Focusing on the Sex

Today's headline news, complete with a photo of a lithe young woman in a bikini and handcuffs, was the raid of 10 massage parlors and the arrest of 29 women who work in them. The vice squad has been working on this bust for a month (according to the Republican-American), and there has not yet been a decision on whether or not to prosecute any of the men caught having sex with their masseuses. The women are all Asian and speak little English, suggesting that they are recent immigrants. The paper reported that the women slept in the same rooms in which they worked. To me, this certainly suggests that they have extremely little control over their lives. I would have liked the reporter, Ben Conery, to have focused more on this issue. The article contains far more information about the details of paying to have a masseuse double as a prostitute. The large photo of the woman in a bikini borders on the titillating, and is extremely offensive and inconsiderate if it should turn out that the woman in question is an immigrant forced to work as a prostitute.

The men who were found in the massage parlors are "cooperating" with the police and might not be charged with any illegal activity. The Waterbury police department has a track record of not charging men who solicit prostitutes. This is a horrible double standard. If exchanging money for sex is so terrible an act that it must be illegal, surely the men are just as guilty as the women. Indeed, aren't the men more guilty? If they did not go looking for the prostitutes, then the prostitution would never occur.

Worse still, if any of these women were forced into prostitution and were, in my opinion, being held in a form of slavery, then the men who frequented the massage parlors are among the lowest of the low and deserve jail time.

Given the possibilities of this case, the newspaper should have been much more balanced in its coverage.