California cities are weighing how to regulate such businesses. When the sun sets, glowing red paper lanterns click on at another part of the establishment, where a younger female massage staff caters to mostly male customers. The move follows a amendment that — following lobbying by the massage industry — loosened restrictions and unleashed a proliferation of new businesses statewide. Relatively cheap and easy to get off the ground, massage businesses have been spreading most notably in places with large numbers of immigrants from China, where massages are as common as haircuts and the practice has a long history. Massage businesses have flourished, for example, in the predominantly Asian San Gabriel Valley. Since California relaxed its law in , a dozen new massage parlors opened up in Arcadia.
Officials struggle to regulate legitimate and unsavory massage parlors - Los Angeles Times
They're near coffee shops, laundromats, even schools. Many San Diego Massage parlors are offering services far beyond just a massage. And NBC 7 Investigates found a public website describing in graphic terms what is supposedly happening inside these locations. Searching the website, NBC 7 Investigates found parlors listed in San Diego County and, according to the reviews on the website, of those parlors offer sex services for a price. In the event we become aware of any incident of trafficking, we take swift internal action and cooperate enthusiastically with state and federal law enforcement officials.
Officials struggle to regulate legitimate and unsavory massage parlors
Seeking a cheap massage, it is tempting to utilize one of the many illicit Asian massage establishments mushrooming all over Southern California. Alarmingly, doing so supports human trafficking, tax evasion, and hurts legitimate massage therapists. These workers are being smuggled in illegally from overseas to work in sweatshops that masquerade as spas. This phenomenon is rising at exactly the time when the plight of the American worker has been the focus of those looking to explain the rise of Donald Trump.
Brothels posing as massage parlors and Asian spas have been part of the American landscape 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 — and how challenging they are to address. The case also highlights how police and prosecutors are increasingly using a 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.