Portland, Oregon- Portland Police spokesman Sgt. Brian Schmautz said the sex industry in Portland, Oregon is flourishing thanks to liberal interpretations of the First Amendment and a public willing to ignore crime that goes along with it.
“The laws are lax. Citizens basically turn a blind eye to the criminal activity and we can’t even get elected officials to care about it,” said Schmautz.
One Web site boasts Portland will emerge as a “major adult entertainment capital in the next decade.”
Its unclear exactly how many people work in the sex industry in Portland, but one advocate believes it’s at least four thousand, mostly women, and mostly prostitutes.
Tuesday, police say, 18 year old Emily Egan [pictured] died when the 37 year old man she lived with killed her.
Gene Frizzelle took porn photos and video of Emily and posted them to his Web sites, according to her mother.
She had lived with him the past four months, but planned to move out Wednesday morning according to her mom.
A woman named Cheryl, from Northern California, read the story of Emily’s death and felt the chill of a haunting memory return.
“This happened to me. Only I lived. I am in total shock. Someone needs to EXPOSE these girls to the idea these men are out there. It happens to the most vulnerable.”
Cheryl asked that her last name not be used, but agreed to share more of her story.
It happened 19 years ago, when she was 18 years old and living in Davis, California, she said.
One day at her junior college a man in a three piece suit approached her and told her she was beautiful. The man asked if she ever considered posing for Playboy-he offered to pay her $500 which seemed like a huge amount of money to her back then.
She said she eventually agreed. At the studio the man gave her alcohol and then drugs to loosen up as he took porn pictures.
Over time, Cheryl said she began to consider the man a friend. But eventually he quit paying her and threatened to expose the pictures to her friends and family if she stopped taking off her clothes.
“You have to do it now, or I’ll expose you!” she remembers him saying.
It ended one night after she told him she was through with porn—no matter what. He convinced her to do one last shoot and gave her something to put on. She said she walked out of the bathroom and the man was holding a knife.
“He said I’m going to kill you,” Cheryl said.
She made up an excuse to use the bathroom one more time — then climbed out a window and jumped three stories down to the street and ran for her life.
“I left everything behind,” she said.
“He would have killed me, no doubt about it,” said Cheryl.
Afterward she felt fear but also intense shame.
“I’ve only ever told three people about it since then,” she said.
But her fear that more young women will end up like Emily Egan prompted her to speak up in the hope that they will see her story and know they are in danger too.