Analysis Of The Chicago Tribune And William Randolph...

This pair seized upon the headlines generated from a case involving a woman named Mona Marshall, who alleged that she had been drugged, raped, and forced into prostitution by a pimp. There were elements of her story that were genuinely factual and terribly disturbing, but other parts seemed far-fetched. That included a tale in which the police reportedly received a note that she dropped from the window of the brothel where she worked stating, â€Å"I am a white slave.† In addition, Marshall’s recounting of events included several contradictions with dates and key details. Nonetheless, The Chicago Tribune and William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago American ran wild with the Mona Marshall story and it quickly gained a national audience. Clifford Roe gained recognition nationwide as the prosecutor of that case and he leveraged his newfound fame into more of an activist role. He subsequently published Panders and Their White Slaves and The Girl Who Disappeared, which was later fact checked by a notable sociologist Walter Reckless. He found that Roe used heavily altered statements from prostitutes to advance his agenda. In addition, Reckless studied Chicago’s â€Å"white slave† court cases extensively and found that less than 5% of them actually involved women held against their will. In fairness, although Roe’s methods were deceptive, one positive result manifested from his work as he successfully lobbied to get much needed sex trafficking laws passed in Illinois. Over a short period of