Redondo Beach – from www.easyreadernews.com – Two women were arrested on suspicion of prostitution last week in a sweep of local massage parlors conducted by undercover police detectives.

Meanwhile, local authorities, a pastor and a patron of the massage parlors described an illicit and increasingly sophisticated Redondo Beach sex trade.

The arrests, part of an ongoing operation by the Redondo Beach Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit, occurred Oct. 13. Detectives arrested Vilma Ramirez [pictured], 33, a Bell Gardens resident and an employee of Lee’s Acupuncture on Aviation Boulevard, and Hye Son, 32, a Los Angeles resident and employee of Ocean Acupuncture on Artesia Boulevard.

RBPD Sgt. Jon Naylor said that the sting operations resulted from a large number of complaints police have received lately concerning suspicious activity at massage parlors.

“I think it is concerning, because of the complaints we get and especially the volume we are getting,” Naylor said. “And these places are located close to residential areas.”

Police arrested Vilma Ramirez, 33, at Lee’s Acupuncture on suspicion of prostitution.

Police arrested three women on suspicion of prostitution earlier this month. Detectives arrested Xiang Barker, 47, the owner and massage practitioner at Sun Flower Massage; Mun Mi Jung, 31, an employee at Ace Acupressure; and Yushan Piao, 47, an employee at Redondo Therapy Massage Center. Ace Acupressure was also cited last week for operating without state or city permits.

The ubiquity of massage parlors in Redondo Beach has caught the attention of policymakers. According to planning department records, 25 massage parlors are licensed in the city. At a recent strategic planning session, the City Council directed staff to explore imposing a moratorium on the opening of any more. Torrance earlier this year implemented such a moratorium and the Redondo council is expected to consider doing so by the end of this year.

Police Chief Joe Leonardi said that the issue of prostitution at local massage and acupuncture businesses has been an ongoing concern for at least two decades.

“At least for 20 years, it has been a recurring issue,” Leonardi said. “Every time we address the issue with these type operations, it may calm down for a short period of time. But then they come back, and we get more complaints from residents.”

Naylor said police are seeking more information from the public as they continue to investigate massage parlors.

“A lot of really important input is from the community,” he said. “A lot of times they see suspicious things that we don’t necessarily see, so we really encourage anyone if they see something suspicious to give us a call.”

Investigators have found an increasingly sophisticated underground economy associated with the massage parlors.

Several third party websites, for example, give reviews not only of the establishments themselves but detailed descriptions of the women who work within the parlors and the services they provide.

One such site, a national guide of sorts called eroticmp.com, listed 14 businesses allegedly offering sexual services within Redondo Beach. Another, naughtyreviews.com, grades alleged prostitutes on appearance, performance, and attitude.

A woman identified as “Coco” at Ace Acupressure, for example, was listed as 36 years old, 5-foot-2, brown haired, and having 34 to 35 inch breasts, with implants; a list of 16 “service” categories, available to paying members of the site, describe what she purportedly will or won’t do for customers.

City Prosecutor Brenda Wells earlier this month won a prostitution conviction stemming from a massage parlor arrest. She said that during jury selection, several prospective jurors were dismissed “for cause” because they expressed belief that such a crime was victimless.

“I think that is something in our society that needs to be exposed, because in reality it is not a victimless crime,” Wells said. “If a massage parlor is on a corner where kids are coming home from school, they see neon signs and men going in to a place where you can have sex. That is basically like what you see in the red light district in Amsterdam.”

Wells said such establishments have been frequently found nationwide to be used in international human trafficking. Both Wells and Leonardi said that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issues frequent reports on human trafficking operations that frequently use massage parlors as fronts.

“There are a variety of ways it can be manifested,” Leonardi said. “Sometimes, people owe a debt in other countries and the women are brought here to work off a debt for their families.”

Wells said many of the women are lured to jobs in the U.S. as nannies or hospitality industry workers.

“All of those hopes are quickly taken away from them as they quickly learn their life here will be about prostitution, or about fulfilling debts and being used as a commodity,” Wells said. “One of the things about human trafficking, unlike narcotics, is that people can be sold over and over and over again, and a woman can be exploited and abused over and over again for the financial gain of a perpetrator.”

None of the recent arrests was found to involve human trafficking. But in 2005, a massage parlor on Manhattan Beach Boulevard near Inglewood Avenue was investigated as part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation that involved local police agencies. RBPD Lt. Joe Hoffman, the head of the detective bureau, took part in the ICE investigation and said that the massage parlor was found to be involved in human trafficking. Several arrests resulted.

“In that case what was happening is it was an organized crime ring that was bringing over young girls – still adults, but young – from Korea and essentially forcing them to work as prostitutes to pay off debts,” Hoffman said.

Leonardi stressed that not every local massage parlor is operating illicitly. But he also noted that it was not easy to identify human trafficking issues even after arrests are made in the businesses that are offering prostitution.

“It’s a very difficult thing to prove because the people arrested are often not very open about their circumstances,” he said.

A Redondo Beach man who spoke on the condition of anonymity painted a different picture of the local massage parlors.

The man said he has been going to massage parlors for about 18 years.

“I could tell you every place up and down the street, every place that has so-called ‘happy ending’ prostitutes,” he said. “I know the whole area like the back of my hand.”

He said he has come to personally know many of the women who work in the parlors. All, he said, commute from outside the area, often from an hour or two inland. Many, he said, support families with the wages they make at the parlors offering sexual services that at the very least include a massage of private parts and often intercourse. None, he said, do so against their will.

