Ban proposed on sex tours after outcry over Honolulu Web site
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
The selling or marketing of travel services known as "sex tours" would become a felony under bills moving through both houses of the Legislature.
The legislation was sparked by an outcry last year against a Honolulu business that used a Web site to market sex tours to Thailand.
An amended bill, SB 2227, passed the Senate Human Services committee Wednesday and is bound for review by the Judiciary Committee. The House Judiciary Committee yesterday gave preliminary approval to a twin measure, House Bill 2020.
Amendments to the Senate bill include one from the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs that proposes spelling out that an illegal advertisement would include the terms "sex tours" or "sex travel" or depictions of genitalia.
The House version does not include that language. But it creates a new section, as recommended by Attorney General Mark Bennett, titled "promotioning travel for prostitution," rather than incorporate it into the existing statute dealing with promotion of prostitution.
Violation would be a Class C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
The bill received support from Equality Now, a New York-based women's rights organization that filed a complaint last fall with the commerce department against the Honolulu company Video Travel. The organization seeks revocation of the company's travel agency license.
Kathryn Xian, representing the group at the Wednesday hearing, said the bill would "make it clear to law-enforcement authorities that they can prosecute the offense of promoting prostitution even though the prostitution itself may not have happened on U.S. soil." She gave similar testimony yesterday to House lawmakers.
JoAnn Uchida of the commerce department's Regulated Industries Complaints Office said an investigation of Video Travel was continuing.
Melvin Hamaguchi, owner of Video Travel, told The Advertiser in a telephone interview he had taken down the Web site and closed his business, which he planned to do even before the controversy to concentrate on his full-time job as an insurance agent.
He also maintained that his twice-yearly tours, which sold for about $800 per person, involved visits to bars as only part of the itinerary. At the bars, he said, he served mainly as transportation and did not set up any clients with the bar hostesses.
"We would go to bars, and it would be just like it is here," he said. "You sit down, drink, and they may meet someone — what they do is their business. I'm not setting anyone up."
He added that if any client expressed interest in underage girls, he "just cut them off."
"I took married couples. I took my wife," he added. "I'm not ashamed to show them where I took them. It's not sleazy."
He acknowledged that the Web site gave the impression the tours focused on brokering sex, but said they were posted by someone else without his supervision.
"Maybe I should have monitored it," he said.
Advertiser staff writer Gordon Y.K. Pang also contributed to this report.
Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.
