The masseuse had just rubbed oil on the naked undercover officer lying on her table in a Midvale massage parlor. She started on his back, then told him to flip over. Eventually, she tapped him on a leg and told him the massage was done.
But the Unified police officer urged her to continue, motioning to her that he wanted a sex act, he later wrote in a police report. The woman complied, removing a small towel that was draped over his waist, and began touching his genitals. I gave the bust signal.
As he was putting his clothes back on, other officers burst into the business to arrest her. Some experts say tactics like this are outdated, inappropriate and, often, not necessary to prove a criminal case in Utah. They say it also ignores that many of these employees are doing sex work because they have been trafficked.
Polaris Project , a national nonprofit that focuses on human trafficking, estimates there are more than 9, massage businesses nationwide whose workers also engage in sex acts. The nonprofit says the best way for officials to deal with these companies is by gathering evidence to revoke their business licenses. The nonprofit also urges police to focus on investigating a criminal network as a whole, instead of prosecuting individual workers on low-level prostitution charges. Bountiful police took that general approach in , when they targeted a woman who owned a massage business there β and also owned the Midvale shop where the Unified officer would be touched two years later.
Bountiful officers set up security cameras at a nearby company to document who was coming in and out of her business. They talked to men who admitted they had paid for sex acts. They sent in an undercover officer to solicit a sex act β but he was told no sexual touching could happen, according to preliminary hearing testimony.
