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A street in Corona, Queens, has turned into the city’s boldest open-air market for sex — one so popular with pervs that it’s advertised on YouTube.
As police enforcement wanes and immigration surges, nearly a dozen brothels have set up shop along Roosevelt Avenue near Junction Boulevard.
On a recent weekday in broad daylight, scores of scantily clad streetwalkers brazenly solicited passersby — including a Post reporter — as sidewalks teemed with kids and legitimate shoppers and merchants.
One sex worker offered a “happy ending” massage for $40 and another offered “full-body massages” for $80.
The women loiter in front of pool halls, dentist shops and massage parlors day and night, and even recruit neighborhood children to hand out their X-rated business cards, concerned moms told The Post.
“How do they have this f–king going on in broad daylight?” one police source asked after seeing photos of the women in the street.
“They’re not allowed to arrest prostitutes anymore, supposedly. But they gotta figure something out.”
It’s a perfect storm for prostitution in Corona and other NYC immigrant enclaves, experts say.
Vulnerable migrant women unable to legally work are flooding the city, while local district attorneys have chosen to stop prosecuting sex workers.
The Post found the oldest profession has some new tricks:
- The Roosevelt Avenue red-light district is blatantly advertised on a YouTube channel for Spanish speakers, with 10 minutes of footage showing the women working what they call the “Market of Sweethearts,” and two men guiding viewers on how to negotiate with them.
- The brothels appear to be cooperating, rather than competing. As The Post spoke with one sex worker, others nearby filmed and photographed, appearing to warn each other of the journalists’ presence.
- It’s not just happening in the dark of night or inside massage parlors. Women were found plying their trade in the middle of the afternoon, in front of a dental clinic, a pool hall and a barber shop.
- Cops no longer arrest hookers. The NYPD started focusing on johns a few years ago after a prostitute tragically jumped to her death during a police pursuit. In April 2021, then-Manhattan DA Cy Vance announced his office would stop prosecuting sex workers, and other borough prosecutors soon followed suit.
- Brothels and sex workers are actively recruiting kids. Some have them hand out cards with a photo of a sex worker offering “delivery service,” according to terrified moms, about 20 of whom have banded together to form the Community of Young Values and Principles in Corona.
“I’ve lived here my entire life and I’ve never seen it get to this point,” said City Councilman Francisco Moya (D-Corona), who is sounding the alarm about the issue and says he’s asked Mayor Eric Adams to help.
Moya was especially incensed by the “Market of Sweethearts” video by the group Comunidad Latina En Usa, which has more than 19,000 YouTube subscribers.
The two male guides in the clip are seen asking one Corona sex worker, “How much, for example, does it cost for a happy ending?”
The woman replies, “Two hundred dollars.”
“Two hundred dollars with everything?” the man marvels, before telling the audience, “That’s how much that service costs here in New York. And how much does it cost in your city?”
Moya fumed, “This is put on Facebook, YouTube and saying, ‘Here’s a destination for you to come to, you know, learn how to negotiate with prostitutes.’ And they are literally telling you the price for whatever a sexual act that they’re willing to perform. It’s just unheard of. It’s in plain sight.”
He added, “We need to get enforcement in here to clean up Roosevelt Avenue … because no community should have to be faced with the quality-of-life issues that we’re facing here each and every day.”
At least six alleged brothels have been shuttered since June by the Queens DA through nuisance abatement, which allows prosecutors to impose large fines and year-long closures — but cops and locals say the effort barely made a dent.
“You’re looking at prostitutes being in a hub area,” a law enforcement source told The Post.
“So your children are right there. It’s not fair to the people who live there.”
While human traffickers have long provided the local sex industry with a steady stream of Asian and Central American women trying to escape horrid conditions in their homelands, the recent flood of migrants into the five boroughs has created a larger — and more desperate — pool of potential prostitutes.
“We’re … aware of the fact that many young people have immigrated here — kids 15 or 16 years old — and they’re not in school, they’re working, and these [prostitutes] find them and pull them in,” said Guadalupe Aguirre Gomez, the coordinator of Community of Young Values and Principles.
Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, said, “There are trafficking cartels from Mexico and Central America who ship women into Queens and parts of Brooklyn.
“I spoke to a young girl in Sunset Park [Brooklyn]. She said she’s seen vans at night picking up women from the shelters that house these new immigrants.”
Women’s advocate Jane Manning said migrants “are at elevated risk” to be pulled into the sex trade.
“It’s harder to get an on-the-books job if you’re undocumented. It’s harder because you’re away from family and friends. It’s harder because you may not speak English. For all kinds of reasons, being an immigrant makes you more vulnerable,” she said.
Despite authorities saying they were focused on johns, pimps and traffickers, locals say the enforcement in Corona is nonexistent.
So far this year, there have been no sex-trafficking arrests by either NYPD’s 110th or 115th precincts, which cover Corona, as well as Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, and a combined six arrests have been made for prostitution in both precincts.
Throughout all of last year, there were two arrests for sex trafficking between the 110th and 115th precincts and just five were cuffed for prostitution.
“The NYPD has proactively shifted the work of vice enforcement in recent years, reflecting our ongoing efforts to focus with precision on those who would purchase sex or promote its sale,” an NYPD spokesperson said.
“We have significantly reduced the number of arrests for prostitution itself as we work in every case to connect the victims of human trafficking with the services they need.”
“We have also worked to proactively deter individual buyers of sex,” the spokesperson added.
“Yet prostitution in all forms remains prohibited by law. The NYPD deploys where crime is reported — in response to community complaints — and we enforce the law impartially.”
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Meanwhile, there have been no prostitution convictions since 2020 in Queens, which has long been a hub for trafficking due, in part, to the borough’s two airports.
“District Attorney [Melinda] Katz created a Human Trafficking Bureau to aggressively prosecute the real criminals in the commercial sex industry, the traffickers,” a spokesperson for the Queens District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
“Rather than treat enslaved sex workers as criminals, as used to be the case, we connect survivors of trafficking with meaningful services to empower them to escape their exploitation.”
“Last year, we secured 22 felony pleas for sex trafficking and rape charges relating to the sex trafficking of women and underage children. Of these convictions, 12 were for the crime of sex trafficking of a child, meaning that the victims were between 13 and 17 years of age.”
“We will continue to hold accountable those responsible for forcing these victims into the sex trade and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Gomez, the local activist, insisted, “We want something to be done about the prostitutes, because [police] practically permit that to happen here.”
On Thursday, leaders of Queens North went to Compstat at Police Plaza to discuss with NYPD brass what to do about the sex trade problems in Corona.
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