TER founder charged

[AdamSmith]

Couple of people here have inquired after review sites for female sex workers. Now, dubious goings-on reported at the leading one, www.theeroticreview.com. Notable for, if nothing else, mainstream media attention to such sites...

Prostitution Site Cuts Ties With Founder After Charges

In part because of David Elms, the business of prostitution is moving from street corners and hotel bars to the Internet. Mr. Elms founded The Erotic Review, a Web site where patrons of prostitutes go to rate their experiences. It’s a bit like Amazon ratings for prostitutes, except of course that paying for books isn’t illegal in most jurisdictions.

But now The Erotic Review says it has severed its ties with Mr. Elms.

Through its lawyer, the company issued a statement saying that it had “parted ways†with Mr. Elms because of his arrest in Phoenix last month and the charge he faces for conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.

Mr. Elms was also charged with conspiracy to possess drugs, conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Details of Mr. Elms’s arrest and the basis for the charges are sketchy, but the assault charge appears to be in connection with disputes that Mr. Elms has had with his critics and critics of The Erotic Review.

Mr. Elms, who lives in Southern California, was arrested when he arrived in Phoenix shortly after midnight on Feb. 15, according to a statement from the Phoenix police department. The statement said investigators had received a tip that Mr. Elms was trying to hire someone to kill a woman, identified by the police only as a 32-year-old female.

Investigators met with Mr. Elms upon his arrival, and after a 30-minute conversation determined that there was cause to arrest him on a murder charge and also for conspiring to hire someone to seriously injure a 62-year-old man.

The county attorney ultimately dropped the murder charge. A spokesman for the attorney’s office declined to discuss the case. Mr. Elms could not be reached for comment.

Police and county attorneys declined to say who they believed Mr. Elms’s targets were. But the operator of SexWork.com, a Web site based in Phoenix that focuses on the sex trade, says he was one of them. He requested that his name not be used because he does not want to compromise his offline career. Over the past year, SexWork.com has posted allegations that Mr. Elms has coerced prostitutes into having sex with him, and that he told women that if they did not accede to his demands he would ruin their reputations on The Erotic Review. Mr. Elms has said those accusations are untrue.

The operator of SexWork.com said the Phoenix police told him that Mr. Elms wanted to hire someone to break his legs. The man said he believes that he was targeted because of his past criticism of Mr. Elms.

The charges add to an already challenging legal environment for Mr. Elms, who is on probation for drug and gun charges.

The Erotic Review, though, continues to operate. Prostitutes and their patrons alike say it has provided a considerable new twist to their business by allowing customers to rate their experiences on the Internet in the same way that consumers have grown accustomed to doing in many other industries.

The result has been that some prostitutes have come to rely on the site as a source of business, seeking out good reviews and having their business hurt by bad ones. In the process, the site has provided a new kind of openness — or, rather, the veneer of openness — to a business that is usually conducted in the shadows. Some prostitutes complain that the power amassed by The Erotic Review has made them beholden not just to the site but to Mr. Elms himself. Mr. Elms previously told The New York Times that he had never coerced anyone into having sex with him.

The operator of SexWork.com said he had been posting a letter on various regional Web sites and mailing lists that are popular among prostitutes and their customers, urging people to come forward if they had evidence of coercive behavior by Mr. Elms.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/p...-after-charges/