It's the defense most people would like to argue: Pornography is simply a hobby. A New Jersey physics professor is making a case for a very 'Bad Teacher'. With hobbies including scuba diving and dreams of working with theater lighting, vice says a professor of physics is the mastermind behind a prostitution website aimed at connecting prostitutes with clients.
The website is said to have catered to roughly 200 prostitutes and 1,200 clients. Kind of like the prostitution form of Linked In, the site worked to couple those who provide services with the clients looking to be serviced.
The arrest of 68-year-old David Flory went down at, of all places, a Starbucks in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The professor is charged with 40 counts of promoting prostitution, a teacher in physics at Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) since 1969 and once a director of FDU's School of Natural Sciences.
The event doesn't shed the best light on the school which has employed the professor for many years.
He's married -- and also a father of three. While the teacher's accused of running a prostitution website, all three of his kids are female.
The professor's website, "Southwest Companions", had been targeted in an Albuquerque vice investigation over the last six months after New Mexico cops received tips from what law enforcement says is both prostitutes and johns.
Police say the Fairleigh Dickinson University teacher's prostitution website has been operating for about three years -- pumping away with roughly 1,400 members that have included 200 working prostitutes and about 1,200 johns as clients. New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado have apparently served as the 'hot spots': Most of the Southwest Companions members were in the Albuquerque-Santa Fe area, but other online postings originated in Phoenix and Denver.
It would figure that Flory's wife is a psychotherapist. She specializes in eating disorders, with the couple living in an apartment on New York's Upper West Side--just miles from the FDU campus. The New Mexico connection? The couple has a vacation house in Santa Fe called Casa de Los Arboles, or "house of the trees." It seems that was also a "house" related to something else.
To make matters ridiculously dumb, the alleged prostitution website didn't make a lot of money. The AP reports that Albuquerque Police Lt. William Roseman told the news agency: "He [Flory] said he was not in this for the money."
Apparently, then, the professor must've been in it for the prison sentence.
"He flat-out told us his thing was he wanted to create a safe place for prostitutes and johns to get together. He called it a hobby."
The New Mexico police department also believes Flory has been enjoying the services of some of those prostitutes when traveling to New Mexico.
Flory apparently had his own bizarre twist on security: The Southwest Companions website was using three levels: "Probation", "Verified" and "Trusted". Roseman told the AP: "In order to get off "Probation" you had to sleep with one of the prostitutes on the website and she in turn would tell the moderator [Flory] what acts occurred, how much they paid and any comments,"
Funny the professor should be utilizing that term "Probation". He'll probably be getting very familiar with it in a different capacity--though maybe not for years down the line.
Lt. Roseman told the AP: "That opened you up to "Verified" status. Once you got into verified status that opened you up to different girls available. Then, some would e-mail the moderator, 'This is the act, this is how much he paid, these are my comments about it.'"
After a certain number of prostitutes, the idea was that site members would move into "Trusted" status which would then open up access to website features like training videos on -- ironically -- what to do if caught by police.
Oh, and "Trusted" members could also rate prostitutes.
Fairleigh Dickinson University won't confirm whether the accused 'bad teacher' has been suspended from his job at the school.