If the police account of Robert Kraft’s behavior is accurate, it is difficult to imagine a better description than disgusting creep.
Not criminal mastermind. Not tortured celebrity. Not complicated antihero.
Just a fabulously wealthy man allegedly showing up at a strip-mall massage parlor twice in roughly 17 hours to receive sexual acts from employees, paying afterward, and then returning to his life as one of the richest and most powerful figures in American sports.
Police said Kraft visited the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida, on January 19 and January 20, 2019. According to investigators, their hidden cameras recorded sexual activity during both visits. The second visit occurred on the same day Kraft’s New England Patriots played the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game.
If you accept that police description, the whole thing is spectacularly grubby.
And money somehow makes it look worse rather than better.
Robert Kraft Had Essentially Unlimited Options
Kraft wasn’t some lonely guy scraping together $80 because he couldn’t imagine any other way to meet another human being.
He was a billionaire.
He had access to a lifestyle almost nobody on Earth experiences. Private transportation, luxury hotels, exclusive clubs, assistants, social connections, celebrity circles and the freedom to go practically anywhere he pleased.
And according to police, this extraordinarily wealthy man was chauffeured to a Florida massage parlor, received a sexual act, paid, left, and then came back the following morning and allegedly did it again.
There is something almost breathtakingly pathetic about that picture.
Not because consensual adult sexuality is inherently shameful. It isn’t. And not because wealth obligates someone to live like a monk.
It’s pathetic because of the combination of power, secrecy and tawdry behavior alleged here. Kraft possessed almost unimaginable social and financial freedom, yet police described conduct that sounds less like the glamorous indiscretion of a billionaire and more like the miserable routine of the creepiest guy in a strip-mall parking lot.
The money doesn’t dignify it.
It makes the contrast harder to ignore.
And Then Came the Lofty Talk About Respect for Women
After initially pleading not guilty and fighting the charges, Kraft released a public statement in March 2019.
“I am truly sorry,” he said, adding that he had disappointed his family, friends, coworkers and Patriots fans. He also said he had “extraordinary respect for women.”
That last line is almost impossible not to wince at.
If the police description of what happened inside Orchids of Asia is substantially accurate, soaring language about one’s extraordinary respect for women sounds painfully hollow.
Kraft also invoked the moral influence of his late wife, Myra, saying his “morals and soul” had been shaped by the woman with whom he’d spent 50 years.
Maybe he sincerely meant every word.
But public apologies should be judged alongside the behavior that necessitated them. And when somebody has been accused of conduct this embarrassing, polished statements about morals and respect have limited persuasive value.
There is something especially tiresome about powerful men getting caught in humiliating situations and suddenly discovering a vocabulary filled with family, respect, values and higher standards.
Where was all that elevated moral language before the trip to the massage parlor?
Kraft Wasn’t Convicted. That Matters.
This is where criticism of Kraft needs to remain intellectually honest.
Kraft did not plead guilty.
He was not convicted.
The criminal charges were eventually dropped.
And there was a very good constitutional reason the government’s case collapsed.
Police installed hidden cameras inside private massage rooms. The Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that law enforcement had failed to adequately minimize its surveillance of innocent customers. The court emphasized the extraordinary privacy intrusion involved in secretly recording people in rooms where they could reasonably expect to undress.
The appellate court called this kind of surveillance “extreme” and upheld the suppression of the recordings.
That ruling wasn’t some billionaire technicality that should simply be waved away because Kraft is unlikeable.
Fourth Amendment protections matter when the defendant is sympathetic, and they matter when the defendant is a billionaire accused of creepy behavior. Constitutional rights aren’t supposed to disappear when police believe they’ve caught someone doing something embarrassing.
Once the video was suppressed, prosecutors said they couldn’t establish the legally required elements necessary to continue the prosecution. They formally dropped Kraft’s charges in September 2020.
Good.
That’s how constitutional protections are supposed to work.
