A little-seen sector of Simcoe County was thrust into the spotlight this week, as police again turned their attention to the region’s sex trade.

A local massage parlour, shut down on Wednesday, was the latest to fall in a string of raids targeting alleged bawdy houses investigators say offer sex for money.

In a wide-ranging interview with Orillia Today, police provided a rare glimpse into the workings of these low-key operations, and the efforts of authorities to track down their operators.

“They have been a bit of a thorn in our side,” Det. Const. Dave Felstead, of the Orillia OPP’s Street Crime Unit, says during an interview in his second-floor office.

Communities north of the Greater Toronto Area are viewed as a largely untapped resource, flush with customers willing to pay for sexual favours offered under the guise of an innocent backrub.

“The market is there, and the clientele is there,” Felstead says. “There is no doubt about it.”
Canada’s Criminal Code defines a common bawdy house as a place where there is “frequent or habitual use of the premises for the purpose of prostitution.”

Their quiet emergence in recent years has not gone unnoticed by residents who greeted with raised eyebrows the storefront operations that often feature neon signage and winking references to “holistic” massage.

Neither were police oblivious.

“We had heard rumblings about it, but we didn’t have the ability to do anything about it at the time,” Felstead says.

In Central Region, the job of ferreting out so-called bawdy houses falls to the Major Investigation Support Team, known to its members as MIST.

The small group, which was overseen by Felstead for the past five years, operates out of the local detachment.

The team initially turned to the York Regional Police vice squad for guidance, given the agency’s long familiarity with the illegal rub shops.

“That’s all they do,” Felstead says.

The local unit has since raided and shut down 10 of the illicit operations in the past 16 months.

A modest rental house in Atherley just outside Orillia was first on the list.

The corner business with the covered windows first made headlines as the victim of an armed robbery, attracting what was invariably unwanted attention.

When police finally swooped in, a 31-year-old Newmarket woman was charged with keeping a common bawdy house and being an inmate of a common bawdy house.

A 40-year-old Barrie man was also charged.

Other busts followed in Wasaga Beach, Midhurst, Angus, and Alliston.

Investigators are confident that organized crime has more than a guiding hand in the business, yet establishing that connection has so far proved futile.

“To date, we have been unable to lay any charges against the owners or organized crime,” Felstead adds. “It’s extremely difficult to gather the necessary information from the girls.”

Numbered companies usually lease the buildings housing the businesses, and the women working there are understandably reluctant to name their employers.

“It is always their first day and they don’t know who their bosses are,” he says. “They are so afraid of what could happen to them. They are just taking their lumps.”

Most hail from Eastern Europe and are often deeply in debt.

“Some have had their way paid to Canada and they are paying their debt back to organized crime,” Felstead says.

 Of the $40 fee clients typically ante up for a basic massage with manual sex, the woman pockets just $10.

The remainder is pushed through the slot of a locked drop box, to be collected at regular intervals by a manager known as “the keeper.”

“It’s not a victimless crime,” says Felstead. “I believe most of the girls are victims. I’m sure they didn’t come to Canada in hopes of getting a job at one of these places.”

The pittance earned by workers serves as an incentive to offer other services.

“It goes all the way up to body slides, to oral sex to full sex,” he says.

To build their case against a suspected establishment, police conduct surveillance over several days, following and pulling over customers at a safe distance from the building.

Those who fess up to the goings-on inside – and all of them do – are treated as witnesses but are not charged.

“These customers are given a free pass on that day, but they have to give us the details,” Felstead says. “Very few of them have criminal records.”

Five witnesses collected over several days are considered sufficient for a warrant.

On the day of the bust, police arrived clothed in tactical gear, more for identification purposes than because of any real threat of violence.

Warrants are typically executed at lunchtime or the dinner hour when business is brisk.

“Everybody inside gets arrested,” Felstead adds.

The penalty typically amounts to a fine, though neither the staff nor the customers are the targets, he says.

“It is the bigger fish up the chain,” he adds of the still-elusive operators.

Stripping the buildings bare is often their only recourse, he says.

“We’ve taken everything from lights to beds, mirrors, toilet paper and massage oils,” Felstead says. “We try to hit them hard in the pocketbook.”

Common bawdy houses differ radically from businesses dealing in legitimate massage therapy.

The former are cash-only and aren’t likely to issue receipts.

Their interiors are dimly lit and often festooned with Christmas lights and tacky plastic floral arrangements.

Slinky fashions are the norm among staff.

“My massage therapist is not wearing skin-tight clothes with high-heeled shoes and her boobs hanging out,” Felstead says bluntly.

Legitimate operations “have their diplomas or degrees displayed proudly, right in the entrance to the clinic,” he adds.

“The degrees obviously have a university or college on it. I have seen fake ones, but you’d have to be Stevie Wonder not to know they were fake.”