Reuters: Sex trafficking ring across four states busted

According to Reuters this past week:

Authorities closed down 20 brothels masquerading as massage parlors and arrested 22 people for running a sex trafficking and prostitution network involving Korean women across four states, officials said.

The New York Asian Organized Crime Task Force, comprised of FBI and New York police investigators, uncovered a network of brothels in New York state, Texas, North Carolina and Pennsylvania over the past year.

Prosecutors said brothel owners were transporting Korean women around the country for prostitution.

“Trafficking in human flesh and sexually exploiting women for financial gain is all too common and simply will not be tolerated,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement released late on Wednesday.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, “It takes a special depravity to take women from their home 6,880 miles away and exploit them here.”

Most of those arrested were charged with transporting individuals across state lines for the purpose of illegal sexual activity, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison on conviction.

(Reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr., editing by Michelle Nichols and Jonathan Oatis)

The 22 arrested and charged are from four different states but most of them are from the New York and New Jersey area. Names and details of those arrested can be found here.

It is critical that more naming and shaming tactics be employed by the media against traffickers and pimps in order to combat such exploitation. Unfortunately, this bust was only covered and reported by less than a handful of news mediums. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to see here that fingers are being shaken at the perpetrators rather than the women who were exploited. Progress?