A woman has been charged with trafficking multiple victims for sex through Crystal’s Day Spa in Revere, an alleged front for human trafficking, the attorney general said.
Geralda De Matos Garland, 57, of Revere, was arrested on Friday and charged with trafficking of persons for sexual servitude, deriving support from prostitution, money laundering and conspiracy, the Attorney General’s Office announced Tuesday.
HUDSON — Police say a downtown massage parlor was a front for a prostitution and human trafficking ring.
Hudson police, in a joint investigation with the FBI’s Boston Division’s Child Exploitation-Human Trafficking Task Force, arrested three people Thursday at the Anjun Spa, 157 Main St., after an investigation, Police Chief Richard DiPersio said.
“Our detectives do a great job of monitoring these type of cases,” he said. “We received several tips from the communities, and we began this investigation several weeks ago.”
The police and FBI task force worked with the state Division of Professional Licensure Investigations to identify businesses that exploit children or traffic in adults for sexual purposes.
A man from Haiti, used two of his houses from Boston, Massachusetts for sex trafficking and has been sentenced to 21 years and 10 months in prison. This 51-year-old used social media to locate his four victims and he convinced them to live with him. All four of the victims were from Maine, and he picked them all up. He trafficked these women from 2012-2016. He was convicted of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. He was ordered to pay his victims $728,000 in restitution.
Read MoreBOSTON – 74-year old Walter Brown was sentenced to 15 years on Friday in federal court in Springfield on sex trafficking and sexual exploitation charges.
On Oct 11, 2019, co-defendant Claire Poole was sentenced to 10 and a half years (125 months) in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and two counts of sex trafficking. Poole moved to the Springfield area in early 2017 and later helped Brown have sex with a teenage girl.
Nine years ago, a woman from Maine went down to Seekonk, Massachusetts to help a man that he knew. Once they checked into a hotel the man turned violent. She was held against her will for days and was sexually assaulted. Once she escaped, she did something that nobody has ever done at the time. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act she sued the hotel for its role in the crime. She said they knew that she was needed help, but they did nothing. She won the lawsuit and now more victims are suing hotels for the same thing.
Read MoreA Massachusetts community college professor is being held on bail after being charged with numerous counts of human trafficking and two counts of rape, state police said.
Read MoreBeltran was found guilty by a Worcester, MA. Superior Court jury last year of human trafficking and deriving support from a prostitute. Judge Daniel Wrenn sentenced Beltran to 6 to 8 years on the human trafficking charge and 4 to 5 years for the deriving support from a prostitute charge. The sentences run concurrently.
Read MoreThe program is called “My Life My Choice” and is based out of Boston, MA. Rockford Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, located in IL, prevention program includes connecting young girls and women with survivors to help them better understand what do to if they are confronted with a sex trafficking situation.
Read MoreXuedan Ou, 34, of Tewksbury, MA, is charged with trafficking a person for sexual servitude, keeping a house of prostitution, and deriving support from prostitution. She ran a a prostitution business from her spa, TCM Therapy Center, located in Tewksbury.
Read MoreMassachusetts has received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to address human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.
Read MorePolice arrested 25-year-old Eddie Diaz of Hyde Park and 40-year-old Robert Horsley of Woburn, MA. as a result of an investigation by Tewksbury detectives and the F.B.I. in connection with a local hotel.
Read MoreCorey Smith, 37, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Senior Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. to one count of transportation of a minor for purposes of prostitution and two counts of transportation of an individual with intent to engage in prostitution. The plea agreement, the parties recommend a sentence of about 12 years in prison and three years of supervised release.
Read MoreWilliam Coleman, 48, was charged with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and nine counts of sex trafficking in U.S. District Court in Springfield. He was arrested on Dec. 23 and has been held behind bars ever since.
Read MoreLaws cracking down on human trafficking are on the books in all 50 states, but convictions are notoriously elusive, and state prosecutors haven’t come close to matching the success their federal counterparts have had in winning cases.
Read MoreThey are near pizza shops, coffee shops and schools — massage parlors that are offering more than just a massage. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey says they are in the business of selling sex.
