” if necessary out of fear these men would kill her to shut her up because scaring her into shutting up wasn’t working as it did with me. Her mother is 76 and lives alone. The mother is doing what I know my mother would have done in the same position – agree it’s suicide to get whoever came after Jeanne to not come after her. There are still her complete phone records out there that Jeanne told me she was saving the “real shocker” for if she was found guilty – which she was going to release before her sentencing. Her mother does not have that list – Jeanne wasn’t stupid. Not in that way anyway. Whoever killed Jeanne is sending a message to others – talk and die. I’ve already had the police come and search my home for four hours last week trying to find something to arrest me on and discredit me I’m sure. I don’t do anything illegal anymore so they can’t find excuses like that – and when that didn’t work – they tried to get CPS to come and take my kid away from me. At least CPS had even sense to laugh and refuse to participate and make a mockery out of the system that deals with real child abuse. When that didn’t work – they tried to get my landlord to kick me out. At least he had some sense – and he came to see I hadn’t “trashed” the place as they had told him I had and told me I could stay. I didn’t know what to say when he asked me why they called him and said I had. Doesn’t anyone wonder why it was the FBI who released the information on Spitzer? Doesn’t anyone wonder if Jeanne was really just selling sex for money – why on earth was she being charged with things such as racketeering? Anyway – thank you Dr. Block for the eulogy. I’m upset I wasn’t able to fly to Florida to be at her funeral. Funny how the police investigating Jeanne’s case can call it sucide without having seen any of the emails between us, talked to me who knew her well for two years – but they have four hours to come out and try to arrest me on something. If anyone wants to reach me – I’m at sexworkrecovery@yahoo.com
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:43 pm
Well done!Consciousness raising! rock on…~mar
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:42 pm
I always liked Ms. Deborah Jeane Palfrey–a beautiful, gentle, classy, rational lady who was also gutsy, honest, moral and very much in favor of continuing her life and fight for Justice; her recent interviews on radio-shows like George Noory and Alex Jones convinced me that she was probably murdered by any of the hypocritical, misogynistic, statist Beltway-scum that she had the misfortune of crossing paths with. Thank you for keeping her in our memory–a thoughtful, brave businesswoman (and role-model) who deserves more than just being dismissed as some flaky criminal who merely threw it all away on mindless whim.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:42 pm
You are absolutely correct — whether suicide or foul play — the culpability lies with sadistic and evil bastards who have caused this. It saddens and angers me on many levels. Yet another example of atrocity due to malecentric values that still dominate all societies — the idea that a woman must conform to certain roles specified by this malecentric society. Practically all the religions, education, the media, and society condition these values into people. It might be the genital mutilation as practiced in Sudan or Egypt (recently outlawed — but still widespread — and over 90% of women there have been savaged in this way for their imposed role). It might be being punished for the ‘sin’ of being raped in Saudi Arabia. It might be having to ask the husband’s permission to do certain things in western religions. It certainly affects every single woman on the planet — like some kind of global gender apartheid.I was also going to raise the same point that Redlight Razorgirl has raised — but one I have also previously raised elsewhere. In what way is selling your labour or skill any different? Maybe that those who do so often do so for their entire lives for a pittance in what is only evolved slavery. Maybe it is because — except in the cases where sex work is hijacked or forced by a pimp — that the person choosing to sell this different commodity is doing so for themselves. Maybe because it is not making the tiny minority in power rich off someone else’s labour. Maybe it is because those that work in an office, in a shop, down a mine, etc can not face up to the fact that they are actually working for the pimp — and that they are not just selling their labour — but their entire lives in exchange for a mountain of barely controlled debt and a few ‘luxuries’?The hypocrisy of attitudes to sex workers makes me sick. And this same hypocrisy is at the root of the dangers of attack that sex workers can face. The attitude towards the sex worker as doing something debased nauseates me. And not only by men — but sometimes by other women — who might say — how can anyone do such a thing? Would it not seem likely that some of these women sometimes have sex with their partners when not really wanting to because they don’t want to hurt their partner’s feelings? Would not some of these women who criticise sex workers have married a man purely because of the rich lifestyle he can offer? I have said elsewhere that all religions have evolved from primitive man’s fear of the sun, and storms, but also women. Perhaps for those that find sex work to be a morally bad thing — it may be because the idea of a woman being in charge of what she will and will not do, is to them, the most unacceptable thing
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:42 pm
Dr. Block,First off let me just start off by saying that you are an incredibly intelligent woman…the fact that you are extremely sexual, just puts you over the top. It is so wonderful to see a highly educated individual, that is fairly mainstream, be so open about sex and her sexuality. I truely believe that if more people where scared of sex but embraced it, the world would truly be a safer place. Now as for those dicks in d.c. i dont know if i want those people to procreate, it is truely sad what happened to the DC Madam. In this great country where free enterprise is encouraged, she found a good/service and sold it to the highest of powered people. And since they are holier than thou..perhaps unholier, they cannot have sex or express themselves openly. But yet they can be seen on camara doing drugs or drinking and we just look away. Id rather have a polititian who is getting laid from an escort, than one who is getting bent over by a PAC. Sorry for that rant…Dr. Block, i just wanted to say that keep up your fight :) Sexuality is supposed to be enjoyed and experienced..by everyone. Again, i just want to say that you are truely a goddess, both brains and beauty.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:41 pm
Hypocrisy, the standard operating procedure of the republicans and the Bush junta
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:41 pm
I’m in the process of reading through your blog archives. I’m sure I may have a follow-up question or two for you. For the time being though there is a ton of great information you’ve posted for me to get familiar with. Thanks so much for making your particular voice heard.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:41 pm
Thanks for the great blog on Deborah Jeane. What happend there, the whole ordeal, is outrageous and I’m glad that I’m not the only one who thinks so.
