Recent raids on Asian massage parlors in Denver spotlight an ugly aspect of the international sex trade: many women are virtually enslaved to fill brothels worldwide.
Asia long was a source of women for traffickers, but instability in the Soviet Bloc and the Balkans opened new supply sources for organized crime. In Europe, it’s said to be at least a $7 billion-a-year business largely controlled by the Russian mafia.
Offers of jobs abroad snare many destitute victims (some are underage girls), who are brutalized, held prisoner and shipped to Western Europe, the Middle East and Far East. Threats or shame keep many silent, according to a 2002 report by the International Organization for Migration. Only about 4 percent of women interviewed for one study knew they’d be prostitutes. Women were often moved and resold to other brothels, adding to huge “debts” they had to work off. Many weren’t paid at all.
Trafficking also enables the Russian mafia to gain control of brothels in Western European nations where prostitution is legal.
Denver police estimate prostitution is a $20 million-a-year industry locally. Of 40 locations targeted in the six-month probe, 18 were raided, resulting in 35 arrests and 16 parlors shut down. But no one’s yet been charged with trafficking.
Denver vice Sgt. Mark Fleecs says the women were brought illegally into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico. Initially, Asian women are taken to West Coast cities to work off smuggling fees of $15,000 to $30,000 before being taken to Denver.
As Denver turns up the heat, parlors are moving to the suburbs, Fleecs said. A 2003 investigation found a dozen parlors linked to Korean gangsters in Denver, Aurora and the Longmont area.
Enforcing prostitution laws usually is a state and local responsibility, but human sex trafficking is a federal offense.
This evil business reduces human beings to commodities, and eliminating illegal trafficking is beyond local cops or even the feds. It will take a serious international effort from a world that, so far, has largely turned a blind eye. That such slavery exists in the 21st century is an outrage; that it has reached Denver is cause to weep.
