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The horrific Atlanta massage parlor shootings captured America’s attention, at least for a while. However, there’s an aspect to this tragedy that’s not being widely discussed. The Illegal Massage Business (IBM) is one of the largest vectors for human trafficking.
The Illegal Massage Business
There’s a serious chance that some of the targeted Atlanta massage parlors were part of this. All three were listed in Rubmaps, an erotic review site that allows users to search for and review illicit massage parlors. Based on this and other clues (including statements made by the shooter and released by the police), it is possible that one or more of these massage parlors was part of the United States’ $2.8-billion-a-year illegal massage parlor industry.
The industry is thought to be the second-largest offender when it comes to human trafficking. Experts at Polaris, the organization that provides the nation’s human trafficking hotline, keep statistics on where calls from trafficking victims come from. Only escort services have a larger number of calls for help from people who are being sex-trafficked. There are almost 10,000 illegal massage parlors in the U.S., and the employees often provide sexual services.
By the way, it’s important not to confuse the massage parlors that offer “happy endings,” with legitimate massage businesses. Unfortunately, illegal massage parlors take advantage of this ambiguity.
Years ago, the sexual activity that goes on in an illegal massage parlor would usually be obtained in a red-light district brothel. Today, these businesses operate out in the open, next to legitimate businesses.
What’s Wrong with Letting Consenting Adults Do What They Want?
Are Americans being too puritanical about consenting adults and sex work?
It’s an interesting question. According to many sources, the illegal massage industry spends a great deal of money working to convince people that there’s nothing wrong with what they do.
The public relations efforts of the illegal massage industry are in some ways reminiscent of the tobacco industry back in the 1950s and 1960s. Like the tobacco industry, the illegal massage parlors have an incentive to create a well-oiled publicity machine designed to convince everyone that there’s nothing wrong with their product.
But is there nothing wrong with what goes on in massage parlors? Take a look at what life is frequently like for women who work there.
A Common Experience for a Sex Worker in a Massage Parlor
The woman in the following example is a composite of what has frequently happened to those who work in massage parlors, based on information compiled by Polaris and other organizations.
There’s a good chance she was born in Thailand, South Korea, or China. While still in her home country, she answered an ad, probably on the Internet, that promised her a well-paying job in the hospitality industry in the United States.
The ad played on her dreams of making a good life in America, the land of opportunity. However, she’d have to pay the agent responsible both for finding her the job and for the paperwork and transportation costs of getting her to America.
To pay these costs, she probably used up any savings she had, and maybe she borrowed money from her parents and relatives. She didn’t worry about this borrowing because after all, she’d be making so much money that it would be easy to pay everyone back. Or so she was told.
However, once in the United States, her dreams became a nightmare. The easy, lucrative job she was expecting to have in a hotel or restaurant turned out to be working in a massage parlor.
She quickly discovered that her job was to have sex with customers as often as 10 times a day or more. If she didn’t comply, she’d be subject to coercion, including beatings, starvation, and even threats to the lives of her family back home.
Why Doesn’t She Leave?
Typically, her trafficker takes away her passport and other identifying documents. Further, many of the massage parlors are part of criminal networks. She may be moved to different sites in different states, so she doesn’t have a chance to develop supportive relationships.
She’s also unlikely to go to the police. Her trafficker convinced her that the police would treat her as a criminal and that working at the massage parlor was better than being subject to what she was told, was the dreaded, cruel, frightening American criminal justice system.
She’s also probably will not confide about her plight to any of her clients. First, she may not have the language skills. But even assuming she does, traffickers have a devilish way of assuring she doesn’t admit to what’s going on.
Frequently, traffickers will arrange for “ringers,” that is fake clients, who offer to rescue the girl. If she’s receptive, the ringer reports this to the trafficker, and that means punishment for her, whether beatings, starvation, torture, or threats to her family.
The woman knows that she must say she likes and enjoys what she’s doing. If she doesn’t, the ringer will reveal this to the trafficker, and punishment will follow.
If the sexual activity that goes on in massage parlors were truly about two consenting adults, a case can be made for having society accept it. However, the odds of this being the case are vanishingly small.
Evidence is still accumulating, and each spa's possible connection to sex trafficking is not yet fully understood. But it's possible that some of the victims of the Atlanta shooting had a difficult, painful life even before their final tragedy. Don’t fall for the propaganda that what goes on in illegal massage parlors is about consenting adults. All too frequently, it’s not.
