Human trafficking in NZ: Reporter in the line of fire
The scale of human trafficking and exploitation in New Zealand is just beginning to be exposed. In part two of a three-part series Lincoln Tan looks at how overseas women wind up in New Zealand
It was the evening of a US Government shutdown and the streets of Washington DC were dead quiet. Business was quiet, too, for Kim, a 27-year-old graduate student originally from South Korea who takes her clothes off for money at a strip club and does escort work with “extras”.
The Herald got in touch with her through an advertisement placed on an adult entertainment site.
Kim, not her real name, is casually dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans. We meet outside the Camelot Show Bar on M St in downtown DC and move on to a Japanese ramen bar nearby to talk.
“I know that American people will be telling you that we girls are victims of trafficking and that sort of crap, but I can tell you that I do it willingly,” she said at the start of our chat.
Kim, who also goes by the names Babe, Karma and Sugar, says she grew up in Seoul but came to the US for further education after graduating.
“My parents don’t know I’m doing this and what I do is considered illegal in America, so that’s why I cannot tell you my real name,” she explained.
Kim began stripping about a year ago after a college mate, who had also been dancing, took her to a club.
Prostitution is illegal in most parts of the US, including Washington DC, so strip clubs are the only adult entertainment establishments.
Kim says the underground world of escort services, Asian health spas and massage parlour brothels may be out of sight, but is very much alive.
As a stripper, she can take home US$1000 to US$2000 a week — but that could be earned in one good night of escort work, which usually involved having sex with the client.
“I am not a trafficking victim, I do it for the money,” Kim reiterated.
But one incident just before Christmas left her shaken.
When she refused a client’s request for unprotected sex, he took out a pistol and pointed it at her head.
“That night, I thought I was surely going to die,” she says. “After that, I had to let him do anything he wanted with me but I began thinking that no money is worth it for me to have to go through this.”
The appeal of New Zealand
Kim, who works for herself and doesn’t have a pimp, says recent police crackdowns on prostitution are making her think of moving to another country to work.
This month, the website where she advertises her services and its affiliated sites were seized by the FBI. Its founders and employees were charged with money laundering and aiding prostitution.
Kim says services are being offered by Korean brokers on an Asian online chat group via messaging app Kakaotalk to bring sex workers to New Zealand.
“They say we can earn $1000 a day, and we don’t have to worry about police because prostitution is legal there,” Kim says. “The biggest attraction is that New Zealand is safe, and clients don’t carry guns.”
She says other Korean sex workers who had done stints in New Zealand had also said on the closed chat group that they had earned up to $100,000 in the three months their visas allowed them to be in the country.
In Houston, Texas, another sex worker originally from Hong Kong told the Herald similar services were being offered on WeChat, a mobile app where users are mainly Chinese.
Half-truths
It’s illegal for migrants on temporary visas to provide commercial sexual services in New Zealand.
Annah Pickering, the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC) regional manager, said many of the migrant sex workers being enticed by brokers and operators to come to New Zealand were not being told the “whole truth”.
“Often it is not until they come into contact with NZPC, or through our closed social media chat group, that we tell them what the actual situation is with the law . . . which prohibits any migrant worker from working in the sex industry.”
Migrants who had been deceived or coerced to work in the sex industry would be treated as suspected victims of trafficking, Immigration New Zealand said.
Caught out
Immigration NZ and the police have a long history of brothel raids and many migrant workers have been caught and deported that way.
In 2015, a 27-year-old Korean sex worker came to New Zealand after establishing contact with a broker through a Korean website.
She was caught by police after working for 20 days, and was jointly charged with her broker and pimp for failure to adopt safe sex practices, operating a prostitution business that promoted unsafe sex practices and aiding a person to breach their visa conditions for material benefit.
According to court documents, the woman came on a short-term temporary visa and contributed $600 towards her airfare.
She was provided with an explanation to give authorities at the border if they asked about the reason for her visit to New Zealand.
The broker arranged for a Korean taxi driver to pick the woman up from the airport and take her to a Hobson St apartment.
On arrival, she was given an induction into the sex industry including appropriate English terms to use when discussing sexual services with clients.
The woman was told she could provide special services, for which she should charge up to $100 extra.
In a written record kept by the woman, police found that she had 196 customers and charged them a total of $32,875 for sexual services including extras during the 20-day period.
Court documents said the broker and operator would have earned about $15,680 from the services provided by the woman.
Where are the workers coming from?
Laura Rundlet, acting deputy director at the US Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, says the office does not hold information on how many sex workers who left America went on to New Zealand or a third country.
It is thought many who arrive in New Zealand come from Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Brazil.
Last year 133 people suspected of wanting to work in the sex industry were denied entry, up from 124 the year before and 101 in 2015.
Immigration NZ assistant general manager Peter Devoy said he was aware of groups offering to help sex workers move overseas but not of specific groups targeting New Zealand as a destination.
None of the 133 suspected illegal sex workers who had been denied entry were recorded as arriving from the US.
“INZ is not aware of any cases where people have asked to come to New Zealand to work in the sex industry against their own free will.
“[But] it is aware that temporary migrants who breach their visa conditions by working in the New Zealand sex industry are very vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers and clients.
“Human trafficking is a serious criminal offence in New Zealand. If a migrant has been deceived or coerced to work in the sex industry, she/he would be treated as a suspected victim of trafficking and the matter would be investigated.”