But there is an enormous difference between “the government cannot legally use this evidence against him” and “therefore the conduct police said they witnessed never happened.”
Those are not remotely the same conclusion.
Kraft received the legal protection to which every American is entitled.
The rest of us are still entitled to have an opinion about the behavior police described.
The Human-Trafficking Story Shouldn’t Be Exaggerated
There is another important correction because the early reporting surrounding the Florida raids became overheated.
Authorities initially discussed the broader operation in the context of suspected human trafficking. But prosecutors later acknowledged that investigators found no evidence of human trafficking at Orchids of Asia sufficient to produce trafficking charges.
That’s significant.
Nobody needs to falsely inflate this into a trafficking case to make Kraft look bad.
If you’re going to call somebody a disgusting creep, you should be able to explain why based on what is actually supported rather than stapling more horrifying allegations onto the story.
The reported conduct is grubby enough on its own.
The Legal Escape Doesn’t Make the Story Flattering
Kraft’s lawyers did their jobs exceptionally well.
They challenged the surveillance, persuaded courts that police had exceeded constitutional boundaries and eliminated the evidence that prosecutors needed.
That is not something Kraft should be criticized for. Anyone charged with a crime should be able to challenge illegally obtained evidence, regardless of wealth or reputation.
But winning that argument doesn’t magically transform the underlying police account into an admirable story.
There was no courtroom finding that Kraft was secretly volunteering at an animal shelter.
The case disappeared because the state’s principal evidence became legally unusable.
Even the prosecution’s filing dropping the case reportedly stated that there had been probable cause but that the remaining admissible evidence couldn’t prove every necessary element of the offense.
That’s an important victory in a courtroom.
It’s considerably less useful as a character reference.
The Whole Thing Looks Small and Sad
That’s ultimately what stands out about the Robert Kraft massage-parlor scandal.
Not glamour.
Not rebellion.
Not even particularly interesting debauchery.
Just smallness.
This is a man with wealth, power, access and status beyond what virtually anyone will ever possess. He’s spent decades occupying luxury boxes, shaking hands with presidents, lifting Super Bowl trophies and being treated as American sports royalty.
And according to police, twice in the span of less than a day he ended up receiving sexual services in a Jupiter massage parlor.
It’s hard to make that image dignified.
The billionaire status almost makes it more pitiful. All that money, all that access, all that social power, and this is allegedly what you’re doing with it?
Then comes the carefully polished apology about respect and morality.
Then an army of lawyers.
Then the constitutional challenge.
Then the evidence gets suppressed.
Then the charges disappear.
Legally, Kraft won.
Constitutionally, the courts may well have reached exactly the right result.
But character isn’t determined exclusively by what prosecutors can get admitted into evidence.
If the police account is substantially accurate, Robert Kraft didn’t emerge from this looking persecuted, heroic or misunderstood.
He looked like an immensely powerful man engaging in deeply sleazy behavior and then returning to the rarefied world of NFL ownership as though the whole miserable episode could eventually fade into trivia.
Maybe legally it did.
As a matter of personal judgment, it remains one of the most embarrassing episodes attached to one of the NFL’s most powerful owners.
And based on the conduct police described, “disgusting creep” isn’t an unreasonable opinion. It’s almost embarrassingly obvious.
References
The Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal’s opinion in State of Florida v. Robert Kraft describes the Orchids of Asia investigation, Kraft’s two recorded visits, the surveillance operation and the constitutional grounds for suppressing the footage.
Reuters reported Kraft’s March 2019 apology and police allegations concerning the surveillance footage.
The Associated Press reported that prosecutors dropped the charges in September 2020 after the courts barred use of the surveillance recordings.
Reuters reported that the prosecution’s dismissal stated there had been probable cause but that the admissible evidence was insufficient to prove the required elements of the alleged offense.
Palm Beach prosecutors acknowledged that the Orchids of Asia investigation did not establish the human-trafficking case initially suspected.