Hot Times in the Suburbs

We here at Boston Daily love a good prostitution story. (Especially ones that involve dryers.) Prostitution is a crime, as well as a public health issue, but we just can’t help but laugh when we read about the compromising, ahem, positions that these women and their johns are caught in.

That is, until we read a story on Boston.com about prostitution in the suburbs.

Eric Moskowitz spent time tagging along with Woburn Detective Lieutenant Bob Rufo as he makes the rounds. It seems that both our dailies just discovered the freaky stuff happening on craigslist this week.

. . .Rufo on a recent afternoon launched the Web browser on his office computer and scrolled through a list of sites he monitors for prostitution activity. He selected one, a popular classified-ads site, and clicked on “erotic services” for the Boston area. He tried a few search terms, like “Woburn” and “north,” and returned dozens of hits.

Next thing you know, they’ll find child predators on MySpace.

The point of the piece is that the Internet has allowed prostitutes to work without having to walk the streets to find a john. But some of the quotes and behavior of the cops even makes us a little uncomfortable. After arranging to meet with a prostitute at a hotel near Route 128, Detective Rufo takes a little too much glee in his work.

He looked up, wearing an it’s-that-easy grin. “I’ve got to go lock her up right now,” he said.

We’re pretty sure most johns end a phone call with that very remark. But perhaps the most disturbing thing about the prostitution sting is that the johns aren’t arrested for their crime.

They don’t arrest the men but instead interview them to gain probable cause to arrest and charge the suspected prostitute. The men are named in the incident report and may be served a summons to appear later as witnesses or to face charges.

The Woburn detectives may reconsider that practice, Rufo said, but choosing not to arrest the johns makes them more likely to cooperate and spares them added shame. “It’s embarrassing enough for them,” he said. “We’re just trying to stop the problem, not create them.”

Hold on. So the woman gets dragged through a police station, probably in some heinous Fredrick’s of Hollywood bustier, while the man gets to go back home without having the awkward discussion with his wife and kids about why daddy was caught going to the room of a “Brazilian Bunny?”

It seems that’s exactly what happens.

Rufo told the [john] he might receive a summons, asked him to erase the number for “Stacy” from his phone (so he wouldn’t tip her off as he drove away), and advised him to find other forms of recreation.

Here’s an idea: Just read a book instead of paying a woman for sex. It’s so simple!

If you need us, we’ll be dipping ourselves in bleach. This whole thing leaves us feeling dirty.