They Keep Making Rules for Us. They Keep Ignoring the Criminals.

What’s really happening with massage ordinances in Washington State — and what would actually work.

On May 5, 2026, the City of Federal Way proposed Ordinance No. 26-1043 — a new set of rules governing massage businesses in the city. A neighboring county, Pierce County had just identified at least 40 businesses suspected of operating as sexually oriented businesses (SOBs) disguised as massage. Women at these locations are believed to be trafficking victims, held against their will.

The city’s response? New rules for massage therapists.

I want to be fair. Some of what Federal Way passed is genuinely good — prohibiting internal warning systems designed to alert operators when law enforcement is nearby, banning late-night operations, requiring card-only payments to create a financial paper trail. These provisions target real operational signatures of criminal businesses.

The other requirements - not so much.

But here is what I can’t stop thinking about.

Licensed massage therapists in Washington State are already required by law to display their license and carry valid ID. That law exists right now. Any investigator could walk into any business claiming to offer massage and verify licensure on the Washington Department of Health website in under sixty seconds.

That tool is already in hand.

It is not being used.

So before we talk about what Federal Way got wrong — and before we talk about what actually works — we need to talk about the question nobody in that council chamber asked out loud:

Why aren’t we enforcing what we already have?

The Problem Nobody Owns

The answer is a coordination failure so complete it’s almost architectural.

Unlicensed massage practice is a civil matter — it belongs to the Washington Department of Health. Prostitution belongs to law enforcement. Business licensing belongs to the city. Human trafficking belongs to a task force that may or may not exist, may or may not be funded, and may or may not include any of the above.

Everyone has a piece of this problem. Nobody owns it.

The Department of Health is complaint-driven. They don’t have investigators walking into businesses. They respond when someone files a complaint. Trafficking victims can’t file complaints. Buyers won’t. Neighbors don’t know what they’re looking at. So the complaints don’t come, and the businesses keep operating.

Law enforcement is focused on prostitution charges — which require proving a sex act occurred, often dependent on victim testimony from women who are traumatized, linguistically isolated, and afraid of deportation. Those cases are hard. So they don’t get made.

The city can revoke a business license — but only if someone tells them to and so these businesses thrive. Not because the laws don’t exist. Because the laws exist in separate silos, each silo waiting for someone else to act first.

Federal Way’s ordinance is a local workaround for a state enforcement failure. That’s what it is. Until we name that clearly, we’ll keep passing ordinances that burden the compliant and ignore the criminal.

What Doesn’t Work

More regulations on licensed massage therapists will not close a single SOB disguised as massage.

Not. One.

These criminal networks are sophisticated, well-funded, and highly adaptive. They comply with nothing. They move when pressured. They reopen under new names. When Kent, Washington cracked down and shut down 18 suspected businesses, authorities immediately noted that operators simply moved to neighboring cities.

This is called the whack-a-mole effect and it’s the predictable result of every single-jurisdiction crackdown that doesn’t coordinate with its neighbors.

The businesses that comply with new display requirements, new ID requirements, new hours restrictions — those are the legitimate massage therapy businesses. The ones that were never the problem. They now carry more paperwork, more inspection risk, more regulatory burden and the criminal operations continue operating until law enforcement decides to act.

We are regulating the compliant and ignoring the criminal.

Establishment licensing — requiring the business itself, not just individual therapists, to obtain a special license — is frequently proposed as a solution. There are arguments for it, the evidence that it actually reduces trafficking or shuts down SOBs is thin. The ABMP and AMTA have both opposed it for years, for a simple reason: it treats massage therapy differently from every other licensed healthcare profession and implies that licensed therapists are part of the problem rather than victims of it. (AMTA now apparently is for it as seen in many states proposing establishment licensing.)

We are not the problem. We have never been the problem.

What Actually Works

The cities that have actually moved the needle — not just passed ordinances, but sustained real reductions in SOBs disguised as massage — did five things that most cities, including Federal Way, are not doing.

1. Prosecute operators as criminal enterprises, not businesses.

These are not massage businesses that went bad. They are organized crime operations using the word “massage” as a cover. Treat them accordingly.

The charges that actually dismantle these networks are not prostitution charges. They are RICO charges. Money laundering. Tax evasion. Labor law violations — failing to file I-9s, misclassifying employees, not carrying workers’ compensation insurance. Consumer fraud. Unlicensed practice of a health profession.

These charges are built on financial and paper trails, not victim testimony. They don’t require a traumatized trafficking survivor to relive her abuse in open court. Denver’s “Bad Apple” RICO case. Ohio prosecutions using corruption and money laundering charges. Multi-state federal cases involving the IRS and DOJ. These are what actually take networks down.

