tv Trafficked Slavery in America MSNBC April 7, 2013 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT
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across the globe for those living behind the poverty line, america symbolizes the hope but for over 500,000 men, women, and children looking to improve their lives, it means something else. >> i don't have money. i don't have passport. and i don't have anybody. >> forced into becoming endentured domestic workers or sex slaves selling their bodies. >> they're going in that room right there. >> trapped in the land of the
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free with no way out. >> human trafficking is real. >> you're under arrest for prostitution. >> we've seen anyone as young as seven. anyone as old as 75 years old. >> relying on the kindness of strangers to release them. >> this is something i'd never expect here. >> sheriff's office, open the door! >> while public servants do their best to bust those. >> there's nothing but modern day slavery. >> look at me. come out. >> msnbc presents "trafficked: slavery in america." today in the u.s., the reach of human trafficking stretches from houston to california's
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most affluent suburbs. it is a growing menace sustained by america's need for cheap labor and underground sex. tonight msnbc returns to houston. this time the human merchandise is different than what we last found here. not women from latin america. but young women from asia trafficked and trapped into selling their bodies and dignity for cash. for those who find it hard to believe it's alive in modern america, the travking task force invites non-believers to ride along for a day in the life. >> houston is a hub. >> bruce carr has a federally funded human trafficking task force from harris county, texas. >> we have a huge problem in the houston area with a lot of spas popping up in the outlying areas of the country. >> we're working off of case number -- >> the mission, root out sex
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traffickers hiding behind the many massage parlors and spas. today's target, one of the 500 massage parlors or spas which uses women who have been illegally trafficked from asia. >> this is the advertisements they're showing here. they're saying sexy asian girls. then saying open seven days a week 24 hours a day. and have explicit pictures. >> the traffickers do little to hide the fact there is sex for sale. just page through dozens of online sites and buyers can literally hand pick the type of girl they want. right down to hethnicity and br size. federal officers have rescued trafficked women. but after shutting it down, it has reopened under new ownership. this brings investigators back for another look. >> we'll be going after this location to do a raid on the
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spa, get the girl hopefully interview other girls that maybe maybe take that information back as well as make the arrests. and hopefully we can secure over evidence inside that business. to indicate prostitution. >> the team heads out hoping to make a dent in a criminal operation that has proven especially difficult to stop. >> seems like you knock one down and ten more pop up. >> with seemingly insatiable demand for easy sex bringing loads of cash to the underground sex industry, the police say it's a never ending battle. >> it's not a victimless crime. i don't know any female that woke up one day and said i'm going to be a prostitute today. they got talked into it, tricked into it by some pimp and some pimp out there is making a ton of money off of the services of this poor girl. >> the crew rendezvous in an alley to suit up. takedown officers gear up and
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hide their faces with ski masks so the spa owners adon't recognize them. >> we're going to send undercover deputies in there posing as customers to confirm the allegations that prostitution is occurring. and we're going to do a raid shortly therefore. >> we got surveillance units. we're going to send one in. >> as the team gets into position, it quickly becomes clear that business is booming at vip. >> another customer just walked in. >> they have a lot going in. >> the undercover officers don't want to tip people off. they have to continue as if they're regular johns. >> okay, y'all start moving up to the back door. let me know when you're ready. >> after watching a civilian leave, officer x makes the call
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to move in. >> we're across, we're across. >> all right. pull in behind them. >> open the door, sheriff's office. open the door. >> go into the back. go into the back. >> officers sweep the massage parlor detaining the johns found in rooms. >> all the female employees go to room number seven. >> officers corral three scantily clad young women as they try to flee. >> she looks young. >> everybody hold what they got. then we'll get i.d.s on these girls find out where their stuff is at. >> how about you? >> young, scared, and foreign. the women pretend they don't understand english. what they don't know is they have already been secretly recorded speaking perfect english when they solicited undercover officers for sex. >> where are you from? >> south korea. >> from korea? >> our producer happens to speak korean and confirms they're here
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illegally. >> how old are they? >> we don't know yet. haven't identified them. >> 30. >> 30? >> yes. >> okay. uh-huh. and this one? >> 31. >> there's no way she's 31 years old, ma'am. there's no way. >> how long have they been here? >> i don't know. >> the three working girls keep their heads down and let the older women who police suspect as the brothel manager do all the talking. >> you the mammasan? >> i just work here. >> she denies being in a position of authority. and plays dumb. what we usually find is clorox bottles. >> investigators search and find the physical evidence they need to make a prostitution bust at vip. >> this is a sure sign it's not
