Did the Sunday Times make up it’s story about SA male prostitute?
Posted on May 28th, 2007 by Richard Catto 4,871 views
Yesterday, the Sunday Times published an article about sa male prostitute, wherein they claim to have had email contact with him.
They apparently initiated contact by posting a comment in his blog and received a reply by email. He allegedly calls himself Skye, is 30 years old and is living in Australia with his girlfriend.
Thing is, there’s no comment in his blog by the Sunday Times. Although comment moderation is turned on, he has already approved two comments, both of low quality. Comments by myself and another blogger, Johan Swarts, have not been approved (yet). It seems to me that a comment by the Sunday Times would be approved merely for the status value of having a major South African newspaper comment in your blog.
According to the Sunday Times, Skye says he has received only two emails so far. One from the Independent Democrats, threatening him with investigation by the Scorpions and another allegedly from one of the people he blogged about.
SA male prostitute publishes a contact email address on his blog. I sent an email to it on Friday evening (May 25 2007) and got a bounce back. The email address does not exist. The yahoo address he published ends in co.uk. I changed it to .com and that email did not bounce, indicating that it does exist. The yahoo ID was created on the same day as he made his first blog entry, so I am reasonably confident that my second email was sent to the correct person, yet Skye says he only received two emails, neither from me.
Skye, apparently, according to the Sunday Times, doesn’t know about all the fuss around his blog. However, he has been using his WordPress.com blog account and the WordPress dashboard would show him all the incoming links from all the many bloggers that are now linking to him. When bloggers see a new incoming link, curiosity compells us to go look at what they are saying about us.
Was Skye playing dumb? Or did the Sunday Times invent the whole story?
One last thing – if the Sunday Times is indeed in possession of emails from Skye, and they originated from yahoo, then they may also have his real IP address which would allow Skye to be traced. Supposedly, the police are investigating this matter, even though no crime seems to have been committed. Are the police, who are apparently investigating a civil case, now going to demand that the Sunday Times provide them with the emails they received from Skye?
When can the public expect to hear a straight story from the Media on this whole charade?
Tags: hoax, Independent Democrats, lying swine, Patricia de Lille, sa male prostitute, Simon Grindrod, Skye, South African Blogosphere, Sunday Times
Filed under South African Blogosphere |
13 Responses to “Did the Sunday Times make up it’s story about SA male prostitute?”
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Belinda Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 09:54Is crimen injuria not a crime?
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mandy Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 11:20Richard, i’d like to chat to you about the blog if you’re available. I have some info you may find pretty interesting…
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Richard Catto Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 11:11Belinda, now that I have provided interested parties with a solid lead to trace SA male prostitute, I wonder if the information will be used?
Your thoughts?
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David Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 18:35Belinda, is it still crimen injuria if it’s true? I’m not saying it is, but just hypothetically. For a prostitute to publicly reveal details about encounters with clients is unprofessional and in my view unethical (even if – and especially if – retired, as that means no consequences such as lost future business), but I’m not sure if it would be illegal. There is definitely a strong implied expectation of confidentiality in such a transaction, even if not explicitly written anywhere, but would that create a kind of “implied contract” that this would be a breach of? And if so, what’s the crime then anyway?
Of course if the information on the blog is false, that’s a whole other matter.
On another note though, prostitution is illegal in this country, so if this site was true, wouldn’t it create a kind of admission of guilt under which he could be prosecuted?
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Richard Catto Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 19:10There’s no code of ethics for prostitutes to live up to.
They’re in a sleazy business and anyone using their services should not be so naive as to think that they would necessarily feel any obligation towards their clients.
There’s no guarantees, boeta. No pretense of professionalism or having ethics. This is life in the raw, no rules of fair play. They do what they do to survive and they don’t give a darn about higher considerations. Don’t fool yourself about the nature of the transaction. It’s dirty, sordid and dangerous.
Clean gentleman’s clubs with high standards are a marketing fiction. Everyone in the Game are soiled, and they will soil anyone who plays their Game.
People who confess to having been a prostitute, aren’t charged. They have to be caught in the act.
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David Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 19:56Richard, that’s a load of crap. They’re just a business like any other, and basic free market principles suggests that providers who maintain professionalism and confidentiality are going to fare better in the long run than those that don’t. Anyway, no matter the type of business, a transaction took place in which there must have been certain expectations from both sides. To suggest that there are no implied expectations of confidentiality when visiting a prostitute is completely absurd. You may have some moral objection to the nature of the business, but that’s arbitrary and irrelevant. I think the entire motorcar repair industry is sleazy and disgusting and full of crooks, that doesn’t mean that if I get ripped off I should just have expected to. The only difference I see is that one is in the informal economy and the other is in the formal economy, so apart from personal disgust, on what basis do you suggest the sex industry is special? Are you suggesting that EVERYTHING in the entire informal economy is not subject to certain ethical standards, implied or otherwise? E.g. if I buy some oranges from a street vendor, I am just not allowed to have any expectation that they won’t all be rotten or that he won’t have poisoned them? That makes no sense.
Anyway, on another note: I sent an e-mail to an obviously nonsense made-up yahoo.com address and it never bounced, so I’m not sure that not getting a failure message suggests anything about whether or not the e-mail address is valid.
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Richard Catto Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 22:23David, prostitutes despise their clients. People become sex-workers out of sheer desperation. They feel used, dirty and soiled all the time.
