Bill addresses property owners who organize illegal massage rooms

A bill in the State Legislature would identify sexual workers trafficked as victims while pursuing owners and owners that allow massage rooms that represent legitimate businesses but are actually illegal houses of prostitution.

Bill from the camera 1485 It represents the last attempt to take energetic measures against Hawaii illegal sex trade, especially in Oahu.

The bill would impose a fine of $ 100,000 when there is “convincing evidence” that property administrators or owners were aware of prostitution and did not take measures to “address it.”

The representative Ikaika Olds (D, MoIlii-McCully) introduced HB 1485, modeling it after applying efforts of similar law to take energetic measures in illegal games rooms.

“Our approach to address this problem is aligned with the way we are addressing game rooms: by holding the owners responsible,” Olds said in a text to Honolulu Star’s advertiser. “The central intention of the bill is to reflect that strategy “

Both game rooms and massage halls persist despite the frequent raids of the law, search orders and prosecution efforts. While the police can arrest workers within both, to demonstrate that an owner knew that illegal activity was happening has been difficult due to the lack of forceful evidence.

The massage, legal and other rooms persist in Oahu, but especially in the urban nucleus, and a Google search lists the names and locations of some of the most popular, often with customers that qualify specific workers .

However, unlike massage halls, game rooms represent an even greater priority because they are often the scenes of violence, including murder. Testing criminal cases against massage rooms and game rooms can be difficult because both victims and witnesses are often reluctant to recognize their roles and help researchers.

In the last incident of violence in the Game Room, the Honolulu police arrested a 38 -year -old man on Wednesday in relation to the fatal shooting of a 30 -year -old man in an illegal game room in Kalihi.

The prosecutor’s office accused Iosefa “Sefa” Fiso, a convicted criminal, with only a crime of firearms and set his bond at $ 50,000, according to the Honolulu Police Department. Prosecutors did not immediately reveal a reason for decline charging with murder.

It has more than 50 arrests and previous appointments, according to the records of the State Court.

Olds acknowledges that HB 1485 is not perfect, which calls it more a starting point to eventually create a better invoice.

“The bill was hurriedly written due to time limitations,” he said. “We simply did not have time to work with the office (from the State Attorney General) or the prosecutor’s office to verify his legal viability.”

HB 1485 has been sent to the judicial of the Chamber and the Hawaii Affairs Committee and the Finance Committee, but it has not yet been scheduled for an audience or receiving any testimony.

Olds wrote HB 1485 due to his experience in social services, which sometimes meant working with women involved in prostitution.

“I understand that sex work is a very complicated world,” he said in a telephone interview. “People who provide these services must be treated as victims. I have worked with women who were being actively trafficked. “

The prosecutor told the Star-Advertiser that “a victim-centered approach is already implementing.”

Unlike street prostitution that operates outdoors in places like Waikiki and Chinatown, massage halls provide private rooms where customers are alone with workers, which makes it difficult for strength forces to demonstrate that the operator or owner of the owner of the owner of the owner of the Building knew that illegal activity was happening.

“Once these activities move within private establishments, the application becomes significantly more challenging due to legal barriers to the entry of the property, compared to the activities that occur in public streets,” said Olds in his text.

Myles Breiner, a criminal defense lawyer from Honolulu, believes that HB 1485 failed.

“In my opinion, it is a very poorly written bill and gives prosecutors tremendous margin margin to differentiate between who is a victim and who is not a victim,” he said.

Breiner has successfully defended the workers of the massage room, including those of a 2015 Sting operation, where 16 of them were arrested for positions of sexual assault that later retired.

HB 1485 would consider any worker a victim, and they would be offered resources to determine the nature of their participation. “

Breiner worries that the language in the bill means that sex workers would have to “renounce their right against self -inculting, sitting and telling them what they want to hear” to be classified as victims.

He believes that prostitution remains a problem in Honolulu because it provides a service that customers often, tourists, want.

The Keeaumoku area around the Ala Moana center and the Hawaii Convention Center, on the outskirts of Waikiki, has been the house for a long time of several suspected illegal massage halls that had previously been raided.

“The public tolerates it because the public wants it,” Breiner said.

Instead of obtaining a constant conviction of persistent residents and challenges for the application of the law, it believes that prostitution should be legalized in a safer and more controlled way, such as legal brothels in Nevada and Amsterdam.

“I am in favor of legalized prostitution,” Breiner said. “I gravels and keep it safe.

“Human desire and human sexuality cannot be legislated.”