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harris county's human trafficking task force has carefully orchestrated a sting operation at this houston massage parlor, renowned for trafficking foreign women. police are now seeking to better understand how the korean women got there. >> how old are you? >> 27. >> 27? >> when initially questioned, all three women say they've only been in the country for a few days. as the team searches the facilities, all the tell-tale signs of trafficking reveal themselves. from the atm in the lobby to the cramped living space filled with mat tress and personal items. the investigators have no doubt
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the owner is exploiting the women by selling sex for cash. >> most of these businesses have living quarters like this in them. as you can see, their beds here, their suitcase is there. they rarely, they don't even unpack. they keep their clothes in their suitcases. this is their home while they're here. >> officers say traffickers keep the women as virtual prisoners who must eat, sleep and work within these four walls, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. >> with surveillance monitors and a manager who controls their every move, the workers are expected to follow a strict protocol. >> this is what is known as your table shower where you pay for the services here, and they would strip you down, put you on there and do a complete table shower for you. and then usually you make a deal for the sex right there. sometimes in this room, sometimes in a different room. >> the reason they bring you here is separate their clients from their clothes so they can look for any type of listening device or check through their wallets to see if they have any money and if they're law
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enforcement or any kind. >> make sure they're not in here. >> sometimes they hide the unwrapped condoms in these bath towels. with we need to check through them just in case we need to use them as evidence. they tier not individually wrap pd they buy them in bulk and they hide them in any household item you can imagine. that happened to be a coffee skbrar. that's easy to find. you open up the top, it black looks like coffee meat. it has a screw-in bottom, as you can see. >> how long have you been here? typically, we try to interview the girls. they deny they can't speak english. however just 20 minutes ago or the day before i had them come
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in here and have a conversation with them in english. so it's common for them to be uncooperative at first. >> this young woman says she's only been in houston for three days. >> only three days? >> at first when the mamasan is watching, she refuses to talk. but once they're separated, she confides that she doesn't want to do this type of work and wants to go home to korea. >> does she have a visa or is anything? >> your green card? >> yeah, green card. >> are you a resident? >> this woman insists she left her visa at home in california and denied selling sex for cash. but officers soon find evidence to the contrary. >> we find clorox bottles. once i open up the lid, i found used condoms inside. what i did was i went ahead and cut it open just to show you that this is how they hide used condoms. >> that's a sign that it's not just massage going on in here?
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>> correct. >> we tried to get some straightforward answers. >> would it surprise you if i told you there was prostitution going on here? >> i don't know. >> would it surprise you, though, if i told you that? >> i don't know anything about it, so. >> and what about the condoms that we found? >> i don't know. >> they were in the laundry area in a clorox bottle. there was no bleach, just used condoms. >> i don't know. >> but you're doing the laundry, right? >> yeah. >> do you use the bleach? >> i do use the bleach. >> that's the bleach that you use? >> yes. >> there are people who say you're the person running this massage parlor. >> i don't know who say that. who say that? i don't know. >> msnbc learned that this self-proclaimed housekeeper is no stranger to police. in 2005, local and federal officers raided a california spa
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she owned where korean girls were selling sex for cash. young women just like these. >> do you sleep here? >> this girl known as cherry approached two undercover officers today and will most likely be charged with prostitution. >> what's your name? how long have you been here? >> three day. >> thee days? >> yes. >> where did you come from? >> from l.a. >> l.a.? >> she says she's from korea, seoul. that's what she told me. she said she's been here for three days and she came from l.a. >> does she have a green card? >> no, just a passport. she travels a lot. >> meanwhile, officers search her purse for the money the undercover cops gave her earlier today. >> $500, $600. >> officers find $907. >> ma'am, you're under arrest
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for prostitution. do you understand what i'm saying? >> the team has what they need to charge her with prostitution. they hope that by booking her and interviewing her away from the mamasan, they may be able to learn valuable information about the criminal network behind massage parlors. and hopefully help her get out of the life. >> tlrl there were three girls working and a mamasan. only one went to jail. other girls we identified, they just arrived or said they have been here for a few days. while much of federal funding goes towards fighting sex traffickers, human rights advocates say there's a much more insidious kind of slavery that occurs behind closed doors. the enslavement of men, women, and children as domestic servants or even factory workers. i feel like a slave. i don't have money, i don't have my passport. and i don't have anybody. gulf. and every day since,ulf. we've worked hard to keep it. today, the beaches and gulf are open for everyone to enjoy.
