America isn't alone in its moral panic over sex trafficking, as an Argentinian case against a self-help center called the Buenos Aires Yoga School (BAYS) suggests. Prosecutors are trying the school's 85-year-old founder, Juan Percowicz, and a number of its members, alleging that the school was really a cult engaged in brainwashing and sex trafficking.
Authorities raided the group's headquarters and the houses of 50 members two summers ago, accusing the group of being a front for an international sex slavery ring. Seventeen people, including Percowicz, were arrested and jailed on suspicion of human trafficking for sexual exploitation and money laundering.
It wasn't the first time the Buenos Aires Yoga School faced criminal allegations; a similar case was brought in the 1990s. But after an intense investigation that involved raids and wiretaps—which human rights groups said were civil liberties violations and some chalked up to anti-Semitism—that earlier case was closed with nary a conviction.
And it's looking like the newer case may face a similar fate. Last week, the Argentinian Court of Cassation—the country's highest criminal court—upheld a lower court's ruling from last December that the case would not be elevated to a trial.
I don't pretend to have some special insight into what's going on with BAYS. But in light of a recent New York Times article leaning heavily into prosecutors' arguments, I think it's worth bringing up some of the evidence that challenges the official narrative here and highlighting how the case mirrors many of the "sex trafficking busts" we've seen in the U.S.
'Human Trafficking Without Victims of Trafficking'
"Cults exist here, but we've never seen one that operated at this level," Ricardo Juri, the investigator who oversaw the 2022 raids, told the Times.
"Prosecutors say the organization exploited and drugged some of its female members, forcing them to sell their bodies and generating hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly from clients in Argentina and the United States," the newspaper reports.
Times writer Ana Lankes suggests the trouble with the earlier case was that "Argentina did not yet have laws on human trafficking or money laundering" and that "the country's justice system was still being overhauled after the end of the military dictatorship"—or at least that's what the prosecutors today argue. According to authorities, this is a case of bad guys who got away before but are now finally being brought to justice.
The government says at least seven women were forced into prostitution by BAYS. "But the women in the case have denied ever having sex in exchange for money, or being victims of any crime," Lankes points out.
"This is a case of human trafficking without victims of trafficking," Percowicz's lawyer, Jorge Daniel Pirozzo, told the Times.
Red Walls = Brothel?
A paper published last year in The Journal of CESNUR (the Center for Studies on New Religions) casts doubt on the government's narrative about BAYS and details questionable tactics used in investigations of it. The paper—"The Great Cult Scare in Argentina and the Buenos Aires Yoga School" by Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne—looks at both the 2022 raids and the earlier case against BAYS.
As part of the 2022 raids, "a man was badly beaten by the police for no reason (it came out later they had mistaken him for somebody else)," and doors were busted in despite residents offering to open them, writes Introvigne. "All in all, twenty persons were arrested and warrants for arrest were issued against another eight."
But police found scant evidence of the alleged international prostitution ring they were seeking or of an alleged sex museum linked to the group.
At the apartment of "a well-known female musician," where they were told this "museum of sex" existed, "all they found was a small painting depicting three naked persons united in an embrace," notes Introvigne. "They noted an abundance of the color red in the decoration of the apartment, and put in their notes it was reminiscent of a brothel."
As in so many American "sex trafficking" busts, this was all turned into a big show for the media:
The painting was duly put on display for the media, together with some old and ruined commercial pornographic VHS videos found elsewhere in the building. The inhabitants claimed they were part of the inventory of a nearby shop that had been flooded with water. They had purchased the whole inventory to help the owner, who was their friend, and had forgotten the videos, most of them not pornographic, stored somewhere in the building—and who would watch in 2022 pornographic VHS of the 1980s anyway.
By March 2023, "all those detained had also been liberated by a Court of Appeal after almost three months spent in jail, in conditions they described as horrible," according to the CESNUR paper.
An All-Too-Familiar Tale
Was BAYS a cult? Some former members or family of members report strange antics, including extreme reverence of the group's leader, members partaking in orgies, and forcing new members to do housework for established members. But even if such statements are true (and I have no idea), it doesn't necessarily mean anything illegal or exploitative was going on. One person's "cult" can be another's spiritual salvation, life coaching service, or kink activity.
The BAYS situation reminds me somewhat of the U.S. case against members of the self-help group NXIVM, a prosecution that included charges against actress Allison Mack. Prosecutors broke the case in a big, sensationalist manner, calling NXIVM a sex cult guilty of human trafficking. But the reality of the case was much more nuanced (and interesting) and nothing like the narrative that initially made headlines. There was certainly evidence that NXIVM's leader may have been cruel, manipulative, and an egomaniac, and there were indications that he started a relationship with someone when she was under 18. And there were women upset with how the group's secretive side-group DOS operated—as well as a number of women who still defend it to this day. But whatever was going on, it was not the simplistic black-and-white narrative that prosecutors portrayed, and it clearly involved authorities trying to slot a range of behavior—some potentially illegal, some merely unsavory, and some that simply read as odd to many people—into a trendy criminal category. A surefire way to get attention to a case these days is to label it sex trafficking or human trafficking.
The BAYS situation also recalls oh-so-many lower profile U.S. "sex trafficking stings" conducted at massage parlors or during boondoggles like "Operation Cross Country" and their ilk. As part of these stings, adult sex workers are often described to and in the media as "victims," even if none of them actually say they are being victimized.
In the BAYS raids, none of the female "victims" said they were being trafficked, and none said they sold sex for money (which is broadly legal in Argentina). But under Argentina's anti-trafficking law, "if a trafficked prostitute denies that she is a prostitute…this is further evidence she is trafficked and somebody is abusing her vulnerability," according to the CESNUR article.
"There is an express mention of the lack of legal relevance of the consent of the [alleged victim]," Argentinian lawyer Marisa Tarantino told the group Human Rights Without Frontiers. "If in a particular case the prosecution agencies detect an activity that they classify as a form of 'prostitution', even if it is exercised by adult and autonomous persons, these will be objectively considered victims and those who make the activity possible or benefit from it in any way, even if it is occasional, will be liable to prosecution."
Coming Up in the Yoga School Case
The case against Percowicz and the other remaining defendants "is currently working its way through the courts. No trial date has been set yet," the Times reports.
And no trial may happen. The Times piece was published right around the same time that Argentina's highest criminal court upheld a lower court ruling rejecting the government's request that the case go to trial.
"This is not the end of the case, since it returns to the judge of first instance, but is clearly a setback for the prosecutors," write Introvigne (author of the CESNUR article) and Maria Varde in the religious liberty and human rights magazine Bitter Winter.
Introvigne and Varde also call the Times piece "a sensationalist attack" that parrots prosecutors' arguments.
They note that "the main reason the elevation to trial has been annulled is that it ignored the opinion by independent experts, including those of the Forensic Medical Corps of the Supreme Court, who examined the [women prosecutors say are victims] and concluded that they are psychologically normal and believable." The court did not find persuasive the prosecutors' claim that the women were brainwashed into denying their victimhood—a bit of rhetoric that U.S. authorities also conveniently deploy to wave away sex workers or others whom they've deemed victims denying that they're actually being trafficked.
Introvigne notes that brainwashing theories of this sort have generally been debunked, but "there is an international lobby of so-called anti-human trafficking agencies, not less powerful in the United States than in Argentina," which wants to bring them back into vogue.
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