It is extremely doubtful that a young woman would find herself in that situation in any other way than a long path of abuse and desperation.
Taking advantage of that young woman is immoral.
That isn't some puritanical, anti-sex philosophy that hates fun.
That is empathy to the all too common situation of young vulnerable women being used for pleasure.
In the end its weighing off protecting people from a presumed risk against infringing on their self determination. The question is clear cut when it comes to kids as we as a society accepted that their self determination isnt that great and infringing on it is fine most of the time. They have to brush their teeth, they dont get to drink alcohol and they cant work in a brothel.
The question here is does the same rule for a 8 year old apply for a 17 year old. Most European societies see a huge difference when it comes to age and that the ways in which the self determination of a 17 year old can be restricted are a lot more limited. In the end infringing on someones self determination is just too grave of a violation to do it unless its absolutely necessary.
What is instead illegal is not the action of the person presumed to be needing protection but make sure that exploiting that person is illegal. The Switzerland example still had it illegal to encourage or coerce girls to work in a brothel, which in practice means there was no one willing to risk running such a brothel.
And again, this discussion misses the point. Its not why did Eppstein run a brothel on an island but how come he was able to engage in sex trafficking, coercing of minors and all of that under the nose of quite a lot of politicians.
This idea is counter-intuitive to me. When I was 17 my religious convictions prevented me from having sex with anyone, but I imagine that without those beliefs I would have at least put _some_ dollar figure on the price for me having sex with a 74 year old woman, and I certainly didn't have any history of abuse or desperation.
Anyone who can read my comment above can see clearly that you are putting words in my mouth.
> The law, precedent, and public opinion all disagree with you.
Except for all the places where law, precedent, and public opinion agree with an age of consent of 17?
The whole point is that there is not one single hard and fast rule that defines the boundaries of ethics in prostitution. So many of the comments here (including yours) portray a complicated situation as clearly black and white. Of course it doesn't help that in this particular case many folks are talking past each other because we're all intermingling various interrelated topics:
* Stallman's remarks and forced resignation
* The age of consent
* The specific case of Epstein's island
* Prostitution
I suspect that if we were to explicitly comment specifically on one point or the other that we'd all find we agree much more that we appear to.
It's really fucking creepy.
Definitely morally dubious, especially in his case. It's not clear if the girl did it for money, or was more or less nudged into this by her life circumstances.
I don't imagine there are any 17 year old girls having sex with 74 year old men who see a distinction between those two things.
How about, if the old person would be mick jagger? I could imagine, he still has his charms to some. Also I have seen young attractive women aproaching old yoga gurus for example ..
But yeah, the old guy wasn't mick jagger, nor a yoga master and at best he did assume the girl was a 18+ old prostitue doing it willingly for money and power.
It's so hard to imagine the origins of the Playboy-era now. But it was dominant among the educated classes through the 80s or 90s. The change is mostly for the better. I suppose the pendulum will swing again some day, but likely not in my lifetime.
The only issue here is the age of the girl involved.
