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The Metropolis of Richmond proposes ramping up bylaw enforcement on physique rub parlours that might see the companies’ licences suspended or revoked.
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A workers report going earlier than the Metropolis of Richmond’s public security committee this week is recommending harsher penalties in opposition to physique rub parlours for bylaw infractions.
One metropolis councillor who helps the crackdown says he’s involved the companies may very well be fronts for human trafficking. However a critic says elevated enforcement might have the impact of scaring employees into extra harmful places.
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At present, parlours can face fines of as much as $1,000 for bylaw infractions. A report from Mark Corrado, the town’s bylaw and licensing director, and Edward Warzel, supervisor of police companies, proposes ramping up penalties to permit for steeper fines, in addition to licence suspensions or revocations. There are at present six licensed physique rub parlours within the metropolis, in line with the workers report.
The workers report was a response to a movement put ahead by Coun. Kash Heed at a gathering of the general public security committee final November throughout which he stated these companies had been probably “avenues which are used for human trafficking.”
“We’ve obtained an unimaginable market, sadly in Richmond, and a requirement for the companies of sex-trade employees,” he stated.
“I believe it’s incumbent on us … we take a powerful stand in opposition to this.”
Angela Wu, govt director of the Vancouver-based non-profit Swan, which helps migrant and immigrant girls engaged in indoor intercourse work, disagrees.
“For months, girls engaged in intercourse work in Richmond have been topic to bylaw raids. … It has paradoxically pushed employees into areas the place there’s a better danger of exploitation and violence the town claims it desires to deal with,” Wu stated in an announcement posted to social media this previous week.
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“The report going earlier than the committee subsequent week is full of misinformation and an irresponsible conflation of exploitation, trafficking and intercourse work,” Wu stated.
Authorities ought to as an alternative take a “compassionate” strategy to bylaw enforcement “so (intercourse) employees really feel protected calling police when they’re victims of a criminal offense.”
However Heed, a former police chief and B.C. solicitor basic, says Richmond is “not seeking to goal the ladies who work within the parlours, however the unsavoury characters who’re turning a revenue by exploiting them.”
Heed pointed to alleged prison connections in not less than one licensed physique rub parlour, Water Dice spa. It beforehand operated contained in the Radisson Lodge and was run by alleged cash launderer Paul Jin, who was shot lifeless at a neighborhood Japanese restaurant within the fall of 2020.
“Bylaws are what the town has inside its energy to cope with this downside,” Heed stated.
Whereas therapeutic massage parlours are authorized in Canada, buying intercourse work is banned. Since 2000, Richmond bylaws have prohibited physique rub parlours from working previous midnight, from utilizing locks on room doorways and obstructing room home windows, and workers from sporting outer clothes that don’t cowl the realm between their neck and knee.
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Up to now six months, Richmond bylaw officers have issued 13 tickets for non-compliance to licensed parlour operators, in line with the workers report. The most recent operation, carried out on Jan. 12 by bylaw and RCMP officers, investigated all six physique rub institutions. Whereas they discovered bylaw violations and handed out eight tickets for non-compliance, no prison exercise was cited.
Investigating unlawful intercourse work enterprises stays a priority for Richmond RCMP, in line with the report, “because of the potential nexus to sexual assault, human trafficking, organized crime and baby or youth sexual exploitation.”
The report outlines three instances over the previous 5 years in Richmond involving suspected human trafficking, together with one in 2019 the place a intercourse employee informed police they had been assaulted, their actions had been being managed they usually had been compelled to have intercourse with “a number of shoppers a day.” The case ended with one individual being convicted of assault and uttering threats,” the RCMP stated.
Not one of the instances talked about within the report had been linked to any of the six licensed physique rub parlours in Richmond.
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Richmond RCMP on Saturday stated they weren’t capable of present a remark.
With recordsdata from Kim Bolan and Douglas Quan
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sgrochowski@postmedia.com
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