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if you're still bent on blowing this fat stack of cash, there's a couple of ways you could do it. ♪ ♪ or just go to e-trade and save it. boom. ♪ in the last decade, cash profits from sex trafficking have driven the proliferation of massage parlors in virtually every city in america. but experts say the trafficking
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of men, women and children for labor is much more common. from indentured servitude in hotels, restaurants and factories, advocates say that modern day slavery is alive and well in even the most affluent of homes. for four long years, a family in suburban san francisco enslaved lily samat, a native of indonesia. >> i feel like a slave because i don't feel money, i don't have a passport, i don't have anybody. if i run away. i say, you know, maybe somebody will kill me. >> in 2002, the family hired lily, then 24 years old to be a nanny. they promised her a steady salary and a nice home. instead lil' lily says the demanding diplomat imprisoned her, abused her, and forced her
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to work 20 hours a day seven days a week for days and days. and where did this modern day slavery take place? in one of the most up scale neighborhoods in the san francisco bay area. >> i mean, this is something i would never expect here. it's just -- i think it's just preposterous. >> heidi lived just four doors down. she couldn't help but notice the young girl wearing the same threadbare jogging suit every time she saw her. >> the thing that i noticed was she was washing the car every day. she washed this car from top to bottom every single day, whether it was raining or cold or warm. we thought what a strange thing. why would some young girl have to come out and wash the car every day. >> lily says washing ae car every day at 6:00 a.m. was only a fraction of her responsibilities. every day began with the feeding of the 7-year-old twins.
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her job also included carrying the diplomat's briefcase to and from the car and being available at all hours of the day and night to serve him. >> he would stay up late at night and still asking to make tea at like 1:00. so i don't know. it's like 24 hours. >> lily says her captors started controlling her right away from the moment she first arrived at their house in the middle east. she then was forced to travel with them to the u.s. there she says, they would lock her indoors whenever they would leave the house. >> and even if they are inside the house, they would lock the door and hide the key. >> the problem is huge. >> human trafficking attorney cindy lu says there are thousands of lilies hiding in plain sight in america. >> how do you count a population by its very nature and definition that's hidden from you. >> the organization asian
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pacific islander legal outreach represents over 200 victims of forced labor trafficking in the san francisco area. but according to a 2004 report from the u.s. department of justice, an estimated 14 to 17,000 people are trafficked into the united states every year. making the crime as prevalent as homicide. put to work in popular restaurants, major hotel chains and factories, these silent victims says lu are the human cost of the low prices customers pay for food and services in big cities like san francisco. >> we' seen anyone as young as 7, anyone as old as 75 years old. men and women. we've also seen sex trafficking cases. but also a lot of labor cases so that involving domestic servitude, hotel restaurant work. >> and says liou, when they're healthy foreigners or diplomats, they have little incentive to respect u.s. laws. >> heidi who works out of her
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home would often see lily when she went to pick up the mail. >> once in a while, she would be there and she would see me standing there getting my mail. she would fly over and start talking to me. and she had this beaming expression on her face as if she was so happy to be talking to another human being. >> even though lily didn't initially convey any distress, heidi slowly began to have concerns about the welfare of the harried young woman. >> it was always clear to me she did not have much time to chat. she would say i have to go now, i must go now. so she would run back. almost like she was afraid someone would see her. >> meanwhile, lily began to confide in heidi, one brief conversation at a time. heidi gradually peaced together the ugly and unrelenting reality of lily's daily life. >> she had to work from morning till night, midnight till 1:00
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in the morning, 2:00 in the morning, 18 hours of work, seven days a week. no holiday, no days off, no ability to go anywhere, visit her parents, nothing. and then after a while, she told me she was never paid. and i thought what a strange thing. >> for many, it's hard to understand why lily didn't just run away. but cindy liou says it's important to see the situation from lily's perspective. >> in the beginning, it doesn't register it's necessarily really fishy. they think oh, this is normal, this is what's expected. >> in fact, she had a good experience working as an international nanny. at 15 she left indonesia is work for a diplomat in saudi arabia. the family treated her well, paying for her vacation time, taking her with her to europe and teaching her arabic and french. so when she received an offer to work for another diplomat, she leaped at the chance.