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:41 pm
Susan: Screen this film for yourself in your new theatre. “Witchfinder General”. Made in 1968, starring Vincent Price. It will resonate with the Palfrey situation, as well as the situation of the last eight years, in ways that can only be described as overwhelming. Your audiences might feel the same way. ON DVD.Barry
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:40 pm
Dr Suzy, I want to Thank You for this great blog and for everything You do. I’ve seen Your show a few time on HBO. I think You are an Amazing Woman. And the things that You do for others are unbelieveable. Please keep it up!!!
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:40 pm
Thank you, Dr Suzy. I find it disgusting the poor woman was driven to hang herself. Funny, I could not find any info that her customers were going to jail. Gee whiz, I thought solicitation was also a crime. But then, men have always been treated differently in cases like this. (Blame the wife or girlfriend if he cheats on her.)
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:39 pm
you summarised this pointless death very articulately and astutely…thank you. Reading it made me cry for her and for the rest of us too. I weep for the fucking hypocrisy, the pointless and seemingly endless chasing of, and policing of consenting adults and what we choose to explore, indulge in, pay for or charge for *BY MUTUAL CONSENT*. It makes me so angry and so sick because in its wake there is a *huge* price we all pay, that of violence, exploitation and the greedy souless suffocating of our imaginations and spirits. That people still differentiate between the selling of our bodies (as ‘bad’) and the selling of our minds/skills (even when in the shittiest curcumstances as ‘good’ is just incomprehensible to me. As you said, may those who stayed silent in the wake of her death and who have at any time paid a woman for sex, and been ashamed of that, and allowed themselves to become puppets and hangmen for that, need publicly humiliating themselves. Get real people…WAKE THE FUCK UP….stand up for what you believe in but do not condemn others for mutually consenting and often pleasurable activities. We’re not discussing the darker aspects of hooking here, merely the hypocritical ones. Thanks for this Susan…..really….x
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:39 pm
After what they did to John Lennon, three Kennedys, MLK and everyone else who is effective at getting in their face I would say it is extremly likely they killed her than what the mainstream media is putting forth. On another note I am starting to see some rumors on the internet that Barak Obama is bisexual and has used cocaine. This is interesting because Bush has been similarly represented (Jeff Gannon). Will the mainstream media give Barak a pass as they have given Bush? If what they did to Bill Clinton is any indication, probably not. ( Not that there is anything wrong with either of them being gay or bi but the hypocrisy factor with Bush is way up there.) I think the DC madam also had some shit on McCain so that also might play into why they took her out. They will probably give the gay guy, who said he gave Barak Obama a blow job, a ticker tape parade. Hopefully Barak can weather the storm. (As Clinton did) Otherwise we are doomed. Alan Zorthian
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:39 pm
No way her death was an Accident!!!!!!!
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:38 pm
Prostitutes and madams should be considered healers, not demonized. Rest in peace, D.C. madam… and thanks for adding a little pleasure to the lives of a few while you were here…
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:38 pm
How in the WORLD do they consider that a suicide anyway??? She went on radio shows stating “I love life, I will not kill myself. Even if I’m convicted I have no intent on committing suicide.” Just BECAUSE she had the names she had in her little black book. And they killed her, and we’re all just standing here, watching. *shakes head*
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:38 pm
Love your philosophy!
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:34 pm
Susan, your piece on Deborah Jeane Palfrey is brilliant.I would like to run it on my johnclarkprose.com blawg, unedited, with attribution of course (but not a link to your website).
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:34 pm
Dr. Suzy,Brava, Brava, Brava. Great tribute to the DC Madam. What a tragedy. Shame on all the righteous people that aided and abetted in the suicide (murder?) of the DC Madam. Why is there such darkness in your country?Best regards, Carlo
03 · 5 · 10 @ 7:33 pm
Eloquent piece on the DC Madam. Even better to hear you say it on the radio. And I for one absolutely believe they killed her.