Sportswriter faces prostitution charge

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jul 30, 2009

LAWRENCE, Mass. -- A veteran sports reporter for New Hampshire's largest newspaper was accused Wednesday of running a prostitution ring in two states and Canada featuring women who had auditioned for him.

Kevin Provencher advertised his prostitution ring's services on Craigslist and other Web sites and rented hotel rooms in Andover, Mass., and in New Hampshire where the women would have sex for money, prosecutors said. He set up a similar operation in Canada, Essex Assistant District Attorney Michelle Defeo told the New Hampshire Union Leader, the newspaper for which he has worked as a sportswriter for more than two decades.

Provencher, 50, was arrested at his Manchester, N.H., home early Wednesday and was taken to Massachusetts, where he pleaded not guilty in Lawrence District Court to two counts of deriving support from prostitution. A judge ordered him held on $10,000 cash bail. Defeo said Provencher hired two women after setting up a Web site for an escort service.

Provencher has been suspended from the Union Leader, where he has been its primary motorsports reporter since 1990. He also has been the newspaper's beat reporter covering the Manchester Monarchs since the American Hockey League franchise's 2001 inception. He has won four New Hampshire Sportswriter of the Year awards from the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.