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>> i'm so happy i heard diplomat because i heard they're really nice people. >> but this family could not have been more different. after two years, lily finally persuaded her captors to send $1,000 home to her family. afraid and isolated, she didn't dare ask for more. >> no one wants to take a chance of putting their own family at risk. >> cindy says degradation and threats are powerful tools traffickers use to control the situation. threats like -- >> we'll hurt your family, or maybe we'll report you to the authority and tell them that you're the one who's doing something wrong, you're here illegally and it's your fault. no one is going to believe you. >> after years of isolation and humiliation, lily was near her breaking point. she was afraid she would spend her whole life enslaved to the diplomat and his family. with no one to help her, she
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turned to the only friendly face she knew. >> someone knocked on the door, i opened the door and there was lily. >> i was crying. i said, please help me. >> i realized now what am i going to do with her? to do with her? what can i do? coming up, the good neighbor helps lily find her freedom. we were so confused. how much is too much water? too little? until we got miracle-gro moisture control. it does what basic soils don't by absorbing more water, so it's there when plants need it. yeah, they're bigger and more beautiful. guaranteed. in pots. in the ground. in a ukulele. are you kidding me? that was my idea. with the right soil... everyone grows with miracle-gro.
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i'm milissa rehberger. here's what's happening. the fbi is investigating whether eric murdock tried to extort the university using the video of mike rice shoving players. investigators are looking at murdock who took the video public. and the beach volleyball player gave birth to her baby scout. now back to "msnbc undercover." after four years of living the punishing life of a modern day slave in this pristine suburb of northern california,
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24-year-old lily samad had lost all hope. working up to 22 hours a day for a demanding diplomat and his family, lily says her employers even made her work when she had debilitating fevers. penniless because the family refused to pay her, she lived a life of desperate isolation and growing depression. >> she is my everything. >> back in indonesia, lily's husband heard nothing from his wife for three long years. he feared that she was dead. >> who can i call somebody here? i don't know. because she don't have phone number, didn't give me a number. it's really hard. no communication with her. >> finally in 2006, lily reached a breaking point. the diplomat's wife who insisted lily wash the car, even in the rain accused the obedient lily of shirking her duties.
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>> i cleaned the car inside and outside. she said to me, why don't you clean the car? i told you every day you have to clean the car. i was really, really mad. i went in the bathroom an just stay there. i said if i see heidi, i said i will pack my stuff and just leave. >> someone knocked on the door. i opened the door and there was lily. >> i was crying. i said please help me. >> so i took her in. >> alarmed, heidi hid lily in the back of her car under a blanket and took her to the local police. the local police directed them to the fbi where she was identified as a victim of human trafficking. when lily's employer went to police asking them to find her, they refused, saying she had left voluntarily. panicked about being exposed, lily's oppressor pressured the indonesian embassy to get her out of the u.s.
