A female massage parlor owner has been handcuffed for allegedly holding a woman captive to sell her for sex.
Ying He — the 55-year-old owner of Message Therapy in Willmar, Minnesota — now faces felony charges as a result, including soliciting or encouraging someone to commit prostitution.
She also faces felony charges of operating a disorderly house and 5th Degree Assault after the unnamed woman told police she was locked in a small room at the business and controlled when she could eat and bathe for several days.
According to the charges filed Tuesday, officers were called at 1:30 p.m. Saturday to the business in response to a report of a woman screaming. They were then waved down by someone outside a neighboring shop before finding the woman inside.
The complaint recalls how she was upset and crying and spoke to officers through a translation app on her phone.
She said the suspect hit her on the head and wouldn’t let her drink water, cook or turn on the light while she lived in the ‘locked… small room every day when there was no business,’ it said the complaint. .
Ying He — the 55-year-old owner of Message Therapy in Willmar, Minnesota — now faces felony charges as a result, including soliciting or encouraging someone to commit prostitution
The woman – who was subsequently hospitalized – later told police that she had been staying at Massage Therapy since sometime after March 3.
It was on the day she flew from her native California to Minnesota under the pretense that he would give her a job that investigators learned more about her alleged ordeal during an interview at the hospital.
“She said she was working with an agency in Los Angeles looking for massage work,” the sit-down complaint says. ‘She paid this agency $100 to find work and specifically asked for legitimate massage work and not involving “sex.”
The woman then told police that her flight cost $630 and that she was told by her new boss that she would pay half.
When she arrived, he – depicted in a Kandiyohi County mug – arranged for a taxi to pick her up at the airport, then regulated the woman’s every move.
This included eating and bathing, police wrote — adding that the suspect allegedly instructed her to ‘do whatever the customer wanted her to do.’
Officials claim it involved sexual acts and intercourse – acts that, if the woman refused, would be met with reprimands and threats.
“She was not allowed to leave the business,” police wrote, charging that this was at his behest.
‘She was threatened that if she left, (he) would find her and (his) boss in LA was a lawyer for the courts.’
She also faces felony counts of running a disorderly house and 5th Degree Assault after the unnamed woman told police she was locked in a small room at the business and controlled when she could eat and bathe for several days
The police eventually returned to the business to crack down on He.
Upon their arrival, he was questioned and denied hitting the woman or forcing her to stay in the room inside the business.
Police continued to ask her to provide a copy of the video footage to investigators, which she obliged.
After reading video footage of the interaction, they looked for a specific alleged incident the victim had told them about — that she was punched twice by He after refusing one of her orders.
The alleged strikes left her dizzy and with a headache, she said – adding that the incident was likely caught on one of the company’s surveillance cameras.
Cops wrote that he allegedly shut out of the video, claiming it didn’t work when it got to the part they were interested in, which they continued to watch.
In the clip in question, he is allegedly shown punching the woman twice in the head as she walks past him, while at another point a man is shown in his underwear in the hallway.
The victim, police wrote, was hit as she walked to the room she was forced to stay in.
Police continued to search the business and eventually confiscated about a dozen items.
The evidence included several phones and sex toy whips, as well as several DNA swabs in the salon’s rooms.
He was arrested that day and is charged in Kandiyohi County District Court with one felony charge of soliciting a person to engage in prostitution and the two misdemeanors.
Unconditional bail was set at $150,000 and her next court appearance was scheduled for March 20.