LMSx wrote: I'm not an expert, but the Mann Act's first prosecution being for an interracial affair between a famous boxer and his girlfriend makes it sound like just another racist Jim Crow law.
As a couple of people have pointed out, the Mann Act was originally passed to prevent forced prostitution. There was a perception (not unjustified) that young immigrant women in the large arrival centers were being abducted or tricked into questionable employment then shipped around the country to assorted brothels in non-immigrant areas. There, the women would literally be worked to death (40+ clients a day not being unusual) and replaced. The scale of the problem was exagerrated at the time; there was, however, a very real industry of that kind.
That the Mann Act was abused for various purposes is not open to question; there is no doubt that it was. However, it addressed a very real social problem that is still with us today. There are significant numbers of women (mostly from South East Asia) who are held in slavery-like conditions in various brothels. The Mann Act has been used to drop the hammer on those organizing that trade.
Some examples (taken from
Trafficking of Women to the United States
"From on or about June 1995 until on or about January 1998, the Kwon family recruited and transported Chinese-Korean women from China to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands for the purpose of exploiting and abusing them for profit. They were promised legitimate waitressing jobs but then forced to work at a karaoke club and submit to customers' sexual demands. Some of the women also complained of physical and sexual abuse by their bosses. The women were held at a barracks apartment. The defendants took their passports, visas, and airline tickets. The women were only allowed to leave the barracks apartment with permission and an escort. The women were threatened with violence, including death, if they left or attempted to leave without paying their debt."
"The defendants recruited women in China for jobs as waitresses in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands in the District of Guam. Shortly after the women arrived and started working in the bar, they were pressed into service as prostitutes."
"In conjunction with Thai traffickers, Ludwig Janak, a German national who operated a tour guide service in Thailand, recruited Thai women to come to the United States to work. Several of the women were told they would have good jobs working in restaurants. Once in the US, Thai traffickers and a Korean madam forced the women into prostitution. The women were held against their will at a brothel house and forced to work as prostitutes until their $35,000 smuggling debt was paid off. The women were kept in the underground brothel by bars on the windows and 24-hour surveillance. The defendants required that each woman sleep with four to five hundred customers to pay off the smuggling fee."
In one Dallas brothel, Thai nationals were locked up and forced to work as prostitutes. They were treated like animals in that if they did not do as they were told, they would not receive any food.
"In 1998 in northern California, a Hmong gang kidnapped, raped, and forced into prostitution Hmong girls. There were roughly 15 girls, ages 13 to 15, whom were trafficked to other cities and forced to submit to sexual slavery for members of their own ethnic community. Even more recently... four teenage Hmong girls were lured to Detroit by Hmong men and boys where they were allegedly gang raped, assaulted, and threatened with death if they tried to escape."
"In August 1999, an organized crime task force in Atlanta, indicted 13 members of an Asian smuggling ring for trafficking up to 1,000 Asian women and girls, between the ages of 13 and 25, to Atlanta and other US cities for prostitution. The women and girls were held in bondage until their $30,000 to $40,000 contracts were paid off. One brothel was described by law enforcement as a “prison compound” with barbed wire, fences, chained dogs, and gang members who served as guards."
"In Los Angeles, traffickers kidnapped a Chinese woman, raped her, forced her into prostitution, posted guards to control her movements, and burned her with cigarettes. Asian street gangs such as Black Dragons and Koolboyz have provided protection to brothels where trafficked women are forcibly held."
The problem is that in such cases, it's often hard to get the girls in question to testify against those responsible for their abuse. They may be terrorized into silence or simply too ashamed to describe their ordeal in court. The Mann Act allows a prosecution without testimony from the victims since all the prosecution has to do is prove the girl crossed a state line - and if she arrived in San Francisco and was freed from captivity in (say) Omaha, that's a given.
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