Horry County targets two more ‘nuisance’ massage parlors, seeks their closure
Horry County is continuing its attempts to close massage parlors where employees are allegedly offering sexual services for money.
The county, via 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson, filed a pair of actions Tuesday seeking to declare Horry Therapeutic Spa, at 946 Lake Arrowhead Road in Myrtle Beach, and Massage Wellness, at 520 Hwy. 17 S. in Surfside Beach, as nuisance businesses.
The filings come about six months after the county filed similar actions against 20 other massage parlors, most of which have since voluntarily closed, though the cases continue to await a final ruling from a judge.
The actions followed a series of stories by McClatchy that explored the problem of human trafficking in South Carolina. Reporters at The Sun News and The State newspaper in Columbia investigated 18 of the 20 massage businesses Richardson is now trying to close.
Richardson said his office hired an outside investigator — who began visiting these businesses in March, according to court records — in response to numerous and continued complaints, which they always forwarded to police.
Horry Therapeutic Spa and Massage Wellness, both owned by Richard Bushey, also closed after the county notified their property owners, according to the court petition. Phone numbers for the two businesses were disconnected when called Tuesday.
The filings state that an investigator visited both locations on three separate occasions posing as a customer, and an employee “offered to perform sex acts to the investigator in exchange for money” each time.
Horry Therapeutic Massage had moved into the Lake Arrowhead Road location after the previous business, Yucca Spa, voluntarily closed from the solicitor’s initial round of nuisance filings.
Last March, The Sun News published an article about potential human trafficking occurring at massage parlors in the county as part of a series with The State Newspaper on human trafficking in South Carolina.
The report detailed how police tend to charge the women working in these parlors with prostitution, while human trafficking advocates argue that those women — usually Asian women over 35 years old — are likely victims.
Polaris, a leading worldwide anti-human trafficking organization, published a report in 2018 about what it calls illicit massage businesses, finding that more than 9,000 such businesses operate nationwide earning about $2.5 billion in annual revenue.
The report also notes that just shutting down the businesses isn’t the answer because the owners can just move to a new location with a new name, and the women remain victims.
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 7:12 PM.
