Mann Act

In the 19th century, many cities in the United States had designated legally protected areas of prostitution. Increased urbanization, as well as greater numbers of young women entering the workforce, led to greater flexibility in courtship without supervision. In this changing social sphere in the mid-1800s, concern over "white slavery" began. This term referred to women kidnapped for the purposes of prostitution and derives from Charles Sumner's 1847 description of the Barbary slave trade. Numerous communities appointed vice commissions to investigate the extent of local prostitution, whether prostitutes participated in it willingly or were forced into it, and the degree to which it was organized by any cartel-type organizations. The second significant action at the local level was to close the brothels and the red-light districts. From 1910 to 1913, city after city changed previously tolerant approaches and forced the closing of their brothels. Opposition to openly practiced prostitution had been growing steadily throughout the last decades of the 19th century. The federal government's response was the Mann Act. The purpose of the act was to make it a crime to "transport or cause to be transported, or aid to assist in obtaining transportation for" or to "persuade, induce, entice, or coerce" a woman to travel. Many of the changes that occurred after 1900 were a result of tensions between social ideals and practical realities. Family form and functions changed in response to a complex set of circumstances that were the effects of economic class and ethnicity. Rescuing sex trafficked young women Suffrage activists, especially Harriet Burton Laidlaw and Rose Livingston, took up the concerns. They worked in New York City's Chinatown and in other cities to rescue young white and Chinese girls from forced prostitution, and helped pass the Mann Act to make interstate sex trafficking a federal crime. Conspiracy narrative According to historian Mark Thomas Connelly, "a group of books and pamphlets appeared announcing a startling claim: a pervasive and depraved conspiracy was at large in the land, brutally trapping and seducing American girls into lives of enforced prostitution, or 'white slavery'. These white-slave tracts began to circulate around 1909." Such narratives often misleadingly portrayed innocent girls "victimized by a huge, secret and powerful conspiracy controlled by foreigners" Some contemporaries did question the idea of abduction and foreign control of prostitution through cartels. For example, noted radical and feminist Emma Goldman observed, "Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution." ==Legal application==

Although the law was created to stop forced sexual slavery of women, the most common initial use of the Mann Act was to prosecute men for having sex with underage females. The 1948 prosecution of Frank LaSalle for abducting Florence Sally Horner is believed to have been an inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov in writing his novel Lolita. Humbert Humbert, the narrator, at one point explicitly refers to LaSalle. The Mann Act has also been used by the U.S. federal government to prosecute polygamists such as Mormon fundamentalists. Bigamy is illegal in the U.S. and all states have antipolygamy laws. Colorado City, Arizona; Hildale, Utah; Bountiful, British Columbia, northern Mexico are historic locations of several Mormon sects that practiced polygamy, although The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has expressly forbidden polygamy since the start of the 20th century. Sect leaders and individuals have been charged under the Mann Act when "wives" are transported across the Utah–Arizona state line or the U.S.–Canadian and U.S.–Mexican borders. • Dušan Popov, a World War II Allied double agent with a "James Bond" lifestyle, was threatened with arrest under the Mann Act. • Individuals associated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), such as Warren Jeffs and Merril Jessop have refused to answer questions during depositions and court hearings, citing the 5th Amendment, over concerns of self-incrimination related to "potential state investigation still ongoing, as well as criminal investigations under the Mann Act out of the U.S. Attorney's Office." Mann Act case decisions by the United States Supreme Court • Hoke v. United States, . The Court held that Congress could not regulate prostitution per se, as that was strictly the province of the states. Congress could, however, regulate interstate travel for purposes of prostitution or "immoral purposes". • Athanasaw v. United States, . The Court decided that the law was not limited strictly to prostitution, but to "debauchery" as well. • In a 1915 ruling, the Court determined that it is not impossible for a victim of the Act to be charged with conspiracy under specific circumstances. The requirements for conspiracy by a victim of the Act were limited in a 1932 ruling. • Caminetti v. United States, . In 1917, the Court decided that the Mann Act did not apply strictly to purposes of prostitution, but to other noncommercial consensual sexual liaisons; thus consensual extramarital sex fell within the category of "immoral sex". • In 1932, the Court ruled that consent by the victim to their own transportation does not constitute conspiracy or culpability under the Act. • Cleveland v. United States, . The Court decided that a man can be prosecuted under the Mann Act even when married to the woman if the marriage is polygamous; therefore, in 1946, polygamous marriage was determined to be an "immoral purpose". • Bell v. United States, . The Court decided that simultaneous transportation of two women across state lines constituted only one violation of the Mann Act, not two violations. • The Court affirmed that a victim can be compelled to testify against a spouse who violated the Act, in exception to the common law spousal privilege rule. ==Congressional amendments to the law==

In 1978, Congress updated the act's definition of "transportation" and added protections against commercial sexual exploitation for minors. Congress amended the law in 1986 to make it gender-neutral and to fix its ambiguous language. In particular, as part of a larger 1986 bill, the Child Sexual Abuse and Pornography Act of 1986, focused on criminalizing various aspects of child pornography, the Mann Act was revised by replacing the ambiguous "debauchery" and "any other immoral purpose" with the more specific "any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense". ==Effects and alterations of the Mann Act==

The Mann Act was one of the more salient legislation passed during the early 20th century Progressive Era. While the Mann Act was meant to combat forced prostitution, it had repercussions that extended into consensual sexual activity, including criminalizing many people who were not participating in prostitution. It was also abused for political persecution and as a tool for blackmail. Such an interpretation of the law in effect criminalized all premarital or extramarital sexual relationships that involved interstate travel. With behavior that was so commonplace now illegal, federal prosecutors had a weapon that could very easily be abused in order to prosecute "undesirables" who were otherwise law-abiding citizens. Chaplin had a premarital relationship with a 24-year-old actress then later paid her train fare home (crossing over state lines), and Berry paid for transportation of an underage Apache girl to her home, across state lines. Following multiple blackmail accounts, The New York Times became an advocate against the Mann Act. In 1915, the paper published an editorial pointing out how the Act led to extortion. In 1916, it labeled the Mann Act "The Blackmail Act", arguing that its dangers had been clear from the start as the Act could make a harmless spree or simple elopement a crime. The paper also called the "blackmail that resulted from the Mann Act [...] worse than the prostitution it sought to suppress". While the Mann Act has never been repealed, it has been amended and altered. The 1978 amendments expanded coverage to issues around child pornography and exploitation. Most recently, in 1986, the Mann Act was significantly altered to make it gender neutral and to redress the ambiguous phrasing that had enabled decades of unjust applications of the Act. With the 1986 amendments, the Mann Act outlaws interstate or foreign transport of "any person" for purposes of "any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense." ==See also==