A police raid on an illicit massage parlor in Greensboro exposed inaction by the city, impropriety from the GPD, ignorance from landlords, pressure on local media. The experts weigh in, and a survivor speaks. Tucked into a complex near the highway. In a strip mall across from a fast food chain. All of these locations in Greensboro have been listed on a website that advertises sex services within massage parlors. Recent investigations by TCB and others in the Greensboro community have unveiled a pattern of illicit massage parlors that have been operating within the city unchecked and in plain sight.
On Nov. On Sept. The next day the parlor was raided by law enforcement, who arrested two women β including the one who had interacted with the officer β in a raid led by the Forsyth County Drug Task Force. A few weeks after the raid, Holder spoke at the Nov. Now, months later, pushback from community members and questions from the media have prompted the Greensboro Police Department to change their directives and pursue new tactics for tamping down on the problem.
While the popular idea of human or sex trafficking may look like something out of the film Taken , with young women being kidnapped to serve in shoddy dungeons, more often than not, modern sex trafficking hides in plain sight. According to the Polaris Project, a nonprofit that works to combat and prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America, illicit massage, health and beauty businesses are one of the most common forms of sex trafficking in the United States.
Outdoor solicitation, or what people may commonly think of when they think of prostitution, ranked third. The organization estimates that there are at least 7, storefronts in the US and possibly more. According to data from the Polaris Project, 47 percent of victims of illicit massage parlors are foreign nationals. Polaris reports that most of the victims in the businesses range in age from their mid-thirties to late fifties and come from China and South Korea. Survivors are often controlled through coercion, threats of shame and debt bondage with some victims forced to live at the places where they work.
According to Thulander, the number of calls regarding illicit parlors climbed steadily through , then declined in and , likely due to the pandemic. The problem is multi-faceted. Not only do the women work in these parlors because they need money, oftentimes they are coerced into staying in these jobs because of immigration status and lack of English proficiency, according to Thulander.
