In a quaint New England town once home to poet Robert Frost, residents grew alarmed when a new type of business began popping up — massage parlors that police suspected were selling sex.
The first appeared in a busy retail strip off Interstate 93 in Derry, New Hampshire. The windows had garbage bags for curtains, recalls Police Capt. Vern Thomas.
Police began surveillance and noticed that mostly out-of-state tags were parked outside, many of which were from nearby Boston. Soon, other parlors opened, all employing Asian migrants. One advertised suggestive photos and the promise, “The girls will give you a unique feeling.”
Community leaders in this town of approximately 34,000 wanted to shut down the parlors. However, they realized over time that prosecuting business owners believed to be part of an organized crime network engaging in sex trafficking could take years.
“These cases are very difficult because no one is going to openly admit they went there and received sexual services,” Thomas said.
As the recent Sean "Diddy" Combs case showed, proving sex trafficking is difficult even with cooperating witnesses. Still, town leaders were determined.
“This is organized trafficking, not legitimate business,” said Derry Police Chief George R. Feole. “We’re committed to identifying it, shutting it down and protecting our community.”
It’s a massive problem for communities nationwide. Illicit massage parlors operate in most cities and towns, regardless of size, and they are so ubiquitous that they now outnumber McDonald’s restaurants, with roughly 16,800 locations in the U.S., according to The Network, a nonprofit working to eliminate them.
A previously published Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team investigation found that most states have done little to address the problem.
Tackling a challenge of this size and complexity is possible, but it requires creativity, experts argue. Derry succeeded in closing all six of its suspicious massage parlors, serving as a model for other communities.
“If we rely solely on criminal prosecution, we’re going to lose a lot of cases,” said Rochelle Keyhan, a former prosecutor who now advocates for sex trafficking victims. “That means traffickers keep operating, and the harm continues. We need to be creative and use every other legal tool available to us.”
“You don’t always have to go in guns blazing with a criminal trial,” echoed Lara Mullin, a prosecutor in Denver who has focused on closing illicit massage parlors. “If you can hit them with enough regulatory and civil actions, they close up because it’s too much hassle to keep operating.”
Plan of attack
Derry explored several strategies, particularly after state lawmakers blocked repeated efforts to let the state licensing board regulate massage parlors, not just individual therapists. Opponents argued the law would be unfair to legitimate businesses. But critics counter that these women, often migrants from China and South Korea with limited English skills, suffer because they lack political influence.
A Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team investigation found only four state massage boards with the power to oversee businesses, making it difficult for states to shut down illicit parlors. Instead, when boards discipline anyone at a massage parlor selling sex, they usually go after the women being exploited, the investigation found.
“Where boards can only discipline individual practitioners, bad actors just plug in a new ‘licensed’ person as a front and keep going. Giving boards the authority to discipline or close the business itself would close that loophole and make enforcement a lot more effective,” said Mullin. “If we could empower licensing bodies to take action against the establishment — not just the person — we’d have a much faster route to shutting down places that are clearly operating outside the law.”
In October 2023, the Derry City Council tried to fill the gap by requiring massage businesses to obtain a local license. This new ordinance gave the city the names of key individuals as well as the right to conduct health inspections. Applicants could not have a felony, sexual offense or moral turpitude conviction within the past 10 years.
With its new powers, the city unleashed health inspectors and began scrutinizing the businesses. It found violations. Some of the workers had no licenses. One owner had a felony prostitution conviction, and advertisements on shady overseas websites suggested the spas were selling sex.
The city issued cease-and-desist orders to six parlors in March 2024, but that didn’t lead to the businesses shutting down right away. The owners appealed the decisions. Some tried to transfer ownership to others involved in the business. City leaders saw this as a stall tactic, and in April 2024, the city council voted to rescind all six licenses.
Even then, the parlors didn’t shut down. Some owners just went ahead with business as usual.
Still, the town succeeded in closing all six parlors suspected of trafficking.
Their method? Persuading landlords to evict the businesses.
Eviction notice
It’s an approach that The Network has long urged state attorneys general to pursue. So far, the group says, New Hampshire and Georgia have been the most responsive to their campaign.
The trick is to get landlords to end leases with illicit massage parlors voluntarily. Ian Hassell, a former CIA intelligence officer who founded The Network after making it his life’s work to shut down these illegal businesses, says he's floated this idea successfully to about 30 jurisdictions.
“You can’t run an illicit massage business without a lease," Hassell said. “All we ask is that an attorney general or district attorney send a letter to landlords informing them that their tenants are engaging in illegal activity.”
The Network provides its extensive database of illicit massage parlors, with addresses and other details, and even offers to figure out who the landlords are.
In communities doing this, the average eviction rate is about 55 percent, said Hassell, adding that 89 percent of the businesses evicted never reopen.
John Formella, New Hampshire’s Republican attorney general, recently announced that since November 2024, state and federal law enforcement agencies have shut down 40 percent of the state's suspected illicit massage parlors – 15 in all.
“These are not real spas—they are hubs of organized trafficking hiding in plain sight,” Formella said. “They profit from the abuse of vulnerable women and have no place in our state.”
Formella gave credit to The Network for its help in finding illicit massage parlors.
Adding legal muscle
Derry Police Captain Thomas said the voluntary approach worked with two parlors. But local officials convinced state lawmakers to enact a new law making it a felony for landlords to allow prostitution to occur on their property. The new law was enough to convince four more landlords to evict.
“If you can get the property owner or the landlord on board, a lot of times you can end the lease without ever having to file charges," said advocate Keyhan. "It’s faster, it’s cheaper and it removes the traffickers’ physical base without re-traumatizing the workers.”
Derry is now free of illicit massage parlors, officials there say.
"But it took a lot of work. This wasn't easy. It's frustrating work," Thomas said. “The advertisements are public and blatant, yet shutting these places down is still challenging from a law enforcement perspective."
A key to further success in shutting such businesses down is public awareness, Keyhan said.
“I think if people really knew what was going on inside those businesses, they would demand change," Keyhan said. “We can’t arrest our way out of it — but we can refuse to look away.”