MSNBC Undercover: Sex Slaves in America
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MSNBC wanted to get a firsthand look at the Houston cantinas that law enforcement described as modern day prisons for hundreds of young women.
FBI agents warned that while the cantinas look like regular restaurants or night clubs, traffickers guard their profit-making houses carefully and not just anyone is allowed access.
As day turned into night, we found a bustling empire with parking attendants who directed traffic and helped organize the arrangement of vehicles.
There were even taco stands outside, serving midnight snacks to cantina customers.
We caught occasional glimpses of prostituted women outside the clubs.
Along with elaborate security cameras, most of the cantinas are well guarded with gun toting security men manning the entrances and exits of the bars.
We decided to try go in with our hidden cameras to document what the girls and the FBI described as a modern day slave market.
During the day, this building is a bustling flea market, but at night, men can buy the company of women and young girls.
In the dark interior, our cameras captured this image of a cantina worker dancing with a client.
And for $10 a beer, our guides were able to buy the company of this young girl.
Ben: It's very, very scary.
On the third night of our surveillance we got to experience firsthand the threat and severity with which traffickers guard their profits. Men spotted our cameras and we were followed for several blocks before losing the car.
Ben: Our guide was kind of nervous and he knew the area and knew that we had cause for concern.
Guide: You're gonna see only security now.
Ben: We had one incident where someone approached the car with a gun. And I think they had just seen us around and they had driven past us a few times, and they had had some communication, either via cell phones or radios or whatever, with some of the other cantinas at this one major intersection in downtown Houston.
The organized threat we felt driving in the neighborhood gave us a deeper understanding why the women trapped in cantinas couldn't run away.
Cantina Girl: He told me that if I go out the front door there are the cantina cameras. If I go out the side door, the other women who work there will tell me everything about you. That's what he told me so I wouldn't do anything.
It became clear to us that the cantina owners will do anything to protect their operation.
Ben: We were driving past this cantina and the look-out ran up to the car with a gun and we pulled out.
Guide: Let's go.
Ben: Whoa!
Ben: Enough time for him to pull out and sort of do one of those at the car (points his had in sideways gun shape at the camera).
Cholanda: You have to do it because you need money.
30 year old Cholanda says that trafficked girls in Houston are everywhere not just in cantinas.
And she should know because she was trafficked from Thailand to Philadelphia before ending up at this massage parlor in Houston. Cholanda says everyone knows that massage parlors are houses of prostitution.
Cholanda: When they come, they pay money. And then take a shower, sauna, go to massage and go to have sex and let him go; 45 minute.
This petite Thai woman says instead of the American dream she was promised she ended up working for 12 years, forced to have sex with hundreds of strange men to pay off an impossible debt.
Cholanda: You come to work restaurant, small money. You owe me $55,000.
How can you finish paying in 6 months, 7 months $55,000 U.S., What can you do? They ask you. "I don't know. What do you take the other girls to do?" They take you to work spa massage. It's really good money. A day, you can get $1000, $2000 a day. $500, $1000, $1500 a day.
Cholanda: No, you no choice. You have to do. You have to do it. You cannot have choice. "Oh, I need that. I need this." No. You have to do what the boss tells you.
Massage parlors like these don't even bother hiding the fact that sex is for sale. Websites offer detailed reviews of women and the sex acts they offer so men can know what to expect.
Like a Zagat’s guide to restaurants or a consumer report guide to cars, men can go online and review the size of a particular girl's breasts, how she is shaved, and whether or not she will give a patron the full "girl friend experience" which means sex without condoms.
MSNBC decided to take hidden cameras into the massage parlor where Cholanda says she used to work. We wanted to find out how exactly they operated.
Masseuse: Hi. Have you been here before?
Petr: No, I haven't.
Masseuse: Ok. It's $60.
Petr: How much?
Masseuse: $60, and then you can tip.
Petr: Yeah, absolutely.
Masseuse: Ok. Are you ready to come in?
Just as Cholanda described, clients must immediately give the house $60 in cash which our cameraman did.
But when the cameraman asked about details, the woman became very tight lipped. Law enforcement warned us that the women are forbidden from verbalizing their services and often use hand gestures or non verbal cues to communicate sex acts.
Petr: What does $60 include?
Masseuse: Have you been to this kind of place?
Petr: Yes, so that's why I wanna find out how much is everything.
Masseuse: Shower and then body massage.
Petr: Uh huh. And then anything after that? Do you have a full service? Nothing? So $60 is just the massage?
Masseuse: Just massage.
Petr: Are there any other services I can get?
Law enforcement warned us that the women are forbidden from verbalizing their services, and often use hand gestures or non-verbal cues to communicate sex acts..
Petr: Oh, you can't talk about it.
Masseuse: No. I can't.
Petr: Oh, I'm sorry. So, is it after the shower then we'll discuss?
Masseuse: Yeah.
Petr: Okay, cool.
NBC News policy prohibited us from going any further so our cameraman left the parlor without getting serviced.
Experts say the explosion of massage parlors illustrates the public's acceptance of institutionalized prostitution.
Judith Momoh: We've become so complacent, we just sit there and say, well it's not in my back yard. Just like, you know, it doesn't affect me. But if you think it doesn't, think again.
Expert Judith Momoh says every American should be alarmed about the public health consequences that comes with the explosion of cheap sex to go offered at these massage parlors and secret brothels.
Momoh: They have sexually transmitted infections like gonorrhea, syphilis, one person takes it and then passes it on to the other person and by the time you look at it, you have 15, 20 or even 100 people infected from this one little lady who was trafficked. And they are right in your neighborhood.
Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco: These are slaves. In this day and age, slavery exists in cities like San Francisco. But it's the most egregious kind of slavery, its sex slaves.
Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco takes the issue of slavery in his city very personally.
Newsom: If it weren't so real, cause I've seen it, I mean I've seen it first hand, I would not believe it. And most people drive by, they don't believe this stuff. They say, ah, maybe it happens a little bit, you're exaggerating. Give me a break, exaggerate. Every single on of these massage establishments, almost every single one, this is happening in all of them.
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