Controversial bill regulating bodywork, intended to fight human trafficking, will get a rewrite
Posted Oct 28, 5:26 PM
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Bodywork practitioners testify at a hearing of the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure on Oct. 28, 2019. (Shira Schoenberg / The Republican)
By Shira Schoenberg |
sschoenberg@repub.com
Proponents of a controversial anti-human trafficking bill are planning to rewrite it after Reiki, Qigong and even yoga practitioners said the current bill would drive many legitimate healers out of business.
“While we want to ensure that we can combat human trafficking however it manifests in our communities, we do not want to burden legitimate practitioners with arduous training and education requirements or redefine industry standards for their modalities,” Beth Keeley, chief of the Human Trafficking Division in Attorney General Maura Healey’s office, told the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure at a hearing on Monday.
Keeley said Healey — who worked with Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, in writing the bill — will submit a redrafted version.
The bill, S.168, would license and regulate bodywork businesses. Bodywork can include things like acupressure, aromatherapy, Reiki, reflexology, tai chi, Ayurveda, biofeedback, Shiatsu or a host of other practices, often those that involve moving energy around the body.
The bill is aimed at cracking down on illicit “bodywork” shops that are actually fronts for human trafficking or sex trafficking, where a trafficker recruits women who are paid to provide sexual services to clients.
The issue gained national attention this year after New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was charged with soliciting a woman for prostitution at a Florida spa.
While experts could not say at the hearing how widespread the problem is, Woburn Police Lt. Brian McManus, who oversees human trafficking cases there, said in investigations, he often encounters “bodywork” businesses advertising on websites known to sell sex, with the same language and emojis used to advertise prostitution.
McManus said Woburn, with a large business district and easy access to two interstate highways, has a pervasive problem with prostitution. Between 2014 and 2018, he estimated that there were around 30 investigations involving bodywork businesses.
According to Healey’s office, their investigations have led to the indictment of 10 individuals since 2012 for human trafficking at illicit massage or bodywork establishments.
In one case, for example, a Quincy woman was sentenced to five years in prison for trafficking women at bodywork establishments in East Longmeadow, Hadley and Framingham. The victims, who were paid for providing sexual services, lived at the businesses and were dependent on the owner for necessities like groceries.
Currently, Massachusetts licenses and regulates massage therapists but not bodywork, although some cities and towns have instituted their own regulations. “These exist in a no-man’s land where they are not being regulated,” said Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan. “We are asking that the same regulation that has been brought to bear on the massage industry be brought to bear on the others.”
Montigny has called it the “bodywork loophole,” and said in a letter to the committee that loophole “has threatened consumer protection and the public health and safety.”
However, at a hearing, bodywork practitioners said the bill as currently drafted would go far beyond cracking down on human trafficking by establishing onerous educational and licensure requirements, which would likely put hundreds of practitioners out of business.
“What you’re doing right now, it’s madness,” said Clark Reddick, a stress relief and recovery specialist. “For every one person it might help, it promises to create 1,000 citizens of collateral damage.” For example, Reddick said it would not be financially worthwhile for his wife, who works with him part-time, to take an expensive training class in order to continue working.
The bill as currently written would set up a seven-member board to regulate and license bodywork professionals.
The board would establish standards for professional and ethical conduct, set educational qualifications, investigate complaints to identify deceptive or dangerous behavior, and penalize those who break the law.
The bill would require practitioners to have undergone at least 500 hours of education or supervised training. Anyone convicted of a sexual crime or crime of “moral turpitude” could not apply for a license within 10 years.
But those in the field testified that there is no reasonable way for a seven-member board to develop credentials for licensing what could include 150 or 200 different types of practices. Some involve touch; others look more like exercise; others include meditation.
Carol Bedrosian, the publisher of Spirit of Change magazine, which writes about alternative healing, compiled a list of 167 practices potentially affected by the bill. Asked why regulating bodywork is different from regulating medicine, she said, “How could one board know what licensing qualifications are for an endocrinologist as well as a heart surgeon?”
Rita Glassman, a Reiki master and executive director of Massachusetts Coalition of Holistic Practitioners, questioned a requirement that practitioners attend a state-licensed school to become credentialed.
“No state-licensed schools teach Reiki. Reiki is taught in people’s living rooms, maybe in centers,” Glassman said. She said there are 64 major lineages of Reiki, a type of energy healing, and Reiki cannot be standardized into a single course.
The bill, she said, “will wipe out the profession in Massachusetts.”
Robert Nelson, a registered nurse from Holyoke and a Reiki practitioner, said the proposed licensing standards will “dramatically reduce health care options to the citizens of the commonwealth of Massachusetts.” Several speakers noted that hospitals ranging from Cooley Dickinson to Dana-Farber Cancer Center to Children’s Hospital bring in Reiki practitioners.
Several speakers said licensing should be reserved for practices that can cause harm, like prescribing a drug or injecting someone with a needle. “Does Reiki pose a danger to the public? … How about a mindfulness-based stress reduction program of meditation?” Bedrosian said.
The bill also raises potential questions of religious freedom. Laura Kandziolka, who teaches Quigong, a Chinese system of breathing and exercises, said she has no reason to touch anyone’s body during her classes. She considers Quigong part of a religious practice, and told the committee, “I don’t think you’re here to require a license to practice religion.”
Several practitioners noted that if they do something wrong in their profession, they maintain liability insurance. But, they said, regulating irresponsible healing practices is far different from cracking down on illicit prostitution, which is what the bill is intended to do. Several people who testified pointed out that a 2013 report by a special state task force looking at human trafficking made numerous recommendations, but no mention of licensing bodywork.
Kandziolka said, “It’s not clear how requiring licensing of 150 or more additional specialties will cut down on human trafficking.”
