Trafficking Victims Forced Into Illicit Massage Business

There are over 9,000 known illicit massage parlours within the USA, with an estimated annual revenue of $2.5 Billion. This accounts for the second highest bracket of human trafficking.

Workers ​in illicit massage parlours are often criminalised or punished for a job they may have been forced into. While some sex workers make the conscious decision to enter the line of work, many within the illicit massage business are victims of human trafficking and therefore work under conditions of force, coercion, fraud and deceit. Due to the underground nature of the business, crime lords and business owners have the ability to protect themselves and their own identities amongst the vast network of people involved. This poses a major issue as employees lower in the supply chain bear the consequences, on top of working under inhumane conditions.

Trafficking cases within massage parlours accounted for the second highest bracket in the USA in 2017, (to escort services as the first) with 2,949 out of 32,000 cases of trafficking recorded by National Human Trafficking Hotline. There are over 9,000 known illicit massage parlours within the USA, with an estimated annual revenue of $2.5 Billion.

However, these figures are a small estimation in the total scope of the problem. Naturally it is a crime that is difficult to quantify, as victims often do not know they are being taken advantage of or are manipulated into keeping quiet​, through threats and control mechanisms​. The victims are statistically most often women from China or South Korea, in their 30s-50s who have had children, speak very little English and are in positions of debt or financial pressures, in which they would have been taken advantage of by seeing this opportunity.

The perpetrators may use these vulnerabilities to fraudulently or deceitfully recruit women. The recruitment advertising often hides the sexual element of the work and also understates the pay, leading victims into debt to their traffickers. In addition, they may use coercion, legal and emotional manipulation, cultural shaming or deportation threats to force victims into commercial sex on an on going basis. Typical scenarios may be when women are told these circumstances are “normal in the USA” or “police are corrupt and will not help them”, or using blackmail by threatening to tell victim’s families of their sexual experiences. Their access to money, communication and national identification are most often confiscated.

The underlying cause of illicit massage businesses is to feed larger crime networks. ‘Front’ businesses are operated, including nail salons and laundromats, in order to launder money through and move victims between. However customers who engage in this business create the demand and therefore sustain the business.

According to the Polaris Project report, there are some obvious indicators as to which parlours are operating commercial sex, even if they do not openly advertise it. If they do, they promote to primarily male clientele through online sites such as Backpage.com and Craigslist. They will typically offer lower market price reflecting the wages of the women, if any. There will be private presentation of the business, often with windows covered and locks on doors with buzzer entry only. A significant indicator of trafficked victims is when the women live on site of the parlour.

The most effective way of combating trafficking in the massage industry is effective and local-national scale legal framework, with increased risk for the traffickers themselves rather than their employees forced into criminality or prostitution, with thorough law enforcement and consistent regulation. In the USA, 46 states reference industry standards for massage orientated businesses, yet these are usually only regulated on county or city level. Business operations including open hours, profit transparency, landowner responsibility should be enforced, and online advertising banned. On a broader scale, cross-state investigations into trafficking and crime rings should aim at the root of the issue, as well as avoiding media framing of ‘sex workers’ as the criminals rather than victims.

Traffickers Target the Vulnerable After Natural Disasters

Traffickers will take opportunities to exploit vulnerable people, and natural disasters create high-risk scenarios. Traffickers target homelessness, and hundreds of people are left homeless with their property, lives and families exposed to recruiters. Tragically, rescue centres become a common point for traffickers to target, according to survivors in the Southern USA states of Texas, Louisiana, and Florida who periodically experience hurricanes.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre “one of the largest labor trafficking cases in United States history resulted from human trafficking that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina”. The higher demand for labour in the clean up and reconstruction of the affected area led to 5 men being recruited by traffickers and eventually paid out $14 million.

The threat of crime and exploitation needs to be built into the emergency and resilience strategies of societies against natural disasters. There is an abundance of agencies and organisations prepared to assist in disaster response, who must partner with local law enforcement and civil service to create awareness around human trafficking and protect the vulnerable against exploitation post disaster.

Read further reporting on natural disasters and human trafficking here.

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos presents a New Global Fund to Reduce Modern Slavery

Significant progress was made at last week’s 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos.

The discussions emphasised the alarming figures of today’s modern slavery crisis, with estimates stating 40.3 million people are currently in slavery worldwide, Gary Haugen, CEO of the International Justice Mission said there are more people in slavery today than were extracted from Africa over 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade. Haugen was one of the panelists at the forum who discussed a new fund, led by the US and UK, whose goal is to raise $1.5 billion (€1.2 billion) combat slavery. “The modern slavery problem is massive … but it’s more stoppable than it’s ever been,” commented United States Senator Robert Corker, chairman of Committee on Foreign Relations”. What is needed is a collective effort by companies and individuals and transparency in supply chains. Governments and consumers also have a role to play in holding business accountable.

Read further on the discussion on modern slavery at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos.

The Migrant Crisis and the rise in human trafficking

Has the #MigrantCrisis become a #HumanTrafficking crisis? Read our latest on the escalating situation in Libya and the absence of appropriate international intervention: https://humantraffickingexperts.com/blog/

Driven by poverty, thousands of migrants have attempted the perilous journey from Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean. Despite the traditional focus on deaths at sea – claiming over 2,257 lives in the first half of 2017 alone –, there is increasing evidence that transit on dry land can also be fatal. Several reports have confirmed that stranded migrants are deprived of food and drink, sold for as little as $400 in discreet warehouse auctions, and are customarily subjected to torture and abuse by their captors. Following the clampdown on sea crossings by the European Union in an attempt to stem flows to the continent, 19,452 individuals have been intercepted by the Libyan coastguard and sent to detention centres in 2017 alone, many of whom have fallen prey to transnational criminal networks. The unparalleled concentration of ‘failed’ migrants in Libya has been accompanied by a rise in human trafficking and modern slavery victims.
 
Given the complexities of the migrants’ journey, it is a frequent occurrence that the definitions of trafficking and smuggling become obscured. Often victims will believe they are being smuggled but become trafficked through transit or at their destination country. Factors such as political instability, economic pressures and environmental issues are often the catalysts for migrants seeking to come to Europe. Illegal migrants often rely on organised criminal networks to facilitate their passage to Europe, leading to higher risk of exploitation and further blurring of the distinction between trafficking and smuggling. The migrant crisis in Libya provides a unique yet unfortunate opportunity for clarification: the controls aimed at ending the smuggling of migrants to Europe has been the catalyst of human trafficking inland.
 
The mounting public outcry at the extent of the crisis and uninterrupted progression has gradually set the European Union in motion, but has failed to create momentum in anti-trafficking initiatives. The only step to this effect is the recent agreement between Italy and Libya to create an operations centre against modern slavery in Libya. However, specific information on the centre’s concrete objectives, strategy and operation has not yet been made public.  After a scathing report by Amnesty International condemning the European Union’s role in enabling human trafficking and modern slavery in Libya via its support to the Libyan coastguard, it is hoped that the EU will be pushed into further action.