Mark Bagshaw

The Blessed Company of Jesus Murders Mark Bagshaw

If you were a savvy entrepreneur with an idea for a business that trained working-class young women to be "kept" by carefully selected, highly successful businessmen who would underwrite your costs and pay you a finder's fee, what would you need to guarantee financial success? For starters, you would need to make your girls marketable by correcting their talk, taste, and teeth; then you would want to provide each girl with an appropriate place to entertain her rich boyfriend-ideally, a spacious and attractive living unit in one of your company's dedicated gated communities-within a reasonable drive of the boyfriend's major metro. You also would need to provide a way for your young women to rationalize their behavior to themselves: a way to find virtue and dignity in their daily lives. Probably, you would need to come up with a philosophical or religious overlay that would reassure each kept woman that she was not a kept woman at all, but a "life-partner"-a loving helpmate who provides a relaxing and supportive environment where she can devote her life to the comfort and pleasure of her male partner-all with the blessing of someone with unquestioned moral stature-some larger-than-life model of all that is loving and good. Someone like Jesus. You would need to include an uncomplicated religious pathway for your resident young ladies to find their way to your company's brand of Jesus. They would be highly motivated to do this because it would be in their personal self-interest: Without you and Jesus, there would be no prospect of a happy-ever-after: no lovely home with designer furniture and all mod cons, no expensive clothing and lingerie, no gourmet meals, no wine cellars, no guiltfree, glamorous lifestyles with expansive recreational facilities for things like spinning classes, yoga, and barre exercises; none of this would be possible unless a girl embraced the social and religious teachings of your company-The Blessed Company of Jesus. Finally, you would need to recognize that, even tricked out in all its luxurious sophistication, your sex-trafficking business is totally dependent on a perishable product: good figures and good looks-and the amorous desires of men attracted to them-won't last forever, even when wrapped in the most seductive packaging. So, when aging product has lost it appeal and reached its expiration date, The Blessed Company would need to remove it from the shelves-as cleanly, quietly, and economically as possible.