413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

I think what we are really talking about is prostitution, and a very small percentage is
being trafficked. It’s not that easy to get to that point. Kind of like what I said earlier, they
might have done it, they might have come over here from let’s say China, they don’t know
what they are going to be doing, but they’re kind of on the hook for the ride to get here.
Then they get a massage license, maybe, then they start working in there, and it turns into
prostitution and it changes once they get arrested. And they get out [once] they’ve paid off
their debt, but then they come back to it, so it’s prostitution. Trafficking aspect is very
hard to prove because most of the girls don’t want to do this, but some of them are happy
to do it because they are sending money home. (Dallas Law Enforcement Official)
Law enforcement acknowledged the often blurred lines between women that were initially sex trafficked
in massage parlors and then voluntarily continued working in prostitution after they paid their debts.
According to officials, there are more benefits attached to the lifestyle of working in massage parlors than
for women and children trafficked by pimps on the street/Internet (although this is arguably relative).
Women working in massage parlors may have more freedom of movement, be granted gym memberships,
and be able to afford expensive clothes, depending on how long they have been employed by the massage
parlors, the massage parlor owner’s level of trust with the women, and whether the women’s debts are
paid off. This can make it difficult for law enforcement and service providers to provide services for them:
Sometimes you’ll get the younger ones that are actually in the massage parlors, but like I
said, those are going to be true trafficking victims. And they will stay in the business
because unfortunately, once they’ve worked in the business for so long, they’ve made a
certain amount of money, to try to get them to come out of that culture is extremely
difficult. I've interacted with some of the victims and they're living on a different scale.
But that’s their lifestyle that they’ve been accustomed to. So going to work at a regular
job, making regular money, that’s not an easy transition for them and they don’t go into
that very willingly. (Dallas Law Enforcement Official)
However, another official went on to challenge the definition of what would be considered “coercive”
under the legal elements necessary to prove that prostitution is coerced and therefore amounts to sex
trafficking:
So let’s say that it is a case with a vast majority of these girls in massage parlors that
they're not suffering from physical assault and threats and things of that nature. But it’s
that, it’s that game. After years and years of living in this, you don’t come from here
anyway. It’s that coercion. It’s that constant coercion. And so they may not have that lack
of freedom of movement, they can go to the gym, they can do this. But at the end of the
day, are they still under someone’s control Yeah. (Dallas Law Enforcement Official)
There was a clearer distinction between victim and offender when it came to cases of women previously
sex trafficked who then became massage parlor owners and were actively involved in the recruitment of
others into the underground commercial sex trade. In these cases, law enforcement could understand the
background of the offender as a prior victim, but charged them if they were actively involved in sex
trafficking others.
Whether the women working in massage parlors are trafficked or voluntarily involved in sex work,
massage parlors in Dallas have been found operating as fronts for illicit commercial sex and have been
found to be networked with one another in Dallas and in other cities and states. The owners of these
establishments make a significant amount of money and operate in a highly organized manner (relative to
street and Internet-based pimps and Latino brothels). The pricing structure within massage parlors in
Dallas is the same whether operated by foreign national Asians or Americans:
$60 to $100, you’re paying that automatically and that’s going to the house. And even in
the American places that we’ve had, that’s been the norm. Any massage parlor or
something like that, $60 to $100 goes to the house no matter what. The rest of the
money, within Americans, they usually keep it or they send it to a pimp but with the
Asians, it’s usually half theirs or it goes off to the trafficker. Or pay ‘em back for what they
consider to be their debt. (Dallas Law Enforcement Official)
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