QUINCY — On a street of restaurants, salons and shops in a busy part of Quincy, a glass-windowed storefront on Thursday advertised massage therapy services in white letters under a snow-covered awning. But according to more than 50 reviews posted online, the spa is also a place where sex is regularly bought and sold. Advocates and experts say spas like this one — and the one in Jupiter, Florida where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is alleged to have paid for sex — are among the most obvious and overlooked venues for human trafficking today, places where immigrant women trapped by debt, fear, shame and coercion find themselves with no choice but to perform sex acts for clients, often for little or no money.
These illicit massage parlors, often parts of loose criminal networks that periodically move women between locations, hide in plain sight, in office buildings, strip malls, storefronts and homes, often with the tacit acceptance of police. Illicit massage parlors can be found in most cities and towns in Massachusetts, but Quincy is home to a particularly high concentration of them.
On RubMaps. In all, the Ledger identified 13 parlors in Quincy that had been reviewed in the last 12 months by someone who reported paying for sex there. The reviewed spas can be found easily in back-alley warehouses, sidewalk storefronts, strip malls and downtown office buildings, some in the busiest parts of Quincy.
Honestly, it doesn't take a rocket scientist," Farrell said. The Quincy Police Department did not respond to a series of questions about its approach toward illicit spas in the city. And Quincy is not alone. Weymouth had five recently reviewed erotic massage parlors on RupMaps. In all, the website lists active erotic massage parlors across Massachusetts. Human trafficking experts say these spas are part of a vast and loosely connected network of illicit storefront businesses across the country.
The report found that women that work in these parlors are typically Chinese and Korean immigrants in their 30s and 40s, often mothers working to support children back home. Farrell, a former member of the state's since-disbanded Massachusetts Interagency Human Trafficking Policy Task Force, said these women often come to the parlors in search of legitimate work, only to discover too late that performing sex acts is part of the job.
