
The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail - tonic_section
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/11/nyregion/sex-workers-massage-parlor.html
======
Regardsyjc
My gynecologist is on this street. Flushing is a dark place.

I grew up here. Some dark things that go on here on a regular basis:

Exploitation of immigrants. Don't pay them at all and threaten to call ICE. A
famous Korean restaurant Kum Gang San was forced to pay millions in a lawsuit
for exploiting their foreign staff. They made their employees pick cabbage at
a local farm on the weekend to make kimchi...
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/nyregion/judge-tells-
kore...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/nyregion/judge-tells-korean-
restaurant-owner-in-queens-to-pay-back-wages.html)

Abuse from landlords. I have friends who grew up in small apartments with
multiple families. One family to a room.

Corruption in the police. I don't think her brother is crazy. It's a real
thing. My favorite restaurant also served as one of those Hollywood trope
Chinese gambling dens. My dad got beaten by a pipe by some drunk whackos in a
parking lot trying to break up a fight and ended up in the ER. When we went to
the police station, the restaurant had deliberately erased the video footage.
The officers couldn't help us, it ended there.

The dark prep school industry that preys on poor families kids whose only
chance at escaping poverty (or making their parents suffering worth it) is
standardized testing. Multimillion dollar industry.

Accountants who do shady tax things and should be arrested and jailed. Thanks
for ruining my parents retirements and those of all the other immigrants who
don't know better but trusted you.

This illegal birthing place where a woman tried to murder new parents and
their newborns not too long ago.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/nyregion/queens-
stabbing-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/nyregion/queens-stabbing-day-
care-birth-tourism.html)

Not to mention all the foreign investment in Flushing right now...

Rampant exploitation but that's why Flushing has some of the best and cheapest
Asian food in New York City. :(

If you saw Abacus, the documentary about the Asian Bank and felt sympathy for
them, I heard they built their wealth as slum lords.

~~~
Scoundreller
Abacus the movie: free-stream in US:
[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/abacus/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/abacus/)

free-stream in Canada: [https://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episodes/abacus-
small-enoug...](https://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episodes/abacus-small-enough-
to-jail)

Possibly available in your country on the world's biggest streaming site:
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=abacus+movie](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=abacus+movie)

------
danso
An amazing story, so rare to see the effort put into finding the human behind
what would otherwise be a nameless tragedy. There's a good interview with the
Dan Barry, the lead reporter, about why he was interested in investigating
this story:

[https://www.poynter.org/news/interview-dan-barry-writer-
nyts...](https://www.poynter.org/news/interview-dan-barry-writer-nyts-case-
jane-doe-ponytail)

> _I had finished a long-form piece last November called “The Lost Children of
> Tuam,” and was looking for the next thing to do. A few days after
> Thanksgiving, I was reading the New York Daily News, and came across a very
> short story with the headline: “Prostie Death Jump As She Flees Police.”_
> [0]

> _I don’t know how else to put this except to say: This really pissed me
> off._

> _I didn’t like — or even know — the term “prostie,” and I really didn’t like
> how a woman’s life and death was summarized so crassly. At that point I felt
> almost obliged to tell the story of this woman, who wasn’t identified in the
> Daily News piece. I wanted to explain who she was, where she came from, what
> her massage-parlor world was like, and how, if possible she came to this
> tragic end._

[0] [https://www.pressreader.com/usa/new-york-daily-
news/20171127...](https://www.pressreader.com/usa/new-york-daily-
news/20171127/281685435159076)

~~~
jlongr
Although her story was an abject tragedy, it's inspiring to hear about this
writer's urge to humanize her and tell the story of the downtrodden. We need
to see more of this compassionate attitude in all aspects of life.

~~~
gowld
People are human . Barry undehumanized her.

------
somberi
For the readers who may not be familiar with Flushing; it is in Queens, which
is one of the 5 boroughs that make up New York City.

Queens, unlike more popular boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, is diverse and
middle class (more diverse may be apt).

Flushing, particularly is all-the-world-in-one-place, and largely immigrant
and per-capita is on the lower side of NYC (about 1/3rd of that of a
Manhattanite, who lives 10kms away) . Purportedly, about 800 languages are
spoken in Queens.

[https://www.businessinsider.in/Queens-has-more-languages-
tha...](https://www.businessinsider.in/Queens-has-more-languages-than-
anywhere-in-the-world-heres-where-theyre-found/articleshow/57171676.cms)

------
olliej
The police complaining that prostitutes don’t work with them is so annoying.

I’m sorry, if you’re not arresting the Johns and the pimps, or you’re putting
undercover officers down to catch individual prostitutes, then why would you
/ever/ expect help?

It’s why things like any politician who favors tougher sex laws that
functionally only punish the prostitute is very simply supporting and enabling
pimps, pedofiles, and traffickers. Anything that makes it harder for a
prostitute to go to the police is very simply enabling the abusers.

------
forkLding
The original sadly short news story that started this investigation:

[https://www.pressreader.com/usa/new-york-daily-
news/20171127...](https://www.pressreader.com/usa/new-york-daily-
news/20171127/281685435159076)

------
jacquesm
Always nice when law enforcement is a bigger problem than the problem they
attempt to solve. Poor woman.

~~~
neaden
Indeed, it is very important to remember that there is always a human cost of
making things illegal, and that the harm of the enforcement needs to be
weighed against the harm of the problem you are trying to solve.

~~~
jmcgough
There's been a larger push for evidence-based medicine over the past decade or
two. I'd love it if our criminal justice system was more evidence-based and
focused solely on reducing crime/suffering/injustice and better
rehabilitation. Many police departments fall into the trap of using number of
arrests as their KPI, because that's easier to measure than outcomes.

Serial season 3 has had good discussion on minimum sentencing and judges who
sentence based on whims, not on what's effective.

