Methuen has launched a human trafficking activity power after town immediately or not directly shut down 9 therapeutic massage parlors suspected as fronts for the crime, and the mayor urged different communities to do the identical.
“The message we have sent in declaring war on human trafficking is clear: Methuen is not a safe harbor for these criminal enterprises,” Mayor D.J. Beauregard mentioned at a press convention Thursday.
He mentioned that town is “advancing the toughest possible local rules to make Methuen utterly inhospitable to human trafficking.” That features an funding in further legislation enforcement know-how, together with license plate readers to work in tandem with surveillance of suspected human trafficking operations, in addition to elevated unannounced inspections of these areas.
“These operations cannot exist without two things, customers and property owners who allow them space to operate,” Beauregard mentioned.
To the “so-called Johns who fuel these crimes,” Beauregard mentioned, “You are not invisible. … If you engage in this vile activity, we will know who you are and we will hold you up to public shame.”
Beauregard mentioned that the issue of human trafficking is “bigger than Methuen.”
“It’s a problem across Massachusetts. It’s a problem across the United States. These illicit businesses exist everywhere, including in communities where people least expect them,” he mentioned. “Every city and every town must adopt this same proactive approach. Today I am calling on leaders at all levels of government to join us in this fight.”
An analogous crime grabbed native headlines earlier this 12 months when 28 accused brothel “johns” went by means of possible trigger Cambridge District Courtroom hearings in March. These prospects face state-level courtroom proceedings, whereas the three operators of the brothel community that spanned the Boston suburbs to the Washington D.C. suburbs of Virginia had been prosecuted in federal courtroom, and every acquired jail sentences.
The announcement got here following a busy week of closing suspected human trafficking therapeutic massage parlors.
These closed because of what Beauregard known as “coordinated city action” by his administration, the Methuen Police Division and town’s Health, Human Companies, and Inspections division had been Oriental Spa on Swan Avenue, Yellow Lilly Day Spa on Baldwin Avenue, Lavender Spa on Baldwin Avenue, Magnificence Backyard Spa on Wallace Avenue and Jap Bodywork Remedy on Hampshire Avenue. Beauregard mentioned 4 extra suspected areas shuttered on their very own after town took motion on the others.
The closures additionally noticed the arrest Friday of the operator of Magnificence Backyard Spa, Suping Zhu, 38, of Flushing, New York. Zhu faces fees of deriving assist from prostitution, being a keeper of a home of in poor health fame, and trafficking an individual for sexual servitude.
Methuen Police Chief Scott McNamara advised reporters Thursday that his division can also be gearing as much as file fees to a different supervisor however didn’t title the particular person.
McNamara mentioned following Zhu’s arrest that his division “is sending a clear and unmistakable warning to every nefarious proprietor running these vile operations: we are coming for you, and we will shut down your illegal enterprises with determined action.”
Audrey Doody, a human trafficking survivor and co-executive director of the Secure Exit Initiative, a corporation that combats human trafficking and offers assist to its victims, mentioned Methuen’s work “is a huge step in combating human trafficking.”
“The vast majority of people in the sex trade are not there by choice,” Doody mentioned. “It is more often circumstances out of their control that place these individuals in harm’s way to be vulnerable, to be coerced, forced and intimidated into the sex trade.”
