Jurors in the D.C. Madam case will be subjected to disturbing sexual secrets of Washington’s working girls and their high-priced clients, but the case will not be about prostitution, a federal prosecutor said during opening arguments Monday.
Calling the witness stand “probably the hottest seat in D.C. this year,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine K. Connelly told the jurors the case against Deborah Jean Palfrey was about racketeering, money laundering and mail fraud, not sex.
High-profile D.C. clients on the witness lists include Sen. David Vitter, R-La., Randall Tobias, who stepped down as deputy secretary of state last summer after he admitted to using Palfrey’s business, and Harlan Ullman, the author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine used at the start of the war in Iraq in 2003.
Many of the witnesses will be reluctant to testify for fear of revealing their private lives, attorneys said.
Connelly opened the trial by reading a resignation letter from one of Palfrey’s workers who wrote she regrettably had to quit because she contracted a sexually transmitted disease. A dozen women will testify that they performed sex acts for $250 and mailed half the money in to Palfrey in California, Connelly said.
Regular clients tested new recruits to make sure they would perform sex acts and looked as good as they described themselves, she said. But defense attorney Preston Burton said his client ran an upscale legal escort business that offered “sexual fantasy,” paid taxes and prohibited the women from engaging in prostitution.
“This is not street prostitution,” Burton said. “These people are not meat.”
Palfrey took calls from clients and arranged appointments with the women. “She was like a taxi dispatcher,” Burton said. “What happened afterward was between the driver and the customer.”
He noted that only 10 percent of the 130 women that Palfrey hired will testify that they took money for sex.
