413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

“gorilla pimps,” but a lot of these guys, they lose a girl, a girl says, “You know screw this,
I’m out. I’m out of the game or I go with another pimp”, they’re just like “alright” and they
go recruit another girl. It really is a revolving door. Girls leave and come back and as long
as he sort of has a girl who he’s got working for him, he’s usually alright and again,
violence is definitely sort of part of this whole world, but a lot of this is the threat of
violence or more likely just the girl will say, “Yeah, I love him. If I stop doing this, I’ll lose
him.” Just crazy stuff like that, so a lot of it is just the domestic violence control situation.
(DC Prosecutor)
Buyers of street and Internet-facilitated prostitution are described as predominantly male and from all
socioeconomic backgrounds. Law enforcement believed that the majority of buyers are not preferential
abusers, but incidentally abuse juveniles they believe are adults (since they are marketed as adults and
may appear to be older due to their style of dress and makeup):
More or less the johns that are looking for service are not necessarily going out and
saying, “I hope to God that there is a 16-year-old out there” or “I cannot wait to find that
14-year-old out there.” Nine times out of ten they are looking for sex, they are looking for
an adult, they [are] looking to be discreet; they are not looking for juveniles. It is a
particular subculture that actually prefers that. (DC Law Enforcement Official)
Despite perceptions of preference or intent, buyers will buy minors by virtue of the fact that they are
marketed alongside adults. To some extent, buyers communicate and network with one another to share
tips on law enforcement activity and “reviews” of individuals selling sexual services:
These johns are smart. They have a lot of forums online and they take care of each other
as far as letting the others know what girls do what. Also, you can go on there and see
where the police have been. Like when we went out on the street they had on there, “The
police are out on the street, everybody be careful.” And that would make them tend to
look on the Internet for prostitutes so it just depends on what is going on. They really take
care of themselves. For instance, with massage parlors. They will let each other know
which massage parlors you can get full service from and everything and then they will
comment on it. (DC Law Enforcement Official)
Erotic Massage Parlors
Massage parlors are the second of three primary areas of UCSE activity in Washington, DC and have been
found to operate as fronts for prostitution and sex trafficking. As the illustrated in figure 4.4, there are no
erotic massage parlors located in the District proper; 47 however, there are numerous massage parlors in
Virginia and the number appears to be increasing in Western Virginia. Massage parlors in DC, similar to
other cities in the study, are operated primarily by Asian individuals and staffed by Asian women. Similar
to other cities in our study, connections have been found between Asian women in prostitution or being
sex trafficked out of massage parlors and New York (specifically Flushing, Queens, and Staten Island).
Massage parlors investigated in DC have not been found to recruit minors. Asian massage parlors (AMPs)
typically welcome customers from all racial and ethnic groups, unlike Latino brothels which limit their
customers to Latinos. However, as will be described, with increased law enforcement investigation, AMPs
have begun limiting their customer base in an effort to protect against detection by undercover law
enforcement. Officials have noted that some drugs may pass through AMPs, but they have not uncovered
any connections with drug or weapons trafficking or gang activity.
47 Although there are no massage parlors that appear on these maps, this does not mean that none exist in DC proper. It might just
be that none are listed on eroticmp.com.
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