And Other Immoral Purposes
And Other Immoral Purposes is a novel about the 1971 criminal case, United States v. Raymond Auler, et al. It is the story of Ray Auler and Craig Poulter, two men charged by the United States with transporting four female strippers from Chicago to Saigon and imprisoning them in a Saigon villa for "prostitution, debauchery, and other immoral purposes." The book, for the most part, is based on fact, buttressed by the author's educated imagination in reconstructing forgotten or unknown details. The author, Barry Freeman, was actually Auler’s defense attorney in the case, and the book's chapters are divided between his detailed account of the defense and Poulter’s recollections of the facts as he revealed them.
The story unfolds during the early 1970s in Wisconsin, Saigon, and Chicago, against a backdrop of the Vietnam era turmoil that then permeated the country's domestic landscape. It begins In December 1970, as Americans, Poulter and Auler, watch four female discontented exotic dancers exit through the open gates of a Saigon villa owned by American expat, Jim Cotton. Auler had hired the ladies in Chicago to entertain GIs in a new Saigon nightclub, adjacent to the villa. The exiting strippers go to the US Embassy, where they tell of their dramatic escape from sexual slavery, forced upon them by the three Americans. A few days later, assailants kidnap Auler and Poulter at night and throw them on a private plane bound for a place unknown.
The story reverts to the colorful series of events preceding Poulter's arrival in Saigon, beginning with his employment as Auler's assistant in his Miilwaukee theatrical agency, representing entertainers on Wisconsin’s strip club circuit in a dark world of sex and show business. He follows Auler to Saigon and works for Madam Chung, booking shows into war zone US military bases. From Chung’s employ, Poulter moves into the villa with Auler and Cotton, where he experiences ten days of life with the four Chicago ladies.
The kidnapping ends when Auler and Poulter arrive, alive and well, in the dead of night, in Bangkok. They soon return home to face federal Mann Act charges in Chicago, and Auler retains attorney, Barry Freeman, to represent him. Freeman's chapters describe the building of Auler's defense, preparing for trial, and the sensational US District Court trial itself. The book concludes with the colorful trial, and its bazaar ending in the United States Court of Appeals.
Throughout And Other Immoral Purposes , the reader is provided with insights, observations, and philosophical musings, gained from the author's forty-seven years of experience in the practice of law. It is humorously thoughtful and entertaining for all readers, awakens memories of the Vietnam and Watergate eras for those who were around at the time, and educates and stimulates those who were not. It raises timely issues, like the criminalization of immorality; and questions the hypocrisy of this prosecution as well as the integrity of the United States system of justice.