Read MoreAn Attleboro, Mass. doctor Sujan Kayastha, 37 was in court Thursday on several charges, including trafficking of a person for sexual servitude, possession of child pornography, and two counts each of electronic enticement of a child for prostitution, paying a minor for sex and disseminating obscene matter to a child. The boy is 14 years old. Kayastha’s bail was set at only $75,000..
Read More“The demand is what drives all of this,” said Nikki Bell, founder and CEO of LIFT Worcester, which works to empower survivors of sexual exploitation in central Massachusetts. “A pimp isn’t going to sell a woman if nobody’s going to buy her, right? You’re not going to stand on a corner if nobody’s going to come to pick you up, right? So, it’s very clear that’s where our efforts should be focused.”
For the women caught up in “the life,” it is a seedy and violent reality that can often be hidden or overlooked by the rest of society.
Chen Chen, one of nearly a dozen bodyworks spas in Worcester alone, had 59 reviews as of this past week at one so-called “john board” online, where massage-parlor customers describe the sexual services offered at spas across the country. Mentions of the place at another online board go back to 2013. The business operates behind drawn blinds in plain sight. A pink plastic flamingo marks the side entrance to the spa in the former Ricciardi Bros. contractors’ building, on a dead end bordered by a junkyard a block off Shrewsbury Street’s restaurant row. In the window is a light-up sign that reads, “OPEN.”
Read More“Sexual exploitation in all of its forms is reprehensible,” Markey told the Globe’s Bob Hohler. “These allegations are very alarming, and I have confidence that the authorities will be investigating this matter fully to get to the truth.”
Read MoreWhen state Rep. Vincent Pedone, D-Worcester, stepped up to Statehouse podium in 2006 to call for the regulation of massage therapy, he was quickly met by laughter and catcalls that filled the chamber and cut him short. The bill that passed that day — despite lawmakers’ laughter, but policymakers and society still don’t take massage, and the human traffickers who increasingly hide behind it, seriously.
Read MoreIn Norwell, MA. the Platinum Body Works Spa was housed in a nondescript blue Cape along a commercial stretch of Route 53. But workers at the neighboring business knew it was no ordinary massage parlor.
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Bail has been set at a combined $35,000 for a married couple charged with operating a Norwell massage parlor where police say sex acts were sold before it was shut down following a raid two weeks ago.
Read MoreThe Worcester woman is a survivor of sex trafficking. She said that although the Florida investigation involved Asian immigrant women being virtually imprisoned in sexual servitude at spas, the underlying issue is no different from prostitution on the streets of the city.
Read MoreThe dark business of human trafficking is, of course, more pervasive than one man alone — and you don’t need to go to Florida to find stories about it.
Read MoreA Medford, Mass. woman has been sentenced to five years in prison for running a human trafficking and money laundering ring out of massage parlors that were used as fronts, the state’s attorney general’s office announced Thursday.
Read MoreSimas bears witness to human trafficking. She wants more people to understand the plight of those who have been or are being trafficked and to help survivors heal, she said an interview at her home.
Read MorePolice have charged a Buckley Street man with trafficking a woman for sex and firing a gun in their apartment while she was in the room.
Read MoreA Lynn woman who worked at a Saugus group home for children referred by the Department of Children and Families has been indicted for allegedly prostituting a child who lived there, officials announced Friday.
Read More“Because of the location we are in, we are fairly rural, people want to think this doesn’t happen around here and kids are not exploited around here, but unfortunately it does happen at a frequency that is all too high,” said Kellie Beaulieu, Child Abuse Unit Coordinator for the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office.
Read MoreRashad Sabree, 37, of Boston, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, federal officials said.
Read MoreA man charged with raping a 15-year-old girl posted $60,000 cash bail Monday, days after a Salem Superior Court judge overturned a lower court ruling that saw him held without bail pending trial.
Read MoreTwo men have been indicted in connection with trafficking multiple victims for sex, including minors, on Cape Cod and in Boston, Attorney General Maura Healey announced today. One of the defendants is also charged with enticement of a child and posing a child in a state of nudity.
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