[Loyalist]

I was thinking that these groups might have been used to arrange sexual offences and transport offenders across state borders either to commit same or obstruct justice. Would that fall under RICO?

[BlackElk]

RICO prosecutions or civil suits cannot be sustained without adequate proof of at least two underlying crimes (called predicate acts) that are specified in the RICO act. I forget what all of them are but there are not many and the most often and easiest to use are either wire or mail fraud or extortion under the federal Hobbs Act. Abortion mills usually use the extortion ploy against pro-life Rescuers by claiming that shutting them down in a Rescue will deprive them of income. This conveniently ignores the disconnect from normal extortion law in that the pro-lifers did not carry away the proceeds for their own use, but never mind.

Taking women across state lines for immoral purposes (Victorian euphemism for illicit sex and usually prostitution) is a violation of federal "White Slavery Acts." I know of no statute prohibiting the sending of lavender queens across state boundaries to indulge in their hobbies. The hobbies may well be crimes especially when perpetrated against the young but the crossing of state borders would not seem to be. Liberals call that the "right to travel" which was discovered by the late Justice William Brennan rooting around in the liberal toolbox of the Fourteenth Amendment "equal protection" clause in the matter of Shapiro vs. Thompson (ca. 1968-70) involving the former Connecticut six-month waiting period before residents of other states could collect colossal Connecticut welfare payments by moving to Connecticut from, say, Mississippi. In any event, crossing state borders as such, regardless of purpose, does not seem to violate RICO.