“I would totally, no doubt, blow people away if they were human-trafficking girls against their will,” he said. “I mean it, I would have no problem killing these guys. I see that on TV, I see what’s happening with young girls 8 or 10 years old, and my heart wrenches…Here, there is no doubt in my mind these girls are not victims. They are going into this to support their families. No one is forcing them. I’ve known these same girls for years.”

He said that he has on occasion even dated some of the women who work at the parlors. The financial arrangement, he said, is that the operator of the establishment – often called the “mama-san” – makes the hourly rate charged for massages, usually $50 or $60. The woman – technically, the masseuse – then makes whatever she earns in tips, which vary for services provided. He said this ranges from $50 to as much as $200 depending on the sex act.

“I think that it’s all money driven,” he said. “These girls make $1,000 to $2,000 a day.”

The problems associated with the operations, the man suggested, have more to do with the black market nature of the enterprise. He argued that in Nevada, where prostitution is legal, such issues as human trafficking aren’t prevalent.

“I am not saying it is morally right,” he said. “It’s more like – it’s just going to happen. The problem is you’ve got mainstream society going back to prohibition on all that stuff, from a moral standpoint. But men are men, and men are going to search it out, right or wrong….Supply and demand: it’s not going to stop.”

He also said that most of the women are savvy enough to recognize undercover police the minute they walk into the parlors. He said that most wait for the man to take action – touching a woman in a sexual manner – because police cannot do so without making conviction impossible due to entrapment.

“How do I say this? Basically, you run your hands along her leg or [private parts] and if she is game, you know it,” he said. “What happens is cops can’t do that.”

The man said that contrary to what many people might believe, what goes on in the illicit massage parlors isn’t necessarily all about sex. He acknowledges that he has “intimacy issues” but said that part of the reason he frequents massage parlors is the controlled intimacy it offers him.

“Everybody thinks of it as a taboo, but for me, it’s more about being held and touched, that moment in time, to get me through the rest of the week,” he said. “That is what it is for me, and I think I can speak for a lot of men. I just want to be held. It’s hard for a man to say that – just hold me.”

Pastor Chris Cannon of King’s Harbor Church recently went for a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway with his daughter. Together, they counted the number of massage parlors from nearby Harbor City to the entry of Redondo Beach. They counted 20.

Cannon, who has long argued that the city needed to address the issue of its own massage parlors, said that the recent arrests in Redondo Beach are the very tip of a much larger problem.

“I think it says two things,” Cannon said. “I think it says that Redondo Beach has the same problem that everyone else has…And it says we are ignorant of the problem. When you aren’t looking, you don’t see it. But if you begin to look for massage parlors in the strip malls, you see these places where the blinds are closed and there is access from the back. And then you begin to see they are everywhere. There are more of them than there are Starbucks and liquor stores. They are hidden in plain sight.”

Cannon agrees with the aforementioned anonymous patron of the massage parlors – who the pastor has spoken with – that it is indeed an issue of supply and demand. But he believes that as a community, and a society, people need to begin pondering what this apparently growing demand means.

Cannon believes the ready availability of pornography on the internet has created an insatiable demand, resulting in a more emotionally starved culture where a façade of intimacy can increasingly be purchased like any other commodity.

“Where there is a demand, there will be a supply,” he said. “This is not a new thing – it goes back as far as you can go. King David had a problem. We know men in particular have this drive for sexual gratification. It’s just that the internet has fed that fire in ways we never imagined. The availability of pornography at your fingertips 24/7 – it used to be a magazine stashed under your mattress, and now you have the equivalent in thousands of images a day to look at.”

The result, Cannon said, is an epidemic of sexual addiction that is ravaging families and making real intimacy ever more elusive. The pastor said that one in every four men who comes to him to talk about problems has some kind of a sex addiction problem. Cannon said the increasing number of massage parlors is an indication of this.

“I think Chief Leonardi and the police department has been courageous to go after this issue,” Cannon said. “Hopefully, they will rescue someone who may be involved in this against their will. And I think the men coming to these places need as much help as anyone. I think the ‘johns’ need sexual addiction treatment, and there are a whole set of dominos that fall. I want everyone to know that our community is committed to helping everyone involved in this mess. There is a lot of damage here, not just to the women and men involved, but to the families.”

The anonymous patron of the parlors said that he personally has little interest in pornography and doesn’t see a necessary link. But he did acknowledge that he has an addiction and has suffered some damage from his habit.

“As a man, I think really I’ve been doing this so long it’s almost to the point now where I’m at the end,” he said. “I don’t want to do it anymore. But it’s hurt me in developing really good, loving relationships with women. Even if I was married, if I had a girlfriend, I still might stray and do it.”

“I think what happens is we lose relationships,” Cannon said. “I think our friend here is trying to meet a deep human need and he has actually convinced himself he is helping by going to these places. But it’s not true. He is rationalizing to try and make it fit. Like Facebook – I have more friends on Facebook than I do in real life. But I don’t know them. I am lonelier now than before Facebook ever came into existence.”

At any rate, the police sweeps are likely to continue. Sgt. Hoffman said that police have developed ways to successfully operate the stings and will continue to do so long as the problem of illicit massage parlors persists in Redondo Beach.

“Believe me, we have put a lot of thought into how we can approach this problem, so we can continue this operation in such a manner that we can identify any sort of illegal activity,” Hoffman said. “I am not going to disclose tactics…But if they chose to engage in illegal acts, they are taking a big chance, because we are going to do what we can to stop them.”

“If we take away the supply,” Hoffman said, “the demand is going to have to go somewhere else.”