“Evil in our midst” – When the Robert Kraft scandal unearthed human trafficking charges

When you think about Robert Kraft, his tenure as the owner of the New England Patriots is the first thing that comes to mind. He was the leader of the franchise during the NFL's most successful era, as he hired Bill Belichick as his head coach, and his franchise won six rings over a span of 17 years.

But Kraft has been a changed person for the last decade. After the death of his beloved wife, Myra Kraft, he started to change his habits and grew to act like the common persona of a single, rich white man in Florida. Due to these habits, he was indicted on an accusation he never expected: soliciting prostitution.

When Robert Kraft was accused of prostitution and sex trafficking

Kraft went on to get what he thought was a massage, but he received sexual services during his two visits to the massage parlor. On one of these visits, he was followed by an officer and received a warning for a traffic offense, except that there was no offense and the detective was just confirming identities.

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The accusations about the massage parlor were huge. Sheriff William Snyder gave more details in a press conference when the charges became public. The following is an excerpt from Vanity Fair:

Snyder announced that as many as 300 men who went to the spas for sex would be charged with soliciting prostitution. “Many of the men are married,” the sheriff said, adopting the moralizing tone common to faith-based groups that consider the sex industry an affront to Christian values. “Many of those men are in ongoing relationships.”

Sex trafficking, under law, involves recruiting and transporting women by force or fraud, and coercing them to work as prostitutes. The traffickers, Snyder continued, had covered their tracks by moving the women every 10 to 20 days to different spas, where they were forced to sleep on massage tables and cook on hot plates. Some were unable to leave, the sheriff said, because the traffickers confiscated their money and passports.

Three days later, on February 22, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg announced that Kraft would be charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution. “Human trafficking is evil in our midst,” Aronberg told reporters. “Modern-day slavery” can “happen anywhere, including in the peaceful community of Jupiter, Florida.”

To this day, Kraft swears to God that all he wanted was to get a massage during the Patriots' 2018 playoff run. He tried to get rid of all the charges - and did not accept a plea to get rid of all the charges if found guilty. He wants to clear his name fully, and it seems likely that he'll be able to do so with expensive lawyers by his side.