A FORMER student nurse has been jailed for four months for running a brothel.
Jing Jing Wang (25) was jailed yesterday at Kilkenny District Court after she pleaded guilty to managing and operating a brothel in Kilkenny city.
The court heard how Wang had advertised her services as a Chinese massage parlour in local papers, but that she was actually offering sexual favours to paying clients.
Insp Paul Heffernan of Tramore Garda station said Wang was arrested after two undercover gardaí were offered sexual services when they made contact with her through an advertised phone number.
He said the ads had run in local papers for a couple of weeks and gardaí became suspicious as there was no landline number given.
Insp Heffernan told the court that the two officers had told Wang “they would return” after being offered sex, “but obviously they didn’t”.
He said a search warrant was issued and Wang was arrested on April 3rd.
Insp Heffernan told Judge William Harnett that Wang had been turning over €900 a day through the business which was run out of Colliers Lane, Kilkenny city, for about five weeks.
John Harte, solicitor for Wang, said his client was a Chinese national who had been living in Ireland for 2½ years. She had trained as a nurse in China for four years.
She had taken a nursing course in Dublin but she wanted to do a second course which cost €11,000, Mr Harte said.
She had worked in pubs and restaurants in Dublin, however, it wasn’t working out.
Wang, with a temporary address at Riverview, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, had set up the Chinese massage business because she saw no such service advertised in local papers in Kilkenny.
She did not set out to establish an illicit business and she had a qualification in Chinese massage, Mr Harte continued.
He said Ms Wang engaged another Chinese woman, aged 50, to “provide massage and other services”. Mr Harte said there was never any use of “pimps, bouncers or heavies” and that the business was run on a “voluntary and fee-sharing arrangement”.
He said his client “deeply regrets” her decision to become involved in this and that she came from a “respectable family” in China and had no previous criminal record.
Judge Harnett sentenced Wang to four months in jail and fined her €900.