By Guy Page
Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas says her office is moving to close a regulatory gap that has limited law enforcement’s ability to address suspected human trafficking at massage parlors across the state.
Speaking with VDC in an impromptu interview in Montpelier on Tuesday, Dec. 23, Copeland Hanzas said authorities have raised concerns about massage businesses where activity suggests possible exploitation, but where enforcement options have been limited because only individual license holders — not the massage establishments themselves — are currently regulated.
At present, authorities may only target individual licensees, Copeland Hanzas said. That has hindered effective investigation and intervention in situations that may involve human trafficking.
After the Legislature reconvenes January 7, the Secretary of State’s Office, through its Office of Professional Regulation (OPR), plans to seek statutory authority to require massage practices themselves to register with the state. The proposal would also allow for inspections of massage establishments, giving regulators and law enforcement an additional tool to identify potential trafficking or labor violations.
According to Copeland Hanzas, police departments in Burlington and Brattleboro have reported noticing massage businesses where women who do not appear to have been born in the United States are present, along with a pattern of men frequently coming and going — activity that has raised red flags for investigators.
The Office of Professional Regulation oversees Vermont’s licensed professions, including massage therapists. Under the current system, OPR can take action against licensed individuals but has limited authority over the businesses where they work. The licensees themselves may be victims of shadowy crime organizations that come and go in Vermont, Copeland Hanzas said.
The proposed changes would be included in OPR’s annual bill before the Legislature, which updates professional regulation statutes. If approved, the new rules would allow the state to register massage practices, conduct inspections, and more directly support law enforcement efforts to identify and disrupt trafficking operations.
The goal is not to target legitimate massage therapists or businesses, but to protect vulnerable individuals and provide authorities with the tools needed to address exploitation.
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Categories: Legislation
After leading Vermont into commercialized cannabis, and allowing anyone to pick up ballots from senior facilities to deliver to polling places, I’m glad to see that Sarah does have concerns in the public interest in this arena.
The bar is on the floor at this point.
I thought we were trying to legalize prostitution in this state? Why now are we concerned with human trafficking and our border? We’re a sanctuary state where all are welcome to collect benefits and be exploited under the veil of calling these individuals citizens. I want to believe this is a true pursuit to correct things, but I feel this may just be another political stunt as we inch closer to elections. If this was truly a concern, we should have been fighting for change all along. And how do they know these women don’t look like they are from here? Are there polsters gathering stats as patrons leave from obtaining “services”?
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from the Lord God?” Corinthians 6:19
Thereby, in keeping with God who created us all and in alignment with His repeated decrees that BOTH sexes, men and women, at all times remain sexually moral – ANY individual involved in “selling” their body to another for money is a “vulnerable” individual – regardless of whether they are being trafficked or are purportedly engaging in this dehumanizing “trade” on their own volition.
This is precisely why prostitution has historically been illegal. It is in complete contradiction to moral order, it spreads disease, it endangers human life via unplanned pregnancies, and it subjugates women and womanhood’s dignity (primarily women, but males serve as prostitutes as well, with DOJ estimates of one-third of all prostitutes being male) and reduces human beings to nothing more than chattel, i.e.: slaves to other humans.
Gosh, and I thought VT OUTLAWED slavery back in the 18th Century??? I suppose the intrinsic dignity of females in general is of much lessor significance & value to that of Africans or African Americans.
Needless to state, institutes of “higher” learning have very effectively manipulated young women particularly into believing, just as they managed to do with their abortion advocacy, that allowing someone else to use another’s sacred body for their personal perverse pleasure is “empowering” and doing so amounts to nothing more than one’s own personal “choice” of “occupation” or “profession”. And many young women have bought into such blasphemy hook, line, and sinker.
Sisters…….you have been and are being played big time! No, slaughtering your own progeny is not empowering, a necessity, healthcare, or a “choice”. It is murder. And selling your body for a C-Note is just as much of a sacrilege. Wise up. The state of your humanity and your soul are but aching for you to tell that moron of a professor to go to hell. You, on the other hand, have the ability for true knowledge, and therefore, salvation.
We were apparently “too good” to have Christianity in our schools, but Islam is welcome and is happy to step in.
And these fools think they’ll be safe under Sharia.