On May 29, massage parlors in some 19 states were hit in simultaneous raids, resulting in the arrest of 46 pimps and procurers—both Chinese and American—who enslaved Chinese girls into sexually servicing hundreds of men in illegal massage businesses (IMBs).
It was a major assault on the scum who lure young women to the US from China with the promise of a better life, only to imprison them in the illegal sex trade. Victims, most of whom do not speak English and have no way of seeking help from the authorities, are often forced to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, having sex with strange men—as many as 1,500 a year.
“This is so prevalent, and it is literally right under our noses.”
Called “Coast to Coast,” the operation involved more than 150 police departments as well as private anti-trafficking groups like the Safe House Project, Our Rescue, Street Grace, Flock Safety and others.
“For too long, human trafficking festered in the shadows of our communities while victims were fearful of being treated like criminals,” Michigan prosecutor Karen McDonald said in a statement. “Law enforcement is working together to attack this problem with an unprecedented urgency. We will keep fighting to hold traffickers accountable and free victims.”
The criminal pimps arrested face charges of forced labor, human trafficking, commercial sexual activity, accepting prostitution earnings and transporting a person for the purpose of prostitution.
“Massage parlors” that are, in fact, brothels are a huge business in the US, with an estimated 7,500 to 9,000 actively breaking the law as of this writing. The average criminal network operates two or three such parlors, with each making upwards of $250,000 per year.
Unfortunately, while successful, the raid in May handled only a small portion of the massage parlor/brothel criminal network that enslaves helpless foreign women in the US.
In Houston, for example, a study found that there were 2,869 daily customers at 292 illegal massage parlor brothels in the city. Peak demand was during lunch hours, with the parlors netting a staggering $107 million every year.
In March, prior to Operation Coast to Coast, four Chinese women were rescued in Michigan, McDonald said. Zixuan Wan, 44, and her husband, Paul Richard Katterman, 57, both of Livonia, Michigan, are accused of forcing the women to work from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, performing sexual services.
Wan is charged with running a human trafficking enterprise resulting in commercial sexual activity, keeping a house of prostitution, conducting a criminal enterprise, failure to file taxes, keeping a house of “ill fame” and money laundering. Katterman faces similar charges.
Another Michigan flesh-peddling pimp, Damon Keith Napier, forced one woman into sexual slavery to pay off a drug debt. When she balked, he threatened to send explicit photos to her family. Napier was said to have several other women working for him as sex slaves.
“This is so prevalent, and it is literally right under our noses,” McDonald said. “The most startling aspect of this is that these are establishments that are considered legitimate by your everyday person in the county. They wouldn’t ever guess that something like this was going on.”
“In California and New York, they have more illicit massage businesses than they do Starbucks and McDonald’s combined.”
Women are often trapped into massage brothel slavery by “snakeheads,” or illegal traffickers who charge money to bring them to the US, then demand they prostitute themselves to pay off the debt.
“These women are mostly undocumented immigrants and don’t have good English language skills,” said John Chin, a Hunter College professor and author of a study on the illicit massage industry.
Dan Nash, founder of the Human Trafficking Training Center and a coordinator of Operation Coast to Coast, said that the problem is massive. “In California and New York, they have more illicit massage businesses than they do Starbucks and McDonald’s combined.”
In a similar operation last year, 97 victims were identified in 14 states and 39 suspected traffickers were arrested.
The existence of the massage parlor/brothel business came to the public’s attention in a big way in 2019, when Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, was found to be visiting the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida, and engaging in sex acts there.
The misdemeanor charges against Kraft were eventually dropped, but Kraft’s arrest opened the nation’s eyes to what may be going on behind the bamboo-painted doors of that little massage parlor down the block.
“Evidence suggests that many of the thousands of women engaging in commercial sex in IMBs or ‘massage parlors’ are victims of human trafficking,” the Human Trafficking Institute writes.
As Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg described it, the tragedy they endure is nothing but “modern-day slavery.”
