As many as 9,000 illegal massage parlors currently operate in more than 1,000 cities nationwide, fueling a roughly $3 billion industry, according to the Polaris Project , a nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
Kettering Director of Planning and Development Tom Robillard and the city’s law department have been working for several months to look at the issue.
The proposed Massage Establishment and Services Ordinance in Kettering is modeled after many other cities in the state including West Carrollton, Centerville, Springboro, Fairborn, Huber Heights, Westerville, and Cincinnati. Miamisburg has drafted a proposed ordinance but has not adopted it yet according to Robillard.
Springboro requires all new and existing “massage service establishments” to obtain annual licenses and submit to unannounced inspections to ensure the businesses are in compliance. Workers, along with the owner or manager, must be licensed massage therapists in Ohio.
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The revised proposed ordinance in Kettering would require that all massage parlor owners obtain a massage establishment license, which requires a background check and extensive review before approval, plus there is a proposed $300 inspection fee and a $150 license renewal fee.
“We are still in draft stage of writing the ordinance,” Robillard explained. “We are planning on having this before council later this fall.”
The city has conducted a detailed investigation of how the proposed ordinance would apply to legitimate businesses in town and reviewed reviewed Chapter 711 of the city’s business regulations, which regulates massage parlors, in order to come up with a way to tighten up the ordinance to help prevent illicit massage parlors and spas from opening.
“I found that there are 40 massage establishments in Kettering,” Robillard concluded. “These are all fixed places of business throughout the city whose primary business is providing massage services.”
He added that the three reasons for the proposed revisions to the city’s ordinance regrading massage parlors are to curb human trafficking, eliminate illicit massage businesses as fronts for illegal activities like prostitution, but also to recognize legitimate massage therapy as a profession.
Massage therapist, instructor and industry expert Jennifer Cull said all too often, places posing as massage businesses are actually doing things that are sexual and illegal.
“They’re fronts. They’re fronts for sexual services, human trafficking,” said Cull, who also is president of the American Massage Therapy Association.
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According to the city’s report, since 2014, the Kettering Police Department has made arrests at four massage businesses and two more are currently under investigation related to prostitution and human trafficking.
These cases do include massage establishments that advertise and appear as legitimate massage therapy establishments. The two cases currently under investigation are advertising their services as massage.
According to KPD, human trafficking cases are very complex and extremely difficult to substantiate, requiring the investment of significant time and resources. Promoting Prostitution is normally the charge that we are able to prove. Often, we find that prostitution occurring within the city of Kettering is being advertised as “massage.”
City Law Director Ted Hamer said that in response to the increasing operation of illicit massage parlors in Ohio and across the country, numerous municipalities have instituted new or revised business regulations for massage parlors.
The most important regulation is the requirement, with certain exceptions, that anyone performing massage in Kettering must be licensed by the city and by the State Medical Board as massage therapists, Hamer noted.
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