You’re a typical young unaware male, full of expectations that the girl or guy that you decide to con with, will be interested in satisfying you, giving you a good time, giving you your money’s worth, so you’ll come back again and again.
None of them are in it for the long run. It’s all strictly a short term thing to get the money they need so they can do whatever it is they really want to be doing.
They don’t even know if they’ll ever see you again. Even if you tell them how much you like them and want to see them regularly, they won’t believe you. They’ve heard it all before. They are routinely lied to, and they routinely lie.
It’s not a business they’re in. It’s a money raising scheme. If they can get your cash and avoid giving you what you paid for, they will slip out on you rather than stick around to pleasure you.
Most of them will steal from you too, given the gap. They’ll walk off with your cellphone if you leave it lying around. And some of them are hardcore all the way. They’ll kill you just to get your stuff.
Coning with sex-workers is a very risky business, not just from a sexual diseases point of view. Some of them work in partnership with a friend or friends. They will lure you to a private place where they will rob you and even murder you.
These people do not give a stuff about you, morality, the law or ethics. They laugh derisively at people who entertain such quaint notions. They, however, excel at deception. They are predators through and through. Their patter to persuade you otherwise is their siren call, lulling you, luring you in, to succumb to their tender mercies.
You are dealing with criminals, not business people. Do not be fooled into thinking otherwise.
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Richard Catto Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 07:00One thing that has been utterly discredited (in The Sunday Times article) is the idea that “Skye” was unaware of all the fuss about his blog.
He knew.
He had already clicked one of my trackback links and read what I had to say about him. I have the log entries to show he was all over this blog.
This guy is not a credible witness.
The other alternative is to conclude that The Sunday Times article was a fabrication. A work of fiction.
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Richard Catto Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 07:06David, re yahoo mail, have you tried using gmail to send your test messages?
Not all SMTP servers will report bounces back to the sender. Some will simply discard them.
I ran some tests again and got bounces on non-existent addresses.
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David Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 16:37Are you saying that there DOES NOT EXIST any prostitution business, anywhere, at all, that tries to keep things as clean and professional as possible and maintain confidentiality in order to try gain repeat customers?
And you say my attitudes are quaint. You clearly haven’t seen (or don’t want to see) what legalisation has done for the industry in many other countries (or states etc.). You are distorting my arguments and putting words in my mouth and basically setting up straw-men arguments to shoot down that have little or nothing to do with what I was saying. I never even vaguely suggested that there aren’t dirty criminal elements active in the prostitution biz that are out to get you. It’s a fact though that it isn’t all like that, and most of the time when it is like that it’s not because of anything inherent about the sex industry, but rather the fact that it’s illegal has pushed the industry underground where criminality can thrive. Most of the crappiness from both sides (e.g. prostitutes getting beaten up and ripped off by clients, or prostitutes stealing from clients or whatever) is as a result of the underground nature of the business. Your arguments are based on assumptions and stereotypes that hold primarily only for the *underground* prostitution industry. But it’s been legalised in many other places now so I suggest it’s worth having a look at the effects this has had. For example a survey of women working in legal, above-ground prostitution businesses (in Australia IIRC) show that their levels of job satisfaction and overall happiness are the SAME as other working women in ordinary jobs. Or the legal Nervada brothel where no woman has ever caught HIV or been beaten up etc. Moreover, your arguments don’t negate the fact that it’s still just a business like any other. Trade is trade.
Your comments about workers not being in it for the long run, and that they’re only doing it to make the money they need now to get where they actually want to be, well that applies to nearly anyone with a job. Who REALLY wants to flip burgers or pump petrol or lay bricks or work 12-hour shifts on a till … I think most people would rather get rich and get out or onto something else. Even those who do enjoy what they do would be hard-pressed to argue that they’d keep living exactly the same if they won R20million in the lottery or whatever. The tiny minority that would are just that, an exception. So prostitutes are like everyone else then, big deal. Yes you get your drug-addicted teens under the abusive Nigerian pimps who are just desperate for their next hit, and you get your con jobs and crooks and filth and disease, but to suggest it’s all like that, or that it necessarily needs to be like that, is parochial. There are many stereotypes about sex workers that are commonly held but generally pre-date modern legalisation and many of the benefits thereof. I’m certainly not saying it’s a perfect and rosy industry, but it also isn’t all the cesspit portrayed by the typical Bible-basher viewpoint.
And what on earth makes you think I have the absurd expectation that prostitutes might ‘care’ about anything but my money? Argue with what I actually say, not insulting straw-man assumptions. You know nothing about me.
Re: Yahoo: OK, I tried another test mail from a GMail account, and I did indeed get a bounce message. (It’s also possible that the garbage I typed in the first time was still a registered address.)
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David Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 17:16I’ve retested the same address that bounced with GMail with the original e-mail address and it also bounced this time – so seemingly I chose an actual address the first time, even though I just hammered nonsense onto the keyboard.
BTW it’s not up to one’s own SMTP server whether or not Yahoo’s SMTP server will send a bounce. Servers generally either will or won’t regardless of sender, although some might do validity checking on the source address first or may block certain addresses.
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Richard Catto Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 17:18David, my comments above are about prostitution, as it is in South Africa – an illegal activity – which is where SAMP plied his “trade”.
I’m not going to talk about it elsewhere because that is irrelevant and off topic. We are discussing SAMP – not prossies in Dutchistan.
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3d game kid over spy Says:
December 11th, 2007 at 14:16Racism’s toll may be physical…
Black men’s shorter life span may be attributable in part to the stresses of their position in society….
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