Athanasaw v. United States

Background

A seventeen-year-old girl, Agnes Couch, answered an Atlanta advertisement and signed a contract to work as a chorus girl in Tampa. The theater operators and their Atlanta booking agent provided her railroad ticket and employment. She testified that the theater scene involved heavy drinking, cursing, sexual suggestions, and that one defendant made improper proposals to her. The girl was indicted under the federal White Slave Act for being transported “for the purpose of debauchery.” A demurrer was overruled, the defendants were tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison terms.

Reasoning

The Court treated the key question as the defendants’ intent when they furnished the transportation: did they intend to induce the girl to give herself up to debauchery? The opinion, relying on a companion case sustaining the statute’s constitutionality, explained that “debauchery” need not be limited to proof of sexual intercourse. The Court approved jury instructions that asked whether the employment and the influences surrounding the girl would naturally and necessarily lead her toward sexual immorality, and it held those instructions were justified by the statute and the facts.

Real world impact

The ruling affirms that people who arrange transportation and placement of young women into workplaces or settings that tend to produce sexual immorality can be criminally prosecuted under the Act. Prosecutors may rely on the character of the workplace and surrounding influences to prove criminal intent, not only direct proof of intercourse. The convictions and sentences of the theater operators were affirmed.