ATLANTA (AP) – Two massage companies from the Atlanta area, where a sniper waged a deadly assault this week, have repeatedly been the subject of police prostitution investigations over the years, raising questions about the mayor’s previous comments that the spas functioned legally.
Police records show that police officers have been in business at least 21 times in the past 10 years, which seems to contradict Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ statement that police officers in her city have not been in business other than a small potential theft and that they they were not “on the radar” of the police. Bottoms added that he did not want to blame the victims.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, is accused of killing four women in Atlanta spas and four others inside a massage shop about 30 miles (50 km) away in Cherokee County. Long, who is white, told investigators that the attacks were not racially motivated and claimed to have an addiction to sex, which led him to attack what he saw as sources of temptation.
Atlanta and Cherokee County police said they were investigating whether the deaths could be considered hate crimes. Seven of the victims were women – six of Asian descent – and the shooter targeted the massage business, despite a strip club and lingerie stores nearby.
According to a 2019 report written by a group of academics, public health experts and community organizers, employees of massage companies who offer sex illegally ended up working there because they had few options to pay the tens of thousands of dollars they owed to smugglers. or to support parents or children in countries like China and South Korea.
The authors of Illicit Massage Parlors in Los Angeles County and New York City Stories from Women Workers interviewed dozens of women who provided sex in companies. They said that their employers sometimes offered them a place to live and eat in business, which also made the job difficult to turn down.
The authors emphasized that not all massage companies are involved in the sex trade. And most women interviewed who did sex work did not see themselves as being trafficked, but thought they were helping their families or themselves, said author Lois M. Takahashi, who runs the USC Price School of Public Policy in Sacramento.
But 40% of them reported that a client forced them to have sex, while 18% said that a client hit them or hurt them physically.
Takahashi said that for many of the women, being arrested was an extremely traumatic process. Women were often pushed into a legal system that they did not understand and in a foreign language.
“They were much more afraid of being arrested than of being stolen,” she said.
Police records released by the city on Friday show that 12 people have been arrested at two Atlanta massage companies on charges of prostitution, but none since 2013. Almost all arrests occurred in secret acts in which a police officer paid for a massage and a massage. employee offered sex or sex act for more money. The reports were first obtained by The Washington Post.
At a news conference the day after the shooting, Bottoms said: “As far as we know in Atlanta, these are companies that operate legally that were not on our radar, not on APD (the Atlanta Police Department) radar.”
A spokeswoman for the mayor said on Friday that the shootings are an ongoing investigation and that she expects new evidence to be discovered.
“What the mayor said was ‘as far as we know’ and that is the operative part of the sentence, ‘as far as we know’,” said Bottoms spokeswoman Elise Durham. “The comments were made less than 24 hours after the shooting incident.”
All three companies where people were shot to death on Tuesday detail recent reviews on an online website that takes users to locations offering sexual services.
Authorities released the names of the Atlanta victims hours before President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Atlanta to meet with leaders from the Asian American community.
Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63, were shot in the head, said the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office. Family members identified Grant by his maiden name, Hyun Jung Kim. Suncha Kim, 69, died of a gunshot wound to the chest, officials said.
Three of the women died at the Gold Spa in Atlanta, while the fourth woman died across the street at the Aromatherapy Spa. The coroner did not immediately say which woman died at Aromatherapy.
Four people died and a fifth was injured at Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock, in the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta.
Cherokee County authorities previously identified the dead there as Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Daoyou Feng, 44; and Xiaojie Tan, 49, who owned Youngs.
South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had helped police identify the four women of Korean descent killed and inform their families. The authorities said they would help to organize funerals and asked the American authorities for a quick investigation to find out the reason for the shooting amid increasing violence against Asian Americans.
Georgia lawmakers last year passed a hate crime law that allows for additional penalties for certain crimes motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender or disability. A hate crime is not an independent crime under the law, but it can be used to increase the sentence once someone is convicted of another crime.
Investigators believe Long had previously visited two of Atlanta’s massage companies, where four of the women were killed, police said.
The First Crabapple Baptist Church, of which Long was an active member, released a statement on Friday that it was trying to remove Long from its membership, saying “we can no longer claim that he is truly a regenerated believer in Jesus Christ.”
The church said that its teaching does not tolerate violence against Asian Americans or women and it is inappropriate to see women as being in any way responsible for male sexual impulses.
Long waived his right to an initial hearing at the Cherokee County Magistrates’ Court.
Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Rebecca Santana in New Orleans contributed to this report.