Woman charged in bizarre York prostitution case: I didn't break the law. What experts say

Brittany Abosede said it was 4:58 a.m. Nov. 19 when she was at the door to room 130 at the Days Inn on Route 30 in Manchester Township.

She didn’t knock. She never does, she said. Instead, she called her client, a man who had contacted her for her services through a website called Tryst.Link, an online escort directory that advocates for sex workers and others who provide more specialized services.

At 34, this is what Abosede said she does for a living. She provides role playing and other fetishistic acts. She said she doesn’t have sex with her clients, something she believes disqualifies her as a prostitute.

The man answered the phone but did not say anything, she recalled, “just silence on the line.” She texted him, “You’re playing games.”

Then he opened the door and let her in, she said.

About half an hour later, Abosede was fleeing the motel’s parking lot, a bullet striking her Nissan Rogue as she left.

She called 911 and drove across the highway to the parking lot of a Sheetz convenience store.

She waited for the police to arrive.

Some hours later, she would be in York County Prison.

The man who allegedly took a shot at her car would be in a hospital.

She wondered: How did this happen?

Her side of the story

The story, as they say, went viral. The York Daily Record’s account of charges filed in the incident, culled from a report from Northern York County Regional Police, was picked up by Yahoo! News and found an audience.

It might have had something to do with the headline on the story that appears in Google: “Shot fired after golden shower incident at York hotel.”

Within hours of the article being posted, it spread. Abosede’s mugshot was posted on Facebook and other sites. (The police posted her mug shot with its news release on Crimewatch. The York Daily Record, as a matter of policy, does not routinely publish mugshots.) One website listed her previous criminal record, which dates to 2011, and posted a reproduction of a flyer that reported her as a missing person in January of this year.

Abosede said she was upset. She felt she was being treated unfairly, branded as a prostitute and a criminal and just a bad person. She wanted to tell her side of the story.

'I was incarcerated'

Abosede is originally from Washington, D.C. The criminal complaint filed against her listed her address as Washington, but she said she was living in Pittsburgh at the time of her arrest.

She had worked as a home health care aide but said the pay for that work ― about $15 an hour ― was not a living wage. So, she worked a side gig, offering her services on Tryst.Link to patrons who wish to be dominated or humiliated.

She said she was on her way to New York to catch a flight to the Dominican Republic on Nov. 20.

“I never made it,” she said. “I was incarcerated.”

'Have a nice night'

The story of what happened when she arrived in York was told in criminal complaints. The police reported that a 66-year-old man from Harrisburg named David Butts contacted her and contracted her service for $300.

Abosede tells a more detailed version of the story than that contained in the criminal complaints.

She said she performed her specialty, the act that Butts had contracted for on the website. She insisted that during the act, there was no sexual contact between her and her client.

She had been there 10, maybe 15 minutes, and her job was done, she said. He asked her to stay longer. She said she’d need more money. She said he told her he left his wallet in his car and wasn’t inclined to fetch it. She told him, “No more money, no more time.”

She told him to “have a nice night” and left the room.

'Police coming'

While Abosede sat in her car, eating chips and scrolling through TikTok videos, waiting for it to warm up, she heard a knock on her window.

It was Butts, she said. He was naked and was tapping the barrel of a semi-automatic pistol on her window, she said.

He accused her of stealing his wallet, she said. She said he asked, “Where’s my (bleeping) money?”

She replied, “I don’t have your wallet. I didn’t steal anything.”

He insisted, she said. She turned on her dome light to show him that his wallet wasn’t in her car. He told her to get out of her car and go to his room until he found his wallet, she said. She told him, “I’m not going to your room.”

She said she tried to talk him down, but he was having nothing to do with it. She eased her car into reverse and backed out of the parking space. She put it in drive and began to drive away when a gunshot rang out. “I heard a shot, and I took off,” she said.

The bullet struck the pillar of the rear passenger-side window of her car, shattering the plastic sheathing and leaving an indentation in the steel frame.

As she left the parking lot, she called 911. She was still on the line with the dispatcher when she pulled into the parking lot at the Sheetz on Toronita Street across Route 30 from the motel.

She texted the guy to let him know, “Police coming.”

He texted, “You tried to rob me and run me over.”

She denied both accusations.

'Never had anything like that happen before'

Why did she call the police? “He shot at me. I could have lost my life. So, I called the police,” she said. “I never had anything like that happen before.”

When the Northern York County Regional Police officer arrived, she told him what happened, more or less. She said she told him she stopped in the parking lot to rest and was watching TikTok videos when the man tapped on her window and began cursing at her. She told the officer that as she drove away, the man took a shot at her. She said she left out the part about going to his room and doing what she did there. She put it this way: “I didn’t say I was there for this and that.”

The officer, according to the criminal complaint, wasn’t buying it. It didn’t add up, he told her. She didn’t know that Northern Regional had created a special detail to police hotels along Route 30 for criminal activity.

She said she asked the officer whether she needed a lawyer, and he replied that she didn’t, that she just had to be honest with him.

She told the officer she went to the motel “to do an act and get paid for it.” She told him she hadn’t had sex with the man, so she didn’t believe she did anything that warranted a criminal charge. “If I’d high-tailed it off,” she said, “it wouldn’t make sense.”

