In 1983, a sock-footed Tom Cruise slid across a hardwood floor to the opening notes of "Old Time Rock and Roll." Wearing a pair of sunglasses, a button down shirt, and his dance scene quickly became one of the most recognizable scenes in movie history, and Risky Business became a movie that glorified prostitution, pandering, and operating a brothel as a high school student's creative entrepreneurship.

Unfortunately for teenage boys in Oklahoma, being a pimp or running a brother is not a legal form of entrepreneurship, and facilitating prostitution is not, perhaps, the finest way to fund one's college education.

Earlier this month, police arrested a 24-year-old University of Central Oklahoma student on a complaint of running a brothel in his Edmond apartment. Ali Hussain Al Yousuf was arrested after an undercover police officer responding to a Craig's List ad met a woman at Yousuf's apartment, where she agreed to have sex in exchange for $150. 

Under Oklahoma law, it is a misdemeanor to "[keep] any disorderly house, or any house of public resort by which the peace, comfort or decency of the immediate neighborhood is habitually disturbed" (21 O.S. 1026). Subsequent statutes prohibit a person from allowing his or her home to be used for prostitution:

"It shall be unlawful in the State of Oklahoma . . . [to] knowingly abet the crime of prostitution by allowing a house, place, building, or parking lot to be used or occupied by a person who is soliciting, inducing, enticing, or procuring another to commit an act of lewdness, assignation, or prostitution or who is engaging in prostitution, lewdness, or assignation on the premises of the house, place, building, or parking lot" (21 O.S. 1028).

While the UCO student is looking at a misdemeanor charge for allegedly allowing prostitution in his home, an 18-year-old Tulsa man is in much more serious trouble. Police responding to a domestic abuse call in which a woman said her boyfriend threatened her and her mother with a gun during an argument discovered an alleged case of human trafficking. During their investigation of 18-year-old Dashawn Patrick Hervey, two minor girls came forward and said that the teen had forced them to have sex with "multiple men" in exchange for money. They said he threatened violence against them if they did not go along with the prostitution, and that he confiscated all the money after the acts were accomplished.

Use of force or fear to coerce prostitution is human trafficking. However, even if the girls had not been threatened in order to compel them to engage in prostitution, any person under the age of 18 engaged in commercial sex is considered to be a victim of human trafficking.

While maintaining a house of prostitution is a misdemeanor, human trafficking of a minor is a felony punishable by 15 years to life in prison.