With promises of happy endings, many of the local Asian massage parlors are offering such special services. So says Keith Coates, a licensed massage therapist, who went undercover without police help four years ago to begin investigating. In , a total of , online advertisements selling sex were discovered by authorities in North Dakota, according to Melissa Williams, the prevention education supervisor for Rape and Abuse Crisis Center.
Before working with the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center she was the human trafficking navigator for eastern North Dakota. Who is willingly going to choose that? In China, happy ending massage parlors can be found in most larger cities, sometimes sectioned off into dimly lit red light districts with a helix of colorful stripes, or fronting as hair salons with back doors leading through winding alleys to secret rooms.
Most Chinese sex workers are from the countryside, speak hard-to-understand Mandarin dialects, and are focused on only one goal: money. Such establishments in China thrive until a government crackdown, and then disappear, only to resurface months later.
The first middle-aged woman who offered sexual services in raised the first human trafficking red flags for Coates, he said. He gave his information to police, and waited, but two years later the parlors were still operating, he said. When he discussed his findings with YouthWorks management, they directed him to federal agents, he said. Only after federal agents told him they had no case that he decided to deepen his own investigation. Asked her out on a date, went to the zoo, went to a couple other places, and after the third date she started opening up.
The woman, who will remain unnamed at this time, turned out to be the owner, he said. Most women are tightly watched, bussed back and forth from work to sleeping quarters. Sometimes they work, eat, and sleep in the same building.
