Before Baton Rouge Police arrested three individuals on Jan. 20 in connection with an alleged prostitution operation at a massage parlor on Goodwood Boulevard, detectives spent three months investigating the establishment in an undercover probe that began in response to a complaint from a local business about human trafficking and prostitution.
For local massage therapists, the arrests were bittersweet. For years, they’ve fought stigmas and stereotypes associated with massage therapy and have been largely successful.
But, as Business Report detailed in a 2015 investigative cover story, the proliferation of more than a dozen massage parlors in the Baton Rouge area that keep late hours, advertise scantily clad “therapists” on websites such as backpage.com and frequently employ young Asian women who don’t speak English, have served to undermine the credibility the legitimate practitioners have worked so hard to establish.
“Any sort of arrest makes it more difficult for any legitimate practitioner to do their job,” says Kathie Lea, a local massage therapist who also serves as government relations chair for the Louisiana chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association. “I’m back to hearing the old jokes … to the point where I’m about to slap someone silly.”
Lea and others in her industry are frustrated that law enforcement and regulators have not done more to crack down on those who use massage as a cover for prostitution. In the Jan. 20 incident, police charged Daniel Yun, Siang Lin and Bingchen Lin with several counts related to prostitution, soliciting for prostitution, pandering and drug possession.
BRPD officials have not said whether the arrests are connected to a larger investigation and whether more arrests might follow. But in 2015, Business Report determined that without a specific complaint, chances are slim that law enforcement will launch an extensive, months-long investigation into a massage parlor. Even if they suspect illegal activity or see an ad with salacious content on backpage.com, they tend not to act without hard evidence of wrongdoing.
As for the Louisiana Board of Massage Therapy, its officials say it is not a regulatory or law enforcement agency and therefore has no authority to go after massage parlors that may be up to no good.
That’s particularly true in the case of the recent arrests. None of the three perpetrators is licensed with the state board, nor is the establishment at which they worked.
Rhonda McManus, executive director of the board, says she cannot comment on “ongoing investigations by law enforcement or open criminal cases. We must let this investigation play out.”
She adds that the board “takes its role of public protection seriously but can only act within its authority as a regulatory board. That is why we encourage anyone who believes that an establishment or a therapist is violating the Louisiana Massage Therapy Practice Act to file a complaint on our website or with their local law enforcement authorities.”
Read the 2015 Business Report cover story on massage parlors.
—Stephanie Riegel
