7 hours Ago By David Heath, Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism
Here’s how the Lee Enterprises Public Service team did a first-of-its-kind analysis of states’ efforts to protect women who are subject to sex trafficking at illicit massage parlors. One tool for shutting down illicit massage parlors that illegally sell sex is through state licensing boards. Their job is to ensure that massage therapists follow state rules and laws.
To see how often these boards act against illicit businesses, the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team tried to obtain individual disciplinary actions from each state from Jan. 1, 2019, to June 30, 2024. We were ultimately able to get data from 32 states.
In most cases, we downloaded these documents from online sites, often using customized computer techniques to scrape this data from the web. In some cases, states created obstacles to automating downloads, and we used special tools to get around those limitations. We then analyzed the documents using artificial intelligence tools or customized computer applications.
Some states didn’t post documents on their sites but provided spreadsheets summarizing the information. Some states only provided this information in minutes of board meetings. Four states – Kansas, Minnesota, Vermont and Wyoming – don't have boards, and others don’t release records or make obtaining them nearly impossible.
Even if disciplinary records were posted online, a few states required the name or license number of the massage therapist to find disciplinary records. In some cases, there was no way to search for the names of individuals disciplined. In cases where we submitted public records requests, we were usually referred to the data available online.
Although we were able to identify disciplinary records for sexual misconduct, we discovered that states rarely discipline massage therapists for any reason. To corroborate our findings, we turned to another source: the National Practitioners Data Bank. The federal government created this database to give states a way to see which health practitioners, including massage therapists, have been disciplined by other states.
The data is released to the public, and the names are removed. But it allowed us to count how often each state had reported a massage therapist for sexual misconduct or any other violation. Local law enforcement agencies provide the Federal Bureau of Investigation with data on each crime and arrest in their jurisdiction.
We were able to use this data to determine how often law enforcement records the crime of sex trafficking, where it occurred and how many arrests were made. We analyzed this data from 2021 to 2023, the latest year in which data were available. We also obtained data from the Virginia State Police on all arrests for sex trafficking related crimes from 2021 to June 2024.
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