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>> the diplomat had run to the indonesian consulate and said i will pay her what i owe her here in the consulate on the condition that i see her ticket going back to indonesia and that she does not speak to anyone. so i thought, well, i don't think that's acceptable. that's basically a form of blackmail. >> if you're a diplomat and you do have diplomatic immunity, there's very little the u.s. government can do to criminally prosecute you or get forms of recovery. >> cindy liou says workers like lily routinely suffer extreme abuse if their employers happen to be a diplomat. because special circumstances shield them from any kind of u.s. prosecution. it's diplomatic immunity. it means that high-ranking foreign diplomats who work inside the united states cannot be arrested or prosecuted for criminal activity. as incredible as it sounds, some
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diplomats have gotten away with rape and murder in the united states. >> a lot of these diplomats are really powerful people in the country that they're from, and a lot of our clients still have family members in that country. unless you can secure the safety of those family members first, there's a lot of maneuvering to be done without just slapping down a criminal case immediately. >> unsure how to proceed, heidi and her family agreed to continue to hide lily with the diplomat just two doors down heidi lived in constant fear of being discovered by a man they considered very dangerous. a man she knew could murder them and never face charges. >> i was very nervous. in fact, there were many nights that i lost a lot of sleep because i thought, oh, my heavens, what's going to happen? >> for months, they lived as if trapped in a surreal spy novel. lily stayed hidden in their upstairs bedroom for days at a time. occasionally heidi would sneak her out of the house. >> of course, i was frightened
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that they would see her. so what i used to do is whenever we went from the kitchen to the garage, i would have a coat over myself and she would walk next to me and she would slowly march into the garage. once she was in the garage, she would be in the back seat and i i would put the coat over her. and then i would put empty shopping bags on top. >> for six months heidi protected lily while a lawyer friend helped get the back payment lily was promised. as a last resort, heidi wrote a strongly worded letter to the consulate at the embassy where the diplomat worked. >> when i sent this letter to the consol general, i said a group of concerned citizens would like for you to please take care of this because we do not want this to go into an international incident or to get
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into the papers or anything like this. >> nine months after fleeing her captor, lily finally received the $6,000 as promised in her original contract. and what was the final cost per hour for her three years of labor? about 23 cents an hour. in 2009, lily was finally reunited with her husband andy and had a baby girl in october later that year. >> she's a great woman. lift me out from the bottom. she support me to get better in life and everything. >> she's really everything for me. because without her, i don't know how to do. she's really understand me, and she is really -- i mean, she is everything. >> hello, suchi. how are you?
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beautiful baby. >> today, lily is in the u.s. on a legal visa, and works as a nanny in san francisco. >> my life now is very happy and i have my baby and my husband also, he is here. you know, so it's -- now it's really happy that my life has really changed. >> it's not forever. >> no, only four years. >> while lily's story of modern day slavery was rovled happily, cindy says lily represents a tiny fraction of those who silently suffer. liou says for every lily, there are hundreds of other workers trapped in servitude and sex slavery in the u.s. who aren't empowered enough to run and seek help. >> a big problem for our clients is if you are residing in the country where you feel like the laws don't apply to you and can't protect you, you're never going to feel safe. hello. inspections. please open the door.
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since 2004, san francisco's health department has been in the business of putting sex traffickers, particularly those running illegal massage parlors out of business. one of its lead investigators is ed walsh. >> initially, i was kind of naive to some of the stuff that goes on. i've never been to a massage parlor as a customer or anything like that. i knew there was sex going on, but i didn't know how it worked. >> walsh got a quick lesson about six years ago. >> hello, inspections. let me take a look over here. when we first took over the program, i went into a facility where there were women sitting
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on towels on couches. and when i went in to check their id's i asked why they were sitting on towels. i asked them why they were sitting on towels. when they stood up, there was blood on the towels. they were bleeding from their rectum or their vagina. the first time i ever saw something like that. it just blew me away. i couldn't believe it. >> dr. johnson ojo heads up the mayor's human trafficking task force. >> the task force has been very, very effective in reducing the number of illegal massage establishments in san francisco. >> could you come out? i want you out here. thank you. >> we issued over 500 citations. fines to the tune of over $100,000. and we closed about 40 to 50 establishments. today we are going to be going out for a joint inspection.
