Inside Methuen’s crackdown on human trafficking at city spas
This week, Methuen officials unleashed the full force of their legal authority in an effort to "eradicate" human trafficking at bodyworks businesses in its city.
As of Thursday, nine spas and massage parlors city officials suspected of being involved in sex-trafficking are closed.
But Methuen Mayor D.J. Beauregard is not done. He hopes to stamp out human trafficking in the city for good with new law enforcement and legislative action and be a role model for other Massachusetts communities who want to take up the cause.
"My main goal is for people to feel safe in this community, for women and families to feel protected," he said. "If there's anything that we can do to root out evil in our communities, I think we have an obligation to do that."
How it all started
Human trafficking is not new to Methuen — or any community, Beauregard said. But when it comes to the city's current efforts, it all began with the investigation into Beauty Garden Spa on Wallace Street .
The investigation took off shortly after Beauregard was elected mayor in December 2024 when nearby residents reported suspicious activity, the mayor said. Over the next few months, Methuen police surveilled the massage parlor with help from Lawrence police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
On Sept. 4, police obtained and executed a search warrant, leading to the discovery of living quarters for two women in the basement of the commercially-zoned building, Methuen police said previously. Police notified the Methuen Departments of Health, Human Services and Inspections, and the business was shut down immediately.
On Sept. 26, 38-year-old Flushing, New York, resident and Beauty Garden Spa co-manager Suping Zhu was arrested and charged with trafficking a person for sexual servitude, keeping a house of ill fame and deriving support from prostitution. Methuen police also obtained an arrest warrant for the massage parlor's other co-manager, 34-year-old Yi Yu Huang, of Brooklyn, New York.
"At that point, I thought that it was the perfect time to pounce on some of the other entities in the city," Beauregard said.
How other suspected businesses were identified
The investigation into Beauty Garden Spa led to a new awareness among officials of where and how human trafficking operations were happening in Methuen.
While massage therapists have to be state-licensed, there's another, similar category of business known as "bodyworks" that is regulated at the local level. But Methuen, like many other Massachusetts municipalities, has never passed laws regulating this type of business, Beauregard said.
Human traffickers take advantage the lack of legal framework regarding bodyworks businesses, the mayor said.
"That's one of the main fronts that this underworld uses," he said.
Officials identified eight other suspicious bodyworks business in Methuen through digital evidence, including an illicit website that listed businesses offering sex acts in exchange for money by town, Beauregard said. Investigators compared the spas and massage parlors featured on the website with resident reports of suspicious activity and were unsurprised to find a great deal of overlap.
"We had to do something," the mayor said.
The floodgates open
Officials now knew which businesses to target, but it had taken months of effort and resources on the part of law enforcement to even obtain a search warrant for Beauty Garden Spa. That's when Police Chief McNamara had the idea to shut down the spas using inspections instead of police investigations, Beauregard said.
Officers need search warrants to enter a business and collect evidence, but health inspectors can check whether a business is up to code whenever. Furthermore, cease-and-desist orders for code violations are enough to shutter a business indefinitely, allowing for rapid, permanent closures, the mayor said.
Just three days after Beauty Garden Spa's co-manager was arrested, Eastern Bodywork Therapy on Hampshire Street was visited by a health inspector and ordered to shut down . The following day, three more bodyworks businesses — Oriental Spa on Swan Street and Yellow Lilly Day Spa and Lavender Spa on Baldwin Street — were subject to inspections and closed.
"Sure enough, the inspectors go in this week, they start hitting them one by one, and they're seeing the same exact signs of human trafficking," Beauregard said.
Inspectors visited four bodyworks businesses listed on the illicit website, but found them suddenly shuttered and abandoned. Officials have not identified those businesses publicly or filed additional charges, but the bodyworks businesses that received cease-and-desist orders are now under investigation by police.
What Methuen officials plan to do next
City officials have announced several new initiatives meant to target those involved in human trafficking this week, including a new task force and the use novel law enforcement technology to identify patrons.
But perhaps the biggest change Methuen could see as part of the city's crackdown is the passage of ban on bodyworks businesses. Beauregard is still working with the city's legal department to craft a bill that wouldn't make licensed massage therapy illegal.
"I don't wanna punish law abiding people who are not engaging in this activity and doing the right thing," he said.
The mayor has also called on other Massachusetts municipalities to take action against human traffickers out of concern that they may set up shop elsewhere.
"Okay, we get them out of Methuen, but do they go to Andover, Dracut, Lowell, Lawrence?" he said.
So far, Methuen's inspections and police departments have received a few inquiries from other local departments, Beauregard said. But given human traffickers' ability to adapt, the mayor said he'd like to see more initiative from Massachusetts officials.
"I don't think the work is ever going to be completely finished," he said. "We're always just gonna have to stay on our toes, keep our guard up, remain vigilant and continue to rely on residents letting us know what's going on in their neighborhoods."
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