Review Website Rub Maps Leads LE To Shut Down Massage Store

[Drukpa Kunley]

Review Website Rub Maps Leads LE To Shut Down Massage Store

The customers themselves led law enforcement to the address by writing detailed reviews of the services they received at Hadley Massage Therapy — services that went far beyond massage. On a website called Rub maps.com, they described their sexual experiences in detail, including how much they paid, what services they received, and their level of satisfaction with the women’s performance.

The now-closed Hadley Massage Therapy is one of hundreds of erotic massage centers described on Rub maps.com in Massachusetts alone — and there are some 7,000 nationwide.

Law enforcement officials can easily find suspected sex-trafficking operations on Rub maps.com and other so-called John boards from listings on these sites.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said her office continues to go after the massage businesses described on the review boards.

Donna Gavin, head of the human trafficking unit for the Boston Police Department, said police scrutinize review boards during investigations.

Valiant Richey, a prosecutor in King County, Washington, believe massage parlor women are exploited, forced into service through debt bondage, poverty, and fear. He said, "review boards are fueling commercial sex by increasing demand."

Richey is the first state prosecutor to go after reviewers for promoting prostitution, targeting the now shuttered Seattle-based site The Review Board. Thirty-five defendants, including brothel operators and reviewers of prostitution-related services provided mainly by Korean women, were charged last year. Most pleaded guilty to prostitution-related charges, and a trial is pending for two remaining men.

The John boards “create vast online communities of sex buyers who share information, who encourage and normalize the conduct for each other and accelerate the rate of buying,’’ Richey said. “These are really toxic venues for exploiting people.”

"Without reducing demand, the problem will never go away."

Anti-sex-trafficking advocates are using Rub maps as a tool to fight the industry. A nonprofit advocacy group called Children at Risk is using information in website reviews to identify illicit parlors and recruit volunteer attorneys to seek to shut them down for lack of licensing records.

Review writers, who describe themselves as “mongers” or “hobbyists,” give tips about how to avoid law enforcement, detail the ethnicity of women, and grouse about less-than-enthusiastic services, LE records show.

One reviewer wrote in his review that he gave the woman an $80 tip, but wasn’t thrilled with her body type. “Will ask for a different more full figured provider next time,” he added.

The Rub maps website’s focus is on a sex-themed adventure. An anonymous author on the site wrote in a review last month about the benefits of asking for a “lineup” of women when entering a shop to avoid getting “a bored-looking, average-to-ugly old Asian lady.”

He urged the site's readers in his review to try new places: “Be adventurous, find a new parlor in your area and write a good review!”

A Boston area businessman who requested anonymity to protect his family’s privacy, described spending tens of thousands of dollars on illicit massage parlors. He would have done it anyway, he said, but the Internet made it much easier.

“Rub maps took the guessing out of it,’’ he said. “It became a very powerful tool.”

In the end, he only stopped because his wife caught him.


https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...VkO/story.html

[grampajones]

and we all know who killed that area.