By Nicole Flatow
A Bellerose travel agent has been accused of arranging tours to southeast Asia that promote prostitution, the New York state attorney general said.
Attorney General Elliot Spitzer announced a lawsuit last week against the travel agency, Big Apple Oriental Tours. The lawsuit alleges that the two owners, who work out of their homes in Bellerose and Poughkeepsie, N.Y., have engaged in illegal activities in promoting their tours.
According to the suit, tour guides in the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia negotiated fees and sexual acts with prostitutes and bar managers on behalf of clients on their tours.
The civil suit, filed in the State Supreme Court of Dutchess County, seeks an injunction prohibiting the tour group from operating an unlawful business, civil penalties and relief for costs of the investigation.
Co-owner Norman Barabash, 58, who conducts business from his Bellerose home on 249-12 Belmont Ave., declined to comment and deferred all questions to his lawyer, Dan Hochheiser.
Hochheiser said Barabash and his partner, Douglas Allen, of Poughkeepsie, have not engaged in any illegal activity. He plans to file a motion seeking dismissal of the suit.
If Barabash and Allen had done anything illegal, Hochheiser said, they would have been prosecuted by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown after he investigated the case in 2000.
Brown concluded at the time that any possible illegal acts had occurred outside New York and thus could not be prosecuted by the state.
Spitzer is now filing civil rather than criminal charges against the travel agency. Hochheiser said this was a last resort for Spitzer, who was pressured by the Equality Now, an international human rights group based in New York, to take action against the travel agency.
“What [Spitzer] wanted to do was completely shut down the travel arrangements that Big Apple had been making,” Hochheiser said. “And instead [the court] only issued a temporary restraining order, only preventing my client from advertising and promoting the tours.”
State Supreme Court Justice Christine A. Sproat of Dutchess County issued the restraining order against the tour company last month. The order prohibited the business from advertising or promoting sex tours in magazines and other publications.
Equality Now, which has been gathering evidence against Big Apple since 1996, first brought the travel agency to Spitzer's attention.
“Sex tourism contributes to the demand for trafficking women, and it is a human rights violation,” said Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now
Joselito A. Jimeno, acting head of the consular post as the Filipino consulate, said the Philippine consulate general praised the lawsuit as “an important move in the international battle against crimes against women and children.”
The Philippines passed the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 in May prohibiting sex tours in the Philippines and criminalizing Internet use that promotes prostitution and sexual exploitation.
In 2000 U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Astoria) wrote to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown and then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno asking them to use state and federal laws to stop U.S.-based tour groups like Big Apple Oriental Tours. Maloney said at the time that a Big Apple Oriental Tour guide boasted as early as 1993 that his company could provide 15- and 16-year-old girls to Big Apple customers for the purpose of sex.
The Web site www.travelexotica.com includes Big Apple Oriental Tours in its listing of “Nude and Adults-only Cruises.”
The description reads, “If you like traveling to exotic places while having exciting adventures while surrounded by hundreds of beautiful women, then welcome aboard the adventure tour of a lifetime.”
Reach reporter Nicole Flatow by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
