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Atlanta Asian massage parlor murders are a warning to the anti-trafficking sector
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Date: None

In the aftermath of the Atlanta killings, police departments across the US sent out police forces to patrol Asian neighborhoods. This was exactly what many AAPI activists and community organizers did not want to happen. Policing does not stop the root cause of anti-Asian racism, and this development is concerning given the history of police raids targeting Asian massage parlors. If we are truly looking out for the best interests of low-wage immigrant Asian women working in massage parlors, some of whom may engage in sex work, we need to be talking about what will make their work safer.

That includes supporting full decriminalization of sex work for workers, clients, and third parties, including massage business owners and managers. Furthermore, we must recognize that this isn’t just about sex work; this must also be a larger conversation about interconnected factors such as violence against workers, economic mobility of low-wage immigrants, precarious immigration status, racism, misogyny, and the hypersexualization of Asian women in the US. Supporting Asian massage workers means addressing all of these issues collectively, thereby affording them agency, protecting their rights, and increasing their resilience to trafficking.

Speaking as an Asian-American, I urge the AAPI community to realize after the tragedy in Atlanta that we need to do better. We need to fold Asian massage workers, low-wage immigrant Asians, and Asian sex workers into our activism and root out stigma towards these communities. Still, this isn’t just our responsibility. This is a reckoning moment for the US in which it will decide which concrete steps it will take to stop hate crimes against the AAPI community. It should also be a warning to the anti-trafficking sector. Don’t let these murders fuel support for misguided police raids and increased surveillance of Asian massage parlors. Don’t let history repeat itself.

Robert Kraft: A case study in caution for the anti-trafficking sector

Two years ago, Robert Kraft made national media headlines. The owner of the New England Patriots had apparently been linked to a massive, multimillion-dollar sex trafficking ring spanning from Florida to New York. Authorities claimed immigrant Chinese women working in massage parlors had been trafficked, brought to the United States under false promises of legitimate spa jobs, and then forced to provide sexual services to customers. The media and a curious public descended on the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, a small massage shop tucked away in a strip mall in Jupiter, Florida, to get a glimpse of the alleged crime scene that Kraft had visited.

The only problem? There proved to be no evidence of human trafficking, and the ‘victims’ law enforcement and some prominent American anti-trafficking organizations sought to help said they were not coerced into providing sexual services. With this, law enforcement did a 180-degree turn. If these immigrant Chinese women would not admit to being victims of trafficking then they would be prosecuted for prostitution to the fullest extent of the law.

The case wrapped up in January 2021. Four Chinese women working at Orchids of Asia Day Spa were slapped with criminal records for prostitution and were ordered to pay some $45,000 in fines. A former manager of the spa pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of soliciting another to commit prostitution, while three other women accepted plea deals. All face months of probation.

This case should serve as a warning to the anti-trafficking sector and the media. Jumping to conclusions before an investigation is completed and indulging in sensational stories of sex trafficking can backfire tremendously. Working immigrant women, who were erroneously assumed to need rescuing from a sex trafficking ring, have instead only ended up being criminalized. Those anti-trafficking organizations and ‘experts’ that cheered on the sex trafficking narrative in the media must take responsibility for the repercussions of their actions.

Too often these types of ‘raid and rescue’ operations are based on misguided cultural assumptions about Asian communities. And when it becomes clear that no trafficking has occurred then immigrant women like those in Florida are demonized, transforming in an instant from ‘victims of sex trafficking who deserve support’ to ‘prostitutes who must be punished for committing a crime’.

Criminalizing adult, consenting sex work is not the path to address sex trafficking. Furthermore, anti-trafficking organizations should not accept criminalization and punishment of sex workers as the result of failed sex trafficking investigations. If the sector truly wants to do no harm then it must recognize that instinctually alleging sex trafficking can have real, negative consequences for immigrant workers who are there on their own volition. Nobody gets ‘saved’ in that scenario. They get prosecuted instead.

While it is true that some immigrant Asian massage parlor workers may be trafficked for sexual exploitation in the US, recent research points to many choosing this line of work as their best option considering their limited economic mobility. Rather than approach all Asian massage parlors as hotspots for trafficking, where victims and consenting sex workers can be swept up together in police raids, we need to clearly distinguish between trafficking victims and agentic women who choose this work. And we need to contextualize all of that by acknowledging the challenges immigrant communities face in accessing economic opportunities. The focus should be on removing those barriers and improving working conditions to prevent abuses, not on criminalizing people for selling sex.

The story unfolds and a sex trafficking narrative takes off

At the end of February 2019, the New York Times published an article titled ‘‘The Monsters Are the Men’: Inside a Thriving Sex Trafficking Trade in Florida’, which detailed how authorities came to the conclusion that they had busted a sex trafficking ring operating out of Asian massage parlors in South Florida. Criminal charges for soliciting sex were brought against high-profile figures, including Kraft, John Havens, the former president and chief operating officer of Citigroup, and John Childs, the founder of the private equity firm J.W. Childs Associates.

The New York Times took the sex trafficking narrative as fact and propelled it to a national audience by writing:

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/atlanta-asian-massage-parlor-murders-are-warning-anti-trafficking-sector/