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>> today, the health department is backed up by inspectors from the fire department, building and code enforcement, as well as the city attorney. they are working together to help build cases against human traffickers and establishments running illegal prostitution parlors. >> that girl that was there, that was the one that solicited a police officer? >> in fact, the task force has been so successful that many of the downtown operators have scattered, choosing instead to hide behind phony fronts inside the city's quiet residential neighborhoods. >> what we do with this one, if we go late enough at night, there's a salon in front. and the salon is just for hair cutting. he closes at 6:00. so when all the lights get turned off, they're in the back. hello, hi. inspectors, please open the door. >> police. >> hi. >> police department. >> do you want to put a towel on
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that customer there. >> my focus initially is on the masseuse. i need o i.d. her and find out if she has a license. >> in the room next door, another customer is stunned when the lights come on and then even more shocked to see our cameras. when the inspectors try to identify the masseuse, the massage parlor manager plays dumb. >> i don't know. >> you speak mandarin. you can tell her that i want her to give me her i.d. she was in the room with the customer. >> yeah, and the customer had no clothes on. >> oh. >> there was an online it says practitioner was in that room providing massage to client. we all saw it, but when we ask her for her name, she won't tell us. when we ask for id, she will not provide it. >> let's get the customer to talk. excuse me, sir, do you speak mandarin? can you come here for a second.
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we want her to show us an id. [ speaking foreign language ] >> she forgot it. >> she has no id with her right now? do you have i.d.? good luck cards. phone number. you have a lot of money in there. wow. no i.d. though. >> when an immigrant does not have any identification on themselves, those are indication that somebody is in charge of her day-to-day movement. and that there's a likelihood that that person has been trafficked. >> you employ the services of online practitioner. i'm going to issue citation. >> she was working. >> she was working, she was in there. don't argue with me. don't argue with me.
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i went in there with a police officer and myself. the man has no clothes on, she's standing over him. okay? there's no argument there. >> the massage parlor is cited and closed down for the night. >> so you're going home. >> okay. >> early today. >> and inspectors move on down the line to another trouble spot. >> supposedly a john in here. saw somebody walk in. yeah. >> as soon as we walked in, this one masseuse got very, very nervous. how are you? >> good. >> we went right into the rooms and we saw this gentleman on the table getting ready for a massage. >> hi, sir. are you dressed? why don't you get dressed. >> who has a permit here. who's working right now? >> this is a customer. >> she knew she didn't have a permit. but the person in the room was just here to order food. >> one customer inside. >> you give him massage? >> no.
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i take him inside the room. he waiting for one person -- someone to come. >> come from where? >> pack the food. the dinner. >> the person came here to order food? that was the excuse she used. i was like i don't think so. >> inspectors then notice something very strange. the woman is wearing an ear piece and taking instructions over the phone. >> my owner call, he's coming. >> so she's talking to the owner right now. they're getting high-tech on me. >> it's beautiful nonsense. >> with all the commotion and presence of our cameras, it seems the customer has lost his appetite. >> my inspector is going to issue you a citation because you are running without a license. as we leave here today, i want you to close your doors. you are closed. >> i'm sorry, i not understand.
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>> you understand? you are closed. no business. >> nobody has a license here. you have to have a license. you have to have a license. you have to close now. everybody is ready to go, right? let's go. our message is you have to follow the law. that's why we're out here tonight. can i see your massage i.d.? if you hire massage practitioners, you have to have licenses. >> you lose your i.d.? you lose it? >> yeah, it's here. i don't know who takes my id. >> san francisco is not going to tolerate anyone using his or her massage establishments as front for prostitution or human trafficking. we are here to serve the order. >> after a two-year battle, inspectors finally pull the plug on one of san francisco's most notorious massage parlors. >> you're supposed to close effective 5:00 p.m. today. [ male announcer ] here's a word you should keep in mind. unbiased.
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it's 3:45 in downtown san francisco, and while most city workers are close to ending their workday, health inspector ed walsh is just gearing up for a much anticipated takedown. >> today we're going to go to 450b jones, the sunflower spa. >> come on out, health department. >> it's the final round in a five-year cat and mouse game between city investigators and the clever proprietors of the sunflower health spa, a massage parlor offering sex for cash right in the shadow of city hall. >> who is the manager? >> reporter: over the last several years with msnbc in tow, in raid after raid this massage parlor has been cited for numerous violations, where the evidence of sex for sale is obvious. >> this is a house of prostitution. if you're just here for a massage, they don't want you there for a massage. they want the money for the extra service. >> built like a prison fortress and well equipped with hidden
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cameras that survey a two-block radius, sunflower's managers keep watch on six video monitors inside. >> that's the -- so the owner has security over the girls. okay? so they can't leave the facility. they know if they're coming or going. >> year after year authorities including the fbi received reports of young foreign women being coerced into selling sex for cash at sunflower. >> there were so many signs of trafficking. there was living quarters found in the space. holes in the walls where women who were working as so to speak massage practitioners were hiding because they didn't have licenses. >> sunflower's biggest achievement over the years was building secret hiding places to house women. the first was discovered behind a false wall in 2006. >> what is this? >> this is where they were sleeping previously. >> this was a room with a lot of mattresses. personal belongings. shoes. there could be about 8 to 10 people sleeping in that unapproved room.
