photo by: Nick Krug

The former Spring Massage location sits along the upper terrace of the outdoor business mall at 600 Lawrence Ave.

At the urging of the Lawrence Police Department, the City Attorney’s office is working on potential additions to city code aiming to suppress sex-trafficking operations disguised as massage parlors.

On Tuesday, the Wichita City Council approved a new, extensive licensing procedure for massage parlors that bans sex activity and nudity in such shops. Maria Garcia, assistant city attorney for Lawrence, said she’s reviewing the measures Wichita is adopting, as well as ordinances in other cities, to determine what to propose for Lawrence.

“The police department is interested in having more language on massage regulations,” Garcia said. “They’ve come to us with that request, and so we’re looking at the issue.”

It’s still early in the process of creating a new ordinance, Garcia said, and it will require input from the City Commission.

The topic of massage shops is broached in current city code, which prohibits them. Establishments operated by medical professionals or certified masseurs are excluded from that law.

Garcia said it’s “not a lot of language” and “it wasn’t recently passed.”

Besides massage shops, modeling studios, adult video arcades and theaters that predominantly show NC-17-rated movies are illegal in Lawrence.

The penalty for operating an illegal massage shop is a fine of $100 to $500 upon conviction and up to six months in jail. Each day of noncompliance with the law is seen as a separate offense.

According to the American Massage Therapy Association, Kansas is one of only four states that don’t certify or license massage therapists or their establishments at the state level.

The AMTA says a state licensure program “creates standards of minimum competency.” Most states require masseuses to pass a background check and go through formal education, training and examinations in order to be licensed.

Massage parlors nationwide have been busted for prostitution and sex trafficking in recent years, with states and cities, such as Wichita, responding by creating new regulations.

Wichita’s action Tuesday came after the city saw an increase in the number of human trafficking cases at massage businesses, the Associated Press reported.

In Lawrence last year, the co-owners of Spring Massage, 600 Lawrence Ave., were charged after a police investigation alleged they were trafficking women.

Before their arrests in 2015, both of the owners, Chen Li and Guihong Xiao, were previously found guilty in 2013 for promoting prostitution at two massage businesses in Bonner Springs. The charges were misdemeanors, and they were each required to pay $600 and received no jail time.

Li pleaded no contest to the Lawrence charges: one count of attempted human trafficking and one county of promoting the sale of sexual relations. He was sentenced to nearly 3.5 years in prison. Xiao faced charges of aggravated human trafficking, promoting the sale of sexual relations and selling sexual relations.

A news release from the time of their arrest stated the pair pressured women against their will to provide sexual service to customers.

Garcia said a date has not been set for when any new city regulation on the massage industry would be taken to the City Commission.