413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

On average, what they are doing in a Korean massage parlor is the owner, who has yet to
be determined on any given Sunday, will get the $60 house fee. They collect all of that
and then on top of that the girl is supposed to keep her $120 tip, but what the brothel
owner does is charge the girls anywhere from $50 a day to $650 a week for the right to
live there. On top of that they will start charging them fees like, “Oh by the way, you did
not put your towels in the laundry basket so that is a $50 fine.” I would say that the
average Korean prostitute is making more depending on the house that she is working at,
how busy it is, and how strict the house rules are. (DC Law Enforcement Official)
Law enforcement has been proactive in executing search warrants and arresting individuals operating
inside of massage parlors, but one prosecutor described massage parlor cases as “next to impossible to
prosecute.” The inability to press sex trafficking charges is due in large part to the difficulty obtaining
information from the women inside the massage parlor about whether they are in a situation of force,
fraud, or coercion (i.e., being sex trafficked) or voluntarily engaged in sex work. Additionally, officials
noted that the women working inside the massage parlor rarely disclose information regarding other
individuals connected to the massage parlor, making it difficult for authorities to trace the criminal
network. As a result, DC authorities have turned to a public health/public nuisance approach to combat
massage parlors by going after the landlords that rent the spaces out to the massage parlors. As two
stakeholders explained,
Respondent 1: And here, there’s definitely a focus on arrests like there is in any police
context. So they’re good because you can execute a search warrant and always arrest a
couple of people, but you very rarely find a lot of money which is harder to make bigger
cases of. The police have done a good job of going in, executing search warrants, arresting
people to sort of stifle it. And this health and civil side have just been amazing—
essentially, focusing on the landlords. Going after the landlords who have been time and
time again opening …
Respondent 2: Creating a safe haven for the [massage] parlors to open with certain
landlords that are willing to be receptive. Once you squeeze those landlords, it squeezes
the network because they can’t rent from certain landlords who just won’t allow it and
once these landlords that might be a little bit more open to it feel the heat from law
enforcement which changes their calculus about how open they are to it. Once they’re not
open to it, then very few people are open to it and it doesn’t give the places air to breathe,
it doesn’t give them places to go. (DC Prosecutor and Service Provider)
As evidence of the success of the approach, officials noted that there are just a handful of massage parlors
left operating in DC and they appear to be connected to one another. Officials did note that there may
have been some level of displacement to the suburbs of Northern Virginia 48 and a change in the operating
structure of massage parlors. At the time of our interview, officials estimated there were approximately 80
massage parlors operating as fronts for prostitution and potential sex trafficking in the Northern Virginia
suburbs of Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Chantilly, Manassas, and Woodbridge.
In addition to some potential displacement, officials have also noted that with increased law enforcement
pressure, some AMPs started limiting their customer base and/or morphed into out-call escort services.
Officials explained that in the previous environment of low pressure from law enforcement, AMPs would
allow any customer inside the establishment. Now, there has been a tightening of the customer base to
limit detection by undercover law enforcement. As a result, the few AMPs left operating in the DC area
screen customers and only allow those customers in who have references and that can prove that they are
trustworthy. Officials believe that this pressure from law enforcement limits the profits of the AMPs.
Another AMP tactic is to switch into out-call escort services. As AMPs are disrupted, officials have noted
an increase in advertising for out-call Asian escorts on websites such as Backpage. Officials believe that
some of these women are part of a larger criminal network that would have sex trafficked them through
massage parlors. The changes noted in AMP operating tactics are considered by some DC officials as a
48 It was noted that officials in Maryland (specifically Montgomery County) have done a good job going after massage parlors so it
makes sense that most of the activity has shifted out to Northern Virginia.
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