NEW YORK -- Investigators Monday reported a boy prostitution network operating in six major cities and said some call-boy services sold information about clients to foreign intelligence agencies.
Detective Anne Fisher of the Washington Metropolitan Police testified at a hearing in New York on boy prostitution that a number of pimps set up a nationwide exchange for boy prostitutes. She said the pimps also used the boys for pornography, call services and street solicitation.
'A group of pimps set up connections in Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, New York and Washington, D.C.,' Fisher testified at the hearing called by state Sen. Ralph Marino, R-Syosset.
Dale Smith, an investigator for the New York State Select Committee on Crime who worked with the Washington, D.C. police, said call services were selling information on clients to the Soviet military, British and Israeli intelligence services.
Smith did not say who the clients were, or what interest those agencies had in them.
Smith said he learned about British and Israeli intelligence purchases from Robert Kohler, who allegedly worked as an accountant for several of the prostitution services in the Washington area. Smith said a member of the Soviet intelligence community told him the Soviets had also bought the information.
Smith said profits from the call services were being re-invested in real estate.
Locations in Manhattan where 13- to 16-year-old boys allegedly engaged in or solicited homosexual encounters included the Dallas Bar, the Haymarket and the Follies Theater.
Smith said that entertainment at the Follies Theater consisted of live sex shows involving under-age boys who engaged in homosexual prostitution 'before, between and after shows.'
Smith said the owner of the Follies Theater, William Oates, also ran Cinema Follies in Washington and Best of Both Worlds in Pittsburgh.
'An awful lot of young boys are being permanently and psychologically damaged,' said Marino.
