About a dozen women arrested over the weekend in a Honolulu prostitution sting at massage parlors won't be charged with prostitution. Instead, they face the more severe charge of sex assault. If convicted, the women would have to register as sex offenders and could spend up to a year in jail, while a prostitution charge carries just 30 days. The new tactic from the Honolulu Police Department is extremely unusual for a law enforcement agency, said legal experts and advocates for prostitutes.
Details of the cases will come out in court. Hawaii has a strange history with prostitution investigations. Until a year ago, police officers were legally allowed to have sex with prostitutes as part of investigations, an unusual policy that state lawmakers changed last year after The Associated Press highlighted the law. The state is also the last in the nation without a law against sex trafficking, which the Legislature is trying to fix this year. The standard way police investigate prostitution is to engage in a conversation to agree on a sex act and a price, said Kenneth Franzblau, former anti-trafficking director with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
If that doesn't happen, there's no arrest. Prostitutes know not to have that conversation, and now that prostitutes in Hawaii know police can't have sex with them, police are trying to get around that difficulty, said an attorney representing some of the women, Myles Breiner.
In at least one instance at a massage parlor called Orchid Relaxtion, Breiner said, an officer disrobed, took the woman's hand and put it on his genitals. A woman who answered the door at Orchid Relaxation on Wednesday declined to comment. At neighboring China Doll Spa, where some arrests took place, there was no answer.
The sex assault charges don't require the proof of a plan for money to be exchanged β just evidence the woman touched someone's genitals without consent. So it may be the type of thing where an alleged prostitute may know, 'If I talk about sex for money I'm going to get arrested,'" he said. Yu said Wednesday that even before the law was changed, officers weren't having sex with prostitutes. Police last year asked lawmakers to retain the exemption as a way to keep secret the methods of undercover officers but assured lawmakers that officers do not abuse the protection and that strict internal rules prevent misconduct.
