![]() “Law enforcement weaponizes these statutes to raid these businesses, to target women of color, to target undocumented communities to quote-unquote clean up communities or quote-unquote save trafficking survivors, but we all know that police intervention is not a tool of justice nor does it serve any of the populations that we are working with.” “Sex workers are part of our community, massage workers are part of our community, and they’re not all the same but often both/either are undocumented and therefore excluded from the licensing procedures,” González-Rojas tells Next City. State Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, whose district includes several Queens neighborhoods close to Flushing, sponsored the bill They worked with lawyers at the New York Civil Liberties Union, immigration rights organizations and other legal aid groups to draft A8281. “We have been arrested simply for the fact we practice massage.”Ĭharlotte is a member of Red Canary Song, which describes itself as a “grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers and allies” based in Flushing. “For a very long time, the Asian massage workers in New York City have been experiencing the same old things, only too much,” said a massage worker with 20 years’ experience who identified herself only as Charlotte, during a February 25 press conference announcing a campaign in support of the new bill. Supporters see the changes as part of the broader work needed to fully decriminalize sex work and related lines of work that in real life exist on a spectrum and aren’t always so easily distinguished. The bill does not change licensing requirements for massage therapy or get rid of penalties for violations, but it does decriminalize unlicensed massage work and remove local police and district attorney enforcement. Newly introduced New York State Assembly Bill A8281 aims to change that. Asian immigrant women have disproportionately been subjected to these raids on their workplaces. ![]() In 2017, massage worker Yang Song fell four stories to her death during a police raid on a massage parlor in the Flushing section of Queens, New York. Massage workers have told researchers stories of police sexually assaulting those they arrest in these raids, or taking cash and other valuables and never returning them. ![]() But state law specifically directs local authorities to enforce licensing requirements for massage therapy - the only profession singled out.Īs a result, police across the state and particularly in New York City routinely raid massage parlors, and it can get pretty ugly. The education department and attorney general are responsible for investigating and prosecuting violations. Bouche mined internet sex forum reviews to identify 207 Houston-area massage parlors that appeared to be both illicit and blatantly open for erotic business.There are 36 licensed professions in the state of New York - including architect, midwife and athletic trainer. She then picked 32 massage parlors to study in-depth, placing hidden cameras on public streets near entrances and collecting 24-hour surveillance videos in December 2015.īased on reviews of that sample, she estimates that 2,869 men per day visit illicit massage parlors across Houston for sexual services that ranged in cost from $50 to $100. Most of the so-called illicit massage parlors - IMPs - are in suburban strip malls and were busiest between noon and 4 p.m. Tips? Reach the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-88 "Men are visiting these places for services on their lunch hour," Bouche said. The study underscores that these businesses are common, lucrative and incredibly easy to detect, and yet spa operators have been very difficult to stop even in Houston, where state and federal authorities have active anti-human trafficking task forces and use civil lawsuits to sue landlords and criminal front companies.įor more than a decade, Houston-based state and federal agents have busted large multinational rings that kidnapped and sold Mexican and Central American women and teens out of cantinas near the Port of Houston. They also have successfully gone after U.S. traffickers who used online advertising and to lure American teenagers into prostitution and then sold them to strangers. Related: Notorious brothel madam gets life in sex-trafficking caseīut locally and nationwide, federal prosecutors have made only a handful of criminal cases against the owners of erotic massage parlors who prey on mostly Asian immigrant victims, said Bouche, who also maintains a database of human trafficking prosecutions.
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