from www.washingtoncitypaper.com – Wondering how butt enemas and female ejaculation came to be the subject of the first obscenity case to hit D.C. in decades?
Credit Los Angeles Police Department Det. Michael Ozaki, who testified this week as a witness for the government—and may be responsible for bringing the works of John “Buttman” Stagliano to the attention of the FBI.
Ozaki works with the LAPD on obscenity-related matters, helping to regulate everything from child pornography to topless bars to video arcades. Ozaki has been following Stagliano’s work since July 22, 2007, when he first spied Stagliano’s Evil Angel booth at the Erotica LA trade show. Ozaki testified that LAPD was on-site at the adult convention to ensure that the venue—the L.A. Convention Center—was in compliance. While on duty, Ozaki also observed Stagliano standing behind the Evil Angel booth, “speaking to a male” to whom he later “sold a DVD.”
Ozaki next spied Stagliano on a police field trip to the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, which Ozaki says he attends yearly to keep tabs on the “new line of products” hitting the industry. On Jan. 11, 2008, Ozaki saw Stagliano engaging in similar activity—selling DVDs, magazines, even T-shirts—from behind a convention booth.
Later that month, Ozaki paid a visit to the Evil Angel offices in Van Nuys, California, where he snapped some aerial photos of the facility and secured photographic evidence of Stagliano’s wife, Karen, entering the building.
Also visible in that photograph? A sign reading “Beware of the evil pussy.” DVD sales? Pussy jokes? The evidence may seem tame, but the government is attempting to prove not only that Stagliano disseminated obscene matter to D.C., but also that he’s is in the regular business of “pandering” obscene materials “for commercial purposes.”
After Ozaki brought Buttman to the attention of the feds, the feds set to work bringing Buttman to D.C. As it turns out, before 14 jurors were forced to view Milk Nymphos and Storm Squirters 2: Target Practice in court this week, there is no evidence that either film has ever been screened inside the District of Columbia by anyone else—not even by the FBI.
Though FBI Special Agent Dan Bradley arranged to have the DVDs sent to a District P.O. Box in 2007, Bradley actually watched the movies in a cubicle in his office in Manassas, Va. Since Bradley is not a resident of D.C., didn’t order the DVDs from D.C., and didn’t watch them in D.C., defense attorney Paul Cambria questioned what, exactly, this case has to do with the District at all. “Did you conduct any surveys to determine the level of acceptance of adult materials?” he asked Bradley.
“Have you visited any adult bookstores in D.C.?” he asked. “Have either of those two movies been declared obscene by any jury or any court?” he asked. Government prosecutors objected to Cambria’s line of questioning—and the mystery of why milk enemas and vaginal discharge became D.C. issue remains unanswered.