Commissioner in hot seat over red-light district photos

Michael Wiener

Michael Wiener

Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Wiener, a Republican, is in the hot seat after being photographed posing with several scantily-clad women in a sex-tourism area in the Philippines.

From KOB-TV, which broke the story:

“Photographer John Keatley has posted several pictures he took of Wiener standing with four scantily clad bar girls last month on his Internet blog.

“Weiner said nothing inappropriate happened and that he and his girlfriend were just walking through the district, waiting to catch a plane out of the city.”

And from the Albuquerque Journal:

Advertisement

“Wiener didn’t say whether he knew the area was a red-light district.

“‘I just wanted to take a quick tour,’ he said. ‘It’d be like if people to go to Las Vegas and they want to go to the casinos, but they don’t gamble. I was just curious. I walked from one end to the other.’

“Wiener said he ran into two Americans, and they wanted to take his picture.

“Keatley offers a different account. He said Wiener wanted photos taken as he posed with a group of scantily clad women in front of a bar and with a woman he introduced as his girlfriend.”

The photographer was documenting sexual exploitation in the Philippines. You can view the photos on his blog here.

Comments are closed.