Houston Republic

If illegal massage businesses reopen when stay-at-home orders get lifted in Texas, a surge in COVID-19 cases may happen, an official with Children at Risk said.

The men paying for sex at these illegal businesses that don’t have any control over the spread of diseases could take the coronavirus home and to work. Texans are urged to avoid the disease by staying at home and practicing social distancing.

James Caruthers, senior staff attorney for Children at Risk, said Texas has more than 700 illicit massage businesses (IMBs) across the state. These businesses use the legitimate industry of massage as a cover for prostitution and human trafficking.

He said that Vanessa Bouché, a Texas Christian University associate professor and trafficking expert, estimates nearly 3,000 Texas men visit these places daily. She also serves as the principle investigator of HumanTraffickingData.org.

“So these guys are going to a place where many, many others guys have gone before them, that has no protocols in place for disease, that are actually vectors for staph infection, Legionnaires disease, things like that in good times, non-pandemic times,” Caruthers, staff attorney for Children at Risk, said. “They are going, they are exposing themselves in the most intimate way possible for potential infection. And then they're going right back to work. No amount of social distancing is going to help with this."

Gov. Greg Abbott’s COVID-19 orders limiting social gatherings, coupled with many local governments moving to issue stay-at-home orders caused the closure of many illicit massage businesses.

Caruthers said he loses sleep over what will happen when those stay-at-home orders get lifted.

“If we reopen Texas for business, and the IMBs open as well, we have what is essentially one of the biggest vectors for infection that no one is really paying attention to it,” Caruthers said.

Even the problems the trafficking victims face need to be secondary to this threat, he said.

“You know, it’s always been a problem. But now it’s like a real deadly problem,” he said.

Lawmakers at the Texas capitol might have been prescient during the last session when they passed a resolution declaring human trafficking a public health emergency, he said.

Children at Risk remains a strong proponent of anti-demand, Caruthers said. Human trafficking, including sex trafficking, would not exist if not for the men who were buying sex.

Arresting victims won’t change the needle on the problem. Cases against pimps and traffickers take a long time to make. Texas will never arrest its way out of the problem this way, though that should be the goal.

Buyers are the weak link in the chain. Remove the consumer element and trafficking will reduce for lack of consumers, Caruthers said.

Children at Risk tracked buyer behavior before the pandemic and continues its online tracking. The non-profit posts decoy ads to see how many buyers respond to them.

“The fact that there is a potentially deadline disease out there isn’t dissuading the buyer from answering our ads. It isn’t dissuading pimps from posting ads.”

Caruthers says efforts local law enforcement must act first to keep the illegal massage businesses closed. City and county attorneys should seek injunctions against them. And efforts need to progress up to the Attorney General’s office.

Human trafficking can’t practice social distancing. They don’t get to sanitize their hands or where they get forced to live. The traffickers simply don’t care, Caruthers said.

Texans can support drop-in centers and victims’ shelters that serve sex trafficking and other human trafficking victims. 

“If they can get out of a trafficking situation, they need someplace to go,” Caruthers said.