The Advocate: Erotic massage parlors retain strong foothold in New Orleans

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Massage parlors that offer services well beyond backrubs are not unique to New Orleans, a city steeped in the lore of Storyville that retains a reputation for sexual excess. Indeed, erotic massage parlors, as such businesses generally call themselves, have proliferated in the United States in recent years, expanding their foothold beyond the country’s coastal metropolises. Though almost universally regarded by law enforcement as shady, the establishments have proved resistant to regulation, vetting their clientele to weed out undercover cops and hiring high-end defense attorneys to wage their legal battles.

While some of these businesses once sought to buy police protection in the Crescent City, today they don’t have to, thanks to a crisis beyond their control.

Facing a well-publicized shortage of officers, the New Orleans Police Department has sharply curtailed vice investigations as officers grapple with huge backlogs of emergency calls that have lengthened response times. In interviews, several veteran law enforcement officials said they are confident that erotic massage parlors remain a barely veiled front for prostitution, based on a host of investigations years ago that combined federal and local resources.

But in a time of diminished manpower, certain nonviolent crimes have been relegated to the back burner.

“I don’t want to say that massage parlors aren’t a problem, but let’s face it, they’re not contributing to violence on the street,” said Cmdr. Frank Young, head of the NOPD’s Specialized Investigations Unit, which counts vice among its responsibilities. “If I had 1,500 cops, we’d be doing it full time.”

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The businesses are often called Asian massage parlors, as the masseuses are most frequently from Southeast Asia, and many of the parlors build that into their branding. The federal interest in erotic massage parlors typically hinges on whether investigators can prove the masseuses are being forced to sell their bodies against their will.

While the feds have made some sex-trafficking busts in New Orleans, however, none has centered on a massage parlor.

Just proving sex is for sale isn’t usually enough to interest the FBI.

“Garden-variety prostitution without coercion — that is not going to get the same level of attention” from the feds, Mike Anderson, the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, said recently.

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When the NOPD took a more aggressive stance toward massage parlors, it wasn’t uncommon for officers to go undercover and arrest women on a misdemeanor or municipal charge after they offered sex; local court records contain dozens of such cases.

In 2010, for instance, vice officers conducted four operations in as many months that targeted the VIP Health Club on Canal Street; the Hollywood Spa across from the Roosevelt Hotel; and the Sakura Spa on Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East. All of the investigations resulted in prostitution-related arrests.

At the Hollywood Spa, a parlor that still receives consistently high ratings in online forums, Huong Dinh, 49 at the time, offered to give an undercover officer “sucky and sex” for $200 and then severely injured herself jumping out of a second-floor window of the establishment as officers tried to take her into custody, according to a police report.

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Masseuses like Dinh, who had to be hospitalized after her fall, are easily replaced by the parlors, and it’s not uncommon for the businesses to shuffle women between cities. It’s far more difficult for law enforcement to implicate the managers and proprietors of the parlors, who may claim to be oblivious to the “extra services” the parlors offer.

Young and his partners at the FBI needed months to accomplish this in 2002, when they built a case against four women operating New Orleans massage parlors, including Rot Groce, who ran the Bangkok Spa on Iberville Street. (The business remains open today but is known as the Sun Spa.)

Authorities alleged the women paid tens of thousands of dollars in what they thought were bribes to Young, who was undercover, in exchange for police protection.

A few years earlier, the same spa’s operators had paid Russell Nelson, a former New Orleans police officer, some $11,000 over a period of four years to lay off the parlor, help charges against workers get dismissed and provide the business with descriptions of undercover officers. Nelson, who had served on the force for 14 years, was sentenced to a year in federal prison after being caught in a sting.

“If you continue to put pressure on them, they offer you bribes,” said Tim Bayard, a former NOPD captain who led the department’s vice and narcotics squad. “They’ll offer you free sex, gifts, and you’ve got weak-minded policemen who will take them up on this kind of stuff.”

Young, in a recent interview, could not explain why the case against Groce and her co-defendants was dismissed. “There was plenty of evidence,” he said.

The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office, in response to a public-records request, released documents earlier this year that showed Groce alone had paid police $56,795 in cash and gifts — including a Rolex watch and four Sugar Bowl tickets — that was characterized as bribe money. Christopher Bowman, a spokesman for the DA’s Office, noted the case was dismissed under the administration of former District Attorney Eddie Jordan.

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Over the years, many of the parlors have lacked the required licenses to legally offer massage therapy. But the question of who, in practice, is responsible for enforcing these regulations appears to be something of a hot potato.

City law identifies a long list of sex acts that are grounds for suspending or revoking licenses. But Sarah McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu, wrote in an email that “state law supersedes city ordinances regarding this for licensing and inspection, except as it relates to zoning and occupational licenses, which City Planning Commission and Revenue Bureau oversee.”

State law forbids prostitution at massage parlors and provides for an obscure agency known as the Louisiana Board of Massage Therapy, which fields complaints but, according to its website, “is not allowed by law to regulate establishments advertising massage therapy services but providing illegal services.”

“We will accept the complaints and let local authorities know that the establishment is in violation of the massage therapy licensing laws,” the board says on its website.

The board also lists all licensed massage therapy establishments on its website. Tokyo Modeling — along with most of the parlors targeted by the police — aren’t on the list.

Bayard, the former NOPD captain, described today’s erotic massage parlors as “wide-open operations” that have flourished in a city with virtually “no vice enforcement to speak of.”

“It’s a front for prostitution,” he said. “That’s all it is.”

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