The Florida prostitution sting that ensnared New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is a reminder of the human trafficking and abuse taking place behind the darkened windows of many of these storefronts, and how challenging those problems can be to address.
In this Feb. Amirah is an organization that works to provide safe spaces for victims and survivors of sex trafficking in New England, where illegal massage parlors have proliferated. Jasmine Grace Marino, of Nashua, N. Marino says she was forced to work at sites in Connecticut and Maine for five years by her then-boyfriend as she struggled with drugs and alcohol in her 20s. She's since written a book about her experience and runs Bags of Hope, a Boston-based nonprofit that helps women who have been trafficked or dealing with addiction and homelessness.
Brothels posing as massage parlors and Asian spas have been part of many American communities for decades, hidden in plain sight. But the Florida prostitution sting that ensnared New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft last week is a reminder of the human trafficking and abuse taking place behind the darkened windows of many of these storefronts β and how challenging the problems are to address.
The case also highlights how police and prosecutors use an increasingly broad range of approaches, including deeper investigations into wider criminal networks, crackdowns on online sites where johns trade detailed sex reviews and enforcement of stricter civil codes on the massage industry, anti-trafficking activists said. Most of the prostitutes are women from China and South Korea in their mids to late 50s who have entered the country illegally, are deeply in debt and are drawn into sex work through a combination of lies, threats and other forms of coercion, the organization said.
The massage parlor in Jupiter, Florida where Kraft, a year-old Massachusetts billionaire, was videotaped engaging in sex acts is typical of the model. Tucked into a pedestrian strip mall in an affluent oceanside community, the Orchids of Asia Day Spa employed mostly Chinese immigrant women and was linked to at least nine other storefronts from Palm Beach to Orlando.