When police got to room 130, according to the criminal complaint, the man had already left. They traced Butts through the motel registration, and Sgt. Cody Becker gave him a call. He told the sergeant he saw Abosede reach under her seat and produced “something dark,” according to the criminal complaint. He panicked, he said. Abosede said she did not reach under her seat and that she kept her hands where Butts could see them, fearing he would shoot her if she did anything to upset him.

Butts told Sgt. Cody Becker he didn’t remember firing his gun, according to the criminal complaint. He also told the sergeant he found his wallet in the motel parking lot.

Becker asked him to come to the police station to give a statement, and he agreed, according to the criminal complaint.

On the way, according to the criminal complaint, Butts got into a car accident, rolling his car onto its roof, and wound up in the hospital to be treated for his injuries.

Police went to the scene and seized Butts’ iPhone and a Sig Sauer 9mm handgun.

Previously: Police: Shot fired after golden shower incident at York hotel, 1 charged with prostitution

She felt she didn't do anything wrong

Abosede was taken into custody that morning, charged with various misdemeanors, including prostitution, theft, false statements to police and possession of drug paraphrenia. Police found “two smoking devices containing marijuana residue and a marijuana grinder,” according to the criminal complaint.

She was jailed on $5,000 bail. Unable to initially make bail, she remained in York County Prison for four days.

She denies the charges, especially the prostitution and theft charges. She said she had no sexual contact with Butts. And under the Pennsylvania Criminal Code ― section 5902 ― prostitution is defined as performing sexual acts for money. Sexual acts, according to the code, include “sexual intercourse and deviate sexual intercourse … and any touching on the sexual or other intimate parts of an individual for the purpose of gratifying sexual desire of either person.”

Abosede said she did not perform anything like that.

“I felt I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “I didn’t perform any sexual acts. This is what he wanted, and this is what was done. ... I never had sex with him. And I don’t sleep with people.”

As far as the theft charge, she said, “If I had robbed him,” she said, “I wouldn’t have been sitting there in my car.”

Northern York County Regional Police Chief David Lash dismissed Abosede's contention that she did not commit the crime of prostitution. Abosede, he said, performed an act that provided sexual gratification for her client for money. "That's the charge," he said. "That's the definition of prostitution." He also noted that Butts was charged with patronizing a prostitute.

Butts was arrested eight days later, on Nov. 27, charged with aggravated assault and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, both felonies. He was also charged with simple assault, reckless endangering another person and, as Lash mentioned, patronizing a prostitute, all misdemeanors. Butts did not respond to messages seeking his side of the story.

He was released on unsecured bail of $75,000.

Charges against Butts: Man charged with shooting at alleged prostitute after 'golden shower' at York area hotel

What the law says about her claim

Abosede's assertion that she shouldn't be charged with prostitution because she had no sexual contact with Butts raises an interesting legal question. It is true that the act she performed is not specified in the criminal code as a sexual act, and court rulings in Pennsylvania and elsewhere are vague on defining what exactly constitutes sexual activity.

"There is no case law directly on point," said Shea Rhodes, co-founder and director of the Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE Institute) at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law.

One case that endeavored to define sexual activity as it pertains to prostitution was a York County case ― Commonwealth vs. Cohen ― that made its way to the state Supreme Court. In that case, the operator of a massage parlor argued, among other things, that so-called "happy ending" massages did not constitute sexual activity as defined by the criminal code. The court admitted that the term sexual activity was not defined by the statute, but ruled that it was "obliged to construe that term according to its common and approved usage." Under that standard, the court ruled that "there is no doubt" that such activity fell under the statute's intent and that the law "is not unconstitutionally vague so as to cause appellant to seriously believe that she was not providing some form of sexual gratification for the payment of money."

The ruling also cited "common understanding and practices" in defining sexual activity, which is akin to the former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter's definition of obscenity: "I know it when I see it."

The judgment that has to be made, according to Stuart Green, distinguished professor of law and Nathan L. Jacobs Scholar at Rutgers University, "What else could be going on?"

Green, author of "Criminalizing Sex: A Unified Liberal Theory," among other books, said the argument could be made that Butts did not seek the act as police allege for sexual gratification, but to fulfill some other psychological need. It would depend on the intent and would have to be developed through his testimony.

Green, though, did note that Abosede did call police and that charging her may be counterproductive.

"She was the one who was shot at," he said. "You want people to call police when they are victims of violence. She was assaulted by someone with a gun. She should be able to report that to police without fear of being arrested."

Race 'had nothing to do with it'

Abosede said she believes there is an element of racism involved in the case. She is Black and she said Butts is white. She was arrested and charged immediately, and Butts remained free while police investigated.

Lash said police charged Abosede immediately because police already had her in custody and that since she listed an address from out of state, officers believed they had to charge her immediately. He said Butts was charged later because he was in the hospital recovering from his injuries suffered in his car accident and "we didn't want the county to foot the bill to babysit him in the hospital." He was charged once he was discharged from the hospital, he said.

Race, he said, "had nothing to do with it."

'I don't deserve this'

Abosede said she is just coming to grips with what happened.

“I’m just now understanding how I was shot at, and I wound up in jail and how I ended up with a list of charges,” she said, sitting at table at the café in Wegman’s in Lancaster. She didn’t want to return to York County. “They didn’t find a weapon in my car. The only thing I have is mace. That’s it.”

She said, “I don’t deserve this.”

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com. 

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Woman accused in bizarre York prostitution case tells her side