Recent high-profile cases in Thailand are a reminder of the scourge of human trafficking. The Nation’s Wasamon Audjarint reports from the US cities of Houston and Los Angeles on sex trafficking rings involving Thai women often working in seemingly legitimate massage parlours – as well as their journeys out of illicit sex work.

THAI POLICE are cooperating with their US counterparts in the hunt for a group involved in a “large-scale highly sophisticated sex-trafficking scheme” in which hundreds of Thai women were forced to work as prostitutes in the US.