The cash is there. Seizures in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been reported in successful operations. Asset forfeiture funds the investigation and cripples the network simultaneously.

2. Assign someone to own the problem across every agency.

This is the simplest and most important structural fix. A designated cross-agency coordinator — someone whose actual job is to connect the DOH civil violation to the law enforcement investigation to the city license revocation — changes everything. Where this coordination exists, results follow. Where it doesn’t, the problem persists regardless of how many ordinances get passed.

No new laws required. Just someone whose job it is to make the existing systems talk to each other.

3. Use nuisance abatement.

This is the most underused and most effective tool cities have right now, and almost none of them are using it.

Nuisance abatement uses building codes, fire codes, zoning ordinances, and health codes to shut down a property — without ever proving prostitution or trafficking. A coordinated inspection by health inspectors, fire inspectors, code enforcement officers, and police, all entering simultaneously and looking for code violations, sanitation failures, zoning violations, and signs of people living on premises — can shut a building down legally, quickly, and without a single victim having to testify.

Bellevue WA used this approach awhile ago.

4. Go after the demand.

Surveillance near suspected locations. Traffic stops. Buyer arrests and public identification. Every buyer who faces consequences reduces the flow of money into these operations. These businesses run on demand. Interrupt the demand and the business model collapses.

This is politically uncomfortable. It is resource-intensive. It requires cooperation from prosecutors who may not prioritize it. But it works. And it is the only intervention that attacks the criminal network at its revenue source.

5. Hold landlords accountable.

The landlord knows.

In most cases, the landlord is collecting cash rent, seeing the late-night traffic, noticing the covered windows and the buzzer system, and looking the other way. Some landlords are profiting directly. Some are simply afraid. All of them are enablers.

Washington State’s Attorney General has attended convenings by the Network Team who promote a Landlord Engagement Program specifically designed for this. ( I actually spoke with someone in the AG office back in 2023 who was working on this…of course it never came to fruition and the person has left. When I most recently contacted the AG office, they would not speak to me on the issue.) Some jurisdictions now allow landlords to break leases and evict tenants when human trafficking or prostitution is suspected — and are exploring penalties for landlords who refuse to act when presented with evidence.

When the building is unavailable, the business cannot operate. Target the real estate and you target the infrastructure.

Stop with the Ordinances. Demanding

We are licensed massage therapists. We are healthcare providers. We have completed state-approved education, passed licensing examinations, and submitted to background checks. We work in pain clinics, rehabilitation facilities, hospitals, and hospice. We help people recover from injury, manage chronic conditions, and reduce the stress that underlies so much disease. In WA State we are providers with health insurance companies providing relief from pain and injuries.

We are not the problem.

We have watched our profession be hijacked by criminal networks for over a hundred years. We have watched media call them “massage parlors.” We have watched ordinance after ordinance add burden to our practices while doing nothing to dismantle the organizations exploiting our name.

Here is what we are demanding — from every city council, every law enforcement agency, every state legislator who wants to address this problem:

Enforce what exists before you create more. Washington State law already gives you the tools to walk into any business using the word massage and verify licensure in sixty seconds. Use it.

Coordinate your agencies. Assign someone to own this problem across DOH, law enforcement, and city licensing. Right now nobody does.

Prosecute operators as criminals. RICO. Money laundering. Tax evasion. Labor violations. Build financial cases that don’t depend on victim testimony.

Use nuisance abatement. You don’t need to prove trafficking to close a building that’s failing health codes and housing workers against their will.

Engage the landlords. Make harboring these operations legally and financially costly.

Stop adding regulatory burden to licensed massage therapists who were never the problem, who are already complying with every existing law, and who are absorbing the stigma and cost of criminal enterprises they have nothing to do with.

The whack-a-mole stops when the entire environment becomes inhospitable — through coordinated multi-agency enforcement, financial prosecution, landlord accountability, and demand suppression, all happening simultaneously across jurisdictions.

That takes political will. It takes resources. It takes agencies working together instead of protecting their turf.

What it does not take is more paperwork for licensed massage therapists.

Julie Onofrio, LMT, is the author of The Massage Therapists Toolkit and the creator of www.lookbeforeyoubookamassage.com*, a national resource for the public, law enforcement, and legislators. She has been a licensed massage therapist for [X] years and has spent [X] years documenting the impact of sexually oriented businesses disguised as massage on the profession.*

If you are a massage therapist, share this article with your local network, your city council member, and your state representative. If you are a legislator or law enforcement officer, reach out. We are ready to work with you.