Lee Rood

lrood@dmreg.com

Des Moines has been identified by a national anti-human trafficking organization as one of the country's top 100 sites for suspected massage-related trafficking.

Washington, D.C.-based Polaris began a national initiative in January to crack down on illicit massage businesses, including six raided last month in Indianapolis.

Polaris identified Des Moines in the top 100 locales by scraping data from paid online sites, where customers review sex workers. It found eight locations in the city, according to Rochelle Keyhan, who is directing the national effort.

"We found 45 (locations) in Iowa and eight in Des Moines," she said. "Those are conservative estimates. Law enforcement typically identifies 150 to 200 percent more than our initial numbers."

Concerns grow as massage parlors spread across Iowa

Keyhan said many massage workers trafficked in the U.S. originally come from China or Korea, and are shipped across the country from entry points on the coasts, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.

Talking about being forced into sex work is considered culturally taboo for most of the workers, she said. Polaris is trying to help shift the focus of law enforcement probes from low-level stings to organized crime investigations.

"People think these women are choosing this work, but they're not," Keyhan said. "Many of the women have been forced into mandatory retirement in China, and have no income and no means of surviving."

Polaris is working with law enforcement and government officials to help them recognize that traffickers often blend in next door to legitimate businesses.

"Many victims are recruited with promises of employment. However, when they arrive they are controlled by means of debts, threats of violence, blackmail, confinement, psychological manipulation, and in some cases, physical violence," the organization says. "Almost every aspect of their life is controlled — where they live, what they eat, where they go, what they look like and who they are allowed to talk to."

According to research at Rutgers University, the exotic massage industry in the U.S. could be doing as much as $1 billion in business a year.

Yet Iowa’s U.S. attorney offices in Des Moines or Davenport have not prosecuted a human trafficking case tied to massage parlors, a spokeswoman confirmed.

A top state law enforcement official said federal authorities have been contacted about activity at some massage parlors. But he acknowledged that until recently the state did not have the structure in place to address the wider concerns about human trafficking at the businesses.

Jim Saunders, who heads investigative operations for the Iowa Department of Public Safety, said local law enforcement agencies largely investigated complaints about massage parlors in their jurisdictions. Authorities suspect some parlors are linked to human trafficking networks, but those types of probes take time, he said.

State leaders this year established a central human trafficking office in the public safety department to quantify the problem, share intelligence and offer training to combat the crime, he said.

“We know it’s there. FBI and Homeland Security have been given leads,” he said. “But these really are complicated cases. These people are very adept at what they’re doing. And they are very good at making an illegitimate business look legitimate.”

The Iowa Attorney General’s Office this summer also hired a new coordinator for the state’s human trafficking efforts.

Belitsos said massage parlors promise to be raised as a concern at a human trafficking conference Thursday in Cedar Rapids.

Iowa legislators have passed legislation allowing trafficked youth to avoid delinquency prosecution. Some in the human trafficking network also want immunity for adult victims.

The human trafficking network also is supporting reintroduction of state legislation known as Erin’s Law, a measure passed in 26 other states that teaches youth about sexual exploitation and abuse. School districts have resisted the effort, saying they already have full curricula.

Some lawmakers, meanwhile, want more focus on the problem by law enforcement.

“I think we’ve been a little blind to human trafficking in Iowa, both sexual and for labor,” said state Rep. Marti Anderson, a Democrat from Des Moines who used to head the Crime Victims Assistance Division at the Iowa Attorney General’s Office. “But if we don’t look at it, it will just keep growing.”