Congress cuts funding to embattled anti-poverty group Acorn

Two conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp have rocked support for one of America's largest anti-poverty groups, with ties to Barack Obama, after secretly filming staff offering to help smuggle underage girls into the country to work as prostitutes, and giving advice on establishing a brothel.

Congress has cut off tens of millions of dollars in funding to the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (Acorn), which has been targeted by the rightwing for its work in helping the poor with housing and mobilising disenfranchised communities to vote, who then tend to support the Democrats.

Obama once acted as a lawyer for Acorn and volunteered for a group funded by the organisation.

The two activists, Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, covertly filmed at various Acorn offices around the country while dressed as a prostitute and pimp seeking advice on tax and housing issues involving the sex trade.

One of the videos, filmed at an Acorn office in San Diego, appeared to show an employee, Juan Carlos, offering to help smuggle a dozen 13-year-old girls from El Salvador to work in a California brothel. In San Bernardino, another Acorn worker, Tresa Kaelke, was heard responding to explicit questions about using underage girls as prostitutes. She said it was illegal to run a brothel using minors, but went on to advise the pair on how to hide the source of the earnings.

"It's cash. No one will know. It never passes through the girls' hands," she told them. She suggested disguising the brothel as a spa or massage parlour. "You have to make it look good," she said.

An Acorn official in New York, on being asked about what to do with the earnings from prostitution, advised burying the cash in a tin in a backyard.

What has shocked many Americans about the videos is the ease with which some Acorn workers in the videos discussed the trafficking of girls for sex work. None expressed outrage, threatened to call the police or apparently took any other action to protect the young women, although Acorn says the police were called to other offices where Giles and O'Keefe attempted to seek advice.

Acorn has conceded that grave errors were made and has sacked the offending workers in the videos. But it has hit back by saying the sting was part of a long campaign by rightwingers to discredit it because it gets the poor to vote.

Acorn's chief organiser, Bertha Lewis, said: "I think the right - the Republicans in particular - are mad as hell at the fact that Democrats are in power. They are mad as hell that poor people are participating, and this is their way of fighting back - lies, innuendo, smears. They try to blunt any progressive policies."

Acorn was targeted by Republicans during last year's presidential election campaign, and accused of systematic fraud as its volunteers registered large numbers of people to vote across the US. Acorn did report 11 of its volunteers to the authorities in Miami, where they are being prosecuted, but denied that the irregularities were widespread or systematic.

Giles, 20, said she targeted the organisation out of love of country and God. "Why go after Acorn? Because I love America, I love God, and corrupt institutions don't help that," she said.