They 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. Patriots owner Robert Kraft stands accused of soliciting prostitution from such a massage parlor in Florida. He denies the charges. But lost in the headlines of the Florida arrests are the stories of the victims, the girls and women forced into prostitution. After the Kraft arrest, the NBC10 Boston Investigators started digging and found similar situations in Massachusetts, hidden in plain sight.
One Massachusetts woman agreed to tell her story with the hope of bringing awareness to what she says is everyone's role in perpetuating or preventing sex trafficking.
She says she remembers the first time a minister from Northborough, Massachusetts, came to her camp. She says the minister promised her an education and told her parents that "he would treat me like his daughter and that I was really too smart to stay in the village. Landing in Massachusetts at age 14, she went from a refugee camp in Tibet to a victim of international sex trafficking.
He told me, 'No one will believe you, even the school. Meston later testified at the trial of the minister. He was convicted of rape and indecent assault and battery in He spent four years in prison. Of the nearly girls helped by My Life, My Choice, a Boston non-profit that helps get girls out of sex trafficking, many are American-born.
Police raids have rescued girls who were being forced to engage in sex for money from massage parlors in Beverly, Medford, Lynn and Quincy. Of the girls that My Life, My Choice has helped, the average age is 14, and 85 percent are part of the state's child welfare system. The estimated billion-dollar illicit sex business is fueled in part by websites like RubMaps, a literal guide to places allegedly offering sex for money.
