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Asian prostitution reaches Vermont
July 26, 2004
Essex Junction - The regulars at the Park Place Tavern weren't surprised when
police raided what is being described as an Asian brothel in a small house
across their shared driveway.
But they were surprised when news reports linked the now-closed Tokyo Spa and
two other health clubs in the area to what police say is an international
prostitution ring that smuggled Asian women into the United States and made
them work as sex slaves.
"We joked about it here all the time," said Sandy Maloney, a tavern regular who
lives in an apartment complex out back. She said she watched as older men
driving expensive out-of-state sport utility vehicles visited the Tokyo Spa at
all hours.
Experts in sexual slavery say the Vermont case fits the pattern of a problem
that is reaching into the smallest corners of the country.
"Modern day slavery is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world,"
said Derek Ellerman, the co-executive director of the Washington-based Polaris
Project, a grass roots anti-trafficking organization.
"They have done a very good job of spreading into suburban and even rural
areas," Ellerman said. "It's a market-driven criminal industry. Wherever there
is demand for commercial sex the traffickers will spread to those areas."
There's an eviction notice on the door of the light gray two-story clapboard
house that operated as the Tokyo Spa for about a year. The city of Burlington
is moving to evict the tenants from another one of the spas. At the third, the
building owner insists all the activity that goes on inside is legal.
Police say in documents filed in court that the women who worked at the spas
never left, with groceries being brought to the house by outsiders.
One Korean woman told investigators she had been smuggled into the United
States and had only recently arrived at the Tokyo Spa, a few hundred yards from
the Essex Junction five corners.
But other than a woman who drove a gray Audi, the only time Maloney and the
others at the Park Street Tavern would see anyone from inside the house was
when the women would step outside for a cigarette.
"They were all Asian women," Maloney said.
Earlier this month local police and federal authorities raided the Tokyo Health
spa and the other businesses. Police say that besides massages, customers were
offered a variety of sexual services for additional money.
Five Korean women and three Chinese women were taken into custody on federal
immigration charges. Two are still in custody while six others have been
released, said Essex Police Lt. Gary L. Taylor.
In Soon Park, who ran the Tokyo Spa, is one of those in federal custody, said
Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman for the department of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement. She wouldn't identify the other person in custody.
No state criminal charges have been filed.
Taylor won't say anything about the status of the ongoing investigation, but he
did say organized prostitution was previously unheard of in Vermont.
"It's the first time I am aware of," Taylor said. "It's certainly the most
overt and organized operation affiliated with prostitution that I am aware of
occurring in this area."
Grenier wouldn't comment on the investigation.
Court documents filed by police to get search warrants for the three businesses
outline what authorities say could be a link to international organized crime
and sexual slavery.
The documents say "identical Asian criminal operations" are being investigated
by federal authorities in New York City, New Jersey and Maine that are fronts
for illegal activities, including prostitution, illegal aliens, slave
trafficking and money laundering.
"The way these massage parlors or spas or health clubs work, they are really
fronts for prostitution," said Linda M. Hughes of the University of Rhode
Island. Hughes has studied international sex trafficking for 15 years.
"In fact, many of the women, particularly the women who are foreign nationals,
have most likely been trafficked into the United States and they are being held
by some sort of forced fraud or coercion," Hughes said.
Typically, the sex rings offer to smuggle women into the United States for a
fee. Once in the United States the women are forced to repay the cost of their
passage by working as prostitutes.
The women will give most of the money they make to the brothel owner. They are
charged for rent and expenses. They can be fined for rule infractions and the
owner can steal the money from the women, Hughes said.
"There are all sorts of things they do to prevent these women from getting
out," Hughes said. "That may mean these women have been enslaved for 20 years."
The women are then rotated between the brothels as part of a network that has,
in some cases, operated coast-to-coast.
The women don't just come from Asia. The Vermont case appears to be a Korean
network, Ellerman said. But traffickers bring women to the United States from
across the world.
Law enforcement authorities have a new tool for fighting the international
trafficking. The federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of
2000 defines women who were forced into prostitution as victims rather than
criminals, Hughes said.
The law makes it easier to prosecute sexual slaves and offers a range of social
benefits and services, including a visa to stay in the United States, for the
victims who agree to cooperate with the authorities.
In general, prostitution and massage parlors are considered a normal byproduct
of big city life or rural areas where there are large migrant farm worker
populations. Officials won't move against it unless there is a public outcry,
said Hughes.
Ellerman said that the effort to get the public to recognize prostitution and
sexual slavery as a problem is just beginning.
"It's much like domestic violence was 30 years ago. It took years to
mainstream," Ellerman said. "We're at that beginning stage right now."
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