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>> after multiple fines, sunflower finally walled up that illegal living space, but two inspections later the task force discovered yet another concealed room. >> this is a mirror on the wall. and behind the wall is a hole they carved into the wall. we opened it to discover there is a hole there. inside there, there's a very tight space. okay, look at me. come out. >> the investigation of sunflower went through the looking glass when inspectors found women crammed into a cubby hole behind this wall. >> stay right there. >> this is probably one of the most blatant in the whole list of massage parlors in san francisco. where they just disregard the law and they do not want to comply with the law. they don't care. >> over the years sunflower spent no legal expense battling the health department and
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managed to stay open. >> i don't think they were in violation. >> sunflower was able to hire the best attorneys to refute all our allegations, all our evidence. it took five years to build a big enough case where we thought we could revoke the permit. and every time we had one of these hearings they provided the best defense they could with the attorneys that they were able to afford. >> but on this day, after numerous appeals, a judge gives the san francisco health department the ruling they always sought. >> ready to go, sir? >> for ed walsh, the decision was a long-sought victory and validation. >> are you ready for this? >> oh, yeah, this is it. this is great. they know it's going to happen. because they've been through the process. the final appeal to rehear the case with the board of appeals, me got denied. so they know that we're getting ready to close them. >> when the inspectors descend upon sunflower, they find the proprietor somewhat reluctant to answer the doorbell. >> you want to cover the back? >> yeah. >> unable to gain entry by way
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of the front door, inspector walsh goes around back. >> and as i approached the back door, the gentleman was walking up the stairs here. >> how you doing, man? >> good. how are you? >> good. you coming out this way? >> yeah. >> could you open it, please? thank you. >> thanks. >> he had his shoes in his hands. he's barefooted, walking out of the premises. >> san francisco police, can you open the door, please? >> with walsh now inside, sunflower has no choice but to open up for inspection. >> is there anybody else here today besides you? no girls? no? >> i sold everything. i'm done. >> after a quick search of the premises -- >> you have immigrant girls, there's always going to be little trap doors, hiding places. >> including all of the favorite hiding spots. >> there were girls hiding here the last time. there's still shoes here, though. yeah, but the hole has been sealed up.
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>> investigators conclude that the massage parlor is deserted. >> we are here to serve the order indicating that your license has been revoked. >> yeah, but i already sold everything in here for the new person and they do a different type of business. and i'm -- i supposed to be out now, take all my stuff so they can come in and do their own business. >> how are you doing, man? >> good. how are you? >> when asked about the barefoot man who scrambled out the back door, the proprietor told investigators that he was her boyfriend. >> and the guy was going up with his shoes in his hands. that shows that there probably were still a lot of activities going on at that location. >> okay. i posted a sign on the front door saying your permit's been revoked. do not remove it. you're supposed to close effective 5:00 p.m. today. no customers. no massage activities. okay? >> thank you. >> thank you.
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>> i think in the 21st century no one should tolerate anybody being used as a sex slave. i will say it to people listening out there, that human trafficking is real, and all they need to do is just take one step back and ask themselves, would they want their daughters to be in that kind of situation? and those that have the ability to stop it should do everything they can to put an end to it. >> for now, the problem of human trafficking in america is a growing one, and the battlefield is nationwide, involving tens of thousands of victims, many scarred for life, some lost, others dead. each day, law enforcement is winning small victories, closing down the sunflower massage parlor, and the legal battle to win lily's freedom from human servitude. it is victories like these that will help win the war against human trafficking.
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