Help me out here. Anybody? Bueller? The "Seattle Incident"

I'm still profoundly flummoxed as to why this ever went anywhere.

Here's the story: Supposedly, when the Japanese Nichiren Shoshu priest who would go on to later become High Priest Nikken Abe (and excommunicate that fat bastard Ikeda for being a pompous ass) came to the US, to Seattle, on some business decades ago, he was involved in a kerfuffle with some prostitutes, who supposedly called the police to complain that he hadn't paid them the money he owed for contracting with them to take pictures of them.

1. Has prostitution EVER been legal in Seattle since, say, 1950? Prostitution is a crime.

2. Police routinely arrest prostitutes for engaging in prostitution, because #1.

3. The first rule of prostitution is that customers pay in advance.

4. If there's a problem with a customer, the prostitute calls her pimp, not the police (see #2).

So HOW could this POSSIBLY have happened as the SGI claims??? Am I missing something here?