In July, the Concord Police Department executed a criminal search warrant at Oriental Bodywork Spa, located at 288 North State Street.
New Hampshire has been cracking down on illicit massage parlors used for providing sex services since last year, but officials say that when one closes, the owners often open another one in a different community.
Alexander Kellermann, an assistant attorney general with the New Hampshire Department of Justice, said it’s like playing a game of “Whack-a-Mole.”
“It’s an endless cycle,” Kellermann said Monday at a legislative committee meeting addressing human trafficking linked to illicit massage parlors in the state. “What that also means is that those businesses need to then advertise, and they need to do so quickly in order to attract those customers to the new locations.”
In New Hampshire, massage therapists must be licensed individually, but the state does not currently require separate licenses for massage parlors or the establishments where they operate.
This has made it difficult for investigators to identify and shut down establishments that operate as massage parlors but serve as fronts for human and sex trafficking, they said.
??The state Department of Justice, working with local and federal agencies since November, has shut down at least 15 such massage businesses in communities including Concord, Derry, Londonderry, Hudson, Merrimack, Manchester, Dover, Salem, and Somersworth.
It represents about 40% of such businesses operating in New Hampshire, they estimate.
Kellermann said that, in addition to storefront operations, some cases of human trafficking have taken place in residential properties. Those too, are part of an ongoing investigation.
In Derry, where several massage parlors were shut down earlier this year for alleged prostitution and trafficking, Mike Fowler, the town administrator, said an esthetician was also flagged for running a similar operation.
The Department of Justice has maintained that individuals who visit these establishments and pay for sex services, enabling them to operate, need to be prosecuted — but in many cases, that hasn’t happened.
Who is being trafficked?
The New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence reported 118 trafficking cases in 2024. Of those, 105 involved sex trafficking and 13 were related to labor trafficking.
In 2023, 95 total cases were reported, with 87 tied to sex trafficking.
Experts say the real numbers are likely much higher, as many victims do not come forward because of the stigma attached to trafficking.
“Criminal investigations, it’s resource-intensive,” Kellermann said. “Oftentimes, victims who are scared or unwilling to come forward may face cultural or language barriers, and that makes building criminal investigations lengthy and makes it expensive.”
At the massage parlors that have been identified as providing sexual services, victims have ranged from 18 years old to women in their mid-fifties.
Kellerman said most of them come from China and they are usually linked to Flushing, New York.
One of the women arrested during a raid at Oriental Bodyworks Spa, an illicit massage parlor in Concord, listed her address in Flushing, New York — a community often cited as a hub for traffickers.
Business owners who exploit women through the sex trade often target immigrants, luring them to the United States with false promises of jobs and a better life.
“It’s a very profitable industry, which is driving the problem,” said Kellermann. “Each one of these businesses can make upwards of a quarter million dollars a year for those that are operating the tracking operations.”
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative.Don’t just read this. Share it with one person who doesn’t usually follow local news — that’s how we make an impact. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.