Sex trafficking victims helped the US Attorney for Minnesota convict hundreds of predators in the 1950's

Editor’s Note: This archive article was first published on August 5, 2021.

ST. PAUL — When state law enforcement began fighting prostitution and the sex trade in the Midwest in the 1950s — targeting a “funhouse” in Minneapolis that served as the crime epicenter — they had some unlikely allies: the victims themselves.

It began on Thursday, August 14, 1952, when police officers searched a home in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis where visitors went “to see a show,” according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune archives. Officer Pat Walling, who ran the force, told the Star Tribune that he said he was a businessman who was hosting two guests from out of town. Officers were charged $20 a piece to witness a “show that contained (accused (officials)) immoral acts.”

In August 1952, when the Minneapolis police raided the home on Groveland Ave. 428 in Minneapolis, it was just the beginning of years of legal efforts to prosecute prostitution throughout the Midwest. Archival photo circa 1910 courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

https://localtoday.news/mn/sex-trafficking-victims-helped-the-us-attorney-for-minnesota-convict-hundreds-of-predators-in-the-1950s-131101.html