Bremerton passes revised ordinance targeting illicit massage businesses - Kitsap Sun

[massage]

Christian Vosler Kitsap Sun

Published 8:04 PM EDT Aug 23, 2019

BREMERTON — Bremerton city officials have made changes to an ordinance regulating illicit massage businesses after legitimate massage practitioners raised concerns about the new rules.

The original ordinance, which was set to go before the Bremerton city council earlier this month, targeted unlicensed massage businesses in the city that are suspected of operating as a front for illegal prostitution and sex trafficking.

But many licensed massage therapists argued that the ordinance as written would create an extra burden for legitimate businesses trying to operate in the city.

“The ordinance was really written to restrict what massage therapists could and couldn’t do as far as how they ran their offices,” Robbin Blake with the Washington State Massage Therapy Association said.

The WSMTA and another organization that represents massage therapists in Washington, the American Massage Therapy Association, expressed their concerns in a letter to Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler and police chief Jim Burchett ahead of the council’s meeting on Aug. 7.

“This ordinance specifically, the way we read it and the letter we sent, we felt it missed the target,” said James Specker, with the Washington chapter of the AMTA.

City officials pulled the ordinance from the agenda and rewrote it with the help of representatives from the massage therapy community. It was approved by the city council at last week’s meeting and will go into effect later this month.

“It was always 100 percent support that an ordinance was needed, but some of the language would impact the business of legit massage therapists,” Burchett said.

The first version of the ordinance would have added a host of regulations meant to curb illicit massage businesses — including fees for fingerprinting and background checks, a limit on the hours that massage businesses could operate, and the requirement that a photo ID be attached to therapist’s state license.

Massage therapists would have had to apply for a specific “massage business” endorsement on top of their regular city business license. The ordinance also prohibited massage businesses from locking doors or using any kind of doorbell or early alert system.

Massage therapists are already subject to many of the same rules under state law, said Julie Johnson, an orthopedic massage therapist and massage instructor with over 15 years in the industry.

Under state law, anyone who wants to practice massage therapy or reflexology — the practice of applying pressure to certain parts of the hands and feet — must complete several hundred hours of training and obtain a license from the state, including background checks and fees.

While it might be effective in rooting out illicit massage businesses, Bremerton’s ordinance would have also forced legitimate massage therapists to double up on fees and paperwork.

“For me, the big issues were us having to have to pay for fingerprinting and background checks, which of course already assumes that we're going to be illicit before we even start a business,” Johnson said.

Tomas Enrique Delgado, a licensed massage therapist who works in Bremerton, said the doorbell stipulations could also threaten the safety and privacy of individual therapists who rent rooms or see clients in their homes.

“That was taken out, I was actually very pleased about that,” Delgado said.

Part of therapists’ frustration comes from the association between legitimate, therapeutic massage therapy and the illicit storefronts that are involved in sex trafficking and prostitution, Johnson said. Johnson’s work specifically focuses on rehab from injury and rarely requires clients to remove clothing.

She added that the misconceptions created by the illicit massage industry have resulted in massage therapists receiving inappropriate advances from clients.

“It's heartbreaking, to be quite honest, to have to constantly be dealing with these issues of illicit massage businesses that are using our profession as a cover for their illegal activity,” Johnson said.

New rules and solutions


The revised ordinance will still accomplish its goal, police say, without punishing legitimate massage businesses.

Burchett said the initial regulations were based off language from cities in California. With help from Blake and AMTA president Michael Mandell, law enforcement modeled the new ordinance off similar regulations in Bellevue and Kent.

The new ordinance leans heavily on state law and requires any local massage businesses to have and display a state license. Unlicensed businesses or businesses with fraudulent documents are subject to misdemeanor charges and can have their city business license denied or revoked.

“The initial ordinance was aimed at closing every single loophole,” Burchett said. “I think the one we have now is a more elegant solution.”

Many of the massage therapists who reached out to the city said they appreciated the quick response from officials.

“Nobody wants these places closed down more than we do,” Johnson said. “We want these businesses gone, absolutely, 100 percent.”

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