By Flint McColgan

Copyright bostonherald

Methuen has launched a human trafficking task force after the city directly or indirectly shut down nine massage parlors suspected as fronts for the crime, and the mayor urged other communities to do the same.

“The message we have sent in declaring war on human trafficking is clear: Methuen is not a safe harbor for these criminal enterprises,” Mayor D.J. Beauregard said at a press conference Thursday.

He said that the city is “advancing the toughest possible local rules to make Methuen utterly inhospitable to human trafficking.” That includes an investment in additional law enforcement technology, including license plate readers to work in tandem with surveillance of suspected human trafficking operations, as well as increased unannounced inspections of those locations.

“These operations cannot exist without two things, customers and property owners who allow them space to operate,” Beauregard said.

To the “so-called Johns who fuel these crimes,” Beauregard said, “You are not invisible. … If you engage in this vile activity, we will know who you are and we will hold you up to public shame.”

Beauregard said that the problem of human trafficking is “bigger than Methuen.”

“It’s a problem across Massachusetts. It’s a problem across the United States. These illicit businesses exist everywhere, including in communities where people least expect them,” he said. “Every city and every town must adopt this same proactive approach. Today I am calling on leaders at all levels of government to join us in this fight.”

A similar crime grabbed local headlines earlier this year when 28 accused brothel “johns” went through probable cause Cambridge District Court hearings in March. These customers face state-level court proceedings, while the three operators of the brothel network that spanned the Boston suburbs to the Washington D.C. suburbs of Virginia were prosecuted in federal court, and each got prison sentences.

The announcement came following a busy week of closing suspected human trafficking massage parlors.

Those closed due to what Beauregard called “coordinated city action” by his administration, the Methuen Police Department and the city’s Health, Human Services, and Inspections department were Oriental Spa on Swan Street, Yellow Lilly Day Spa on Baldwin Street, Lavender Spa on Baldwin Street, Beauty Garden Spa on Wallace Street and Eastern Bodywork Therapy on Hampshire Street. Beauregard said four more suspected locations shuttered on their own after the city took action on the others.

The closures also saw the arrest Friday of the operator of Beauty Garden Spa, Suping Zhu, 38, of Flushing, New York. Zhu faces charges of deriving support from prostitution, being a keeper of a house of ill fame, and trafficking a person for sexual servitude.

Methuen Police Chief Scott McNamara told reporters Thursday that his department is also gearing up to file charges to another manager but did not name the person.

McNamara said following Zhu’s arrest that his department “is sending a clear and unmistakable warning to every nefarious proprietor running these vile operations: we are coming for you, and we will shut down your illegal enterprises with determined action.”

Audrey Doody, a human trafficking survivor and co-executive director of the Safe Exit Initiative, an organization that combats human trafficking and gives support to its victims, said Methuen’s work “is a huge step in combating human trafficking.”

“The vast majority of people in the sex trade are not there by choice,” Doody said. “It is more often circumstances out of their control that place these individuals in harm’s way to be vulnerable, to be coerced, forced and intimidated into the sex trade.”