The commercial sex business was much bigger than law enforcement suspected in this small town.  The Mansfield News-Journal reports…

‘Body rubs’ lead to arrest
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Spurred by numerous complaints from hotels in the city, Sharonville police were shocked by what they found when they began a prostitution investigation.

In a city of 14,000 residents (37,000 by day when workers are counted), police uncovered a thriving trade on the Internet and in adult entertainment listings, with Sharonville as a prime destination.

Now, authorities are pushing back, with some success.

Most of the come-ons are for women selling services such as “body rubs” and “girl friend experiences,” which police say are thinly-veiled references to paid sex. And Sharonville was one of the main places to find them.

“They are so blatant in what they are advertising and so explicit, and they list Sharonville by name or by ZIP code,” Detective Jim Nesbit said.

The attack against this sort of illegal activity is a fight for the integrity of his city, said Lt. John Cook, who supervises the detectives working the prostitution detail.

“We are not on some high morality kick,” Cook said. “We’ve got women walking around the hotels. People know what they are. It’s not good for business.”

Sixteen arrests have been made in three raids since July 2007, and police say the investigation is ongoing. This week, another group of women was arraigned in Mayor’s Court, arrested during a raid June 30.

“We won’t tolerate it here,” Cook said. “Stay away from Sharonville.”

Last year, Sharonville police received complaints from customers and staff at some of the city’s hotels about seeing women – often scantily dressed and sometimes in pairs or in the company of a bodyguard or a driver – in the hotels.

According to Nesbit, detectives found that those women were linked to Web sites such as eros-ohio.com and craigslist.com, as well as publications such as Yellowbook and CityBeat, where they were advertising their services for massages and escort-type services.

“Prostitution has always been around in different ways,” Nesbit said. “(Customers) used to have to go to a seedier outlet, like a street corner.

“But online, they can do it in their own home, in a protected setting.”

Police found some women ply the trade part time; others do it for a living. Clients contact them by phone – often with prepaid cell phones difficult to trace – and set up an appointment, Nesbit said. Police found a niche language, full of acronyms and code words, for services such as oral sex.

“Some women check into a hotel for a day or a week and then move on to another city,” Nesbit said.

Police targeted the prostitutes in a series of raids beginning last summer.

The first, in July 2007, netted three women, but officers ran into a legal loophole. Giving topless or nude massages wasn’t illegal. With a little help from Sharonville City Council, a new law was put on the books earlier this year that requires masseuses who operate in the city to have a state license or city permit.

Since then, Sharonville police have arrested 13 women for prostitution or giving massages without a license in two raids this year – such as one that occurred July 30.

Police contacted women in several ads and set up the operation in a hotel, with an undercover officer acting as a client.

Between 4 and 8 p.m., they arrested eight women between the ages of 20 and 33. They were from all over the area – from Fairfield to Taylor Mill.

Three had other jobs, according to the arrest reports.

At least three had never been convicted of a crime before those charges, and of those with a criminal background, one had previously been convicted of drug trafficking and another for not paying child support.

The women arrested in the last bust, who were found guilty in the Mayor’s Court this week of engaging in acts of prostitution or massage without a license, received a $350 fine and court costs.

“We don’t want to ruin their lives or the lives of their families,” Cook said. “We just want them to stay away from Sharonville.” Maximum penalty for prostitution is $500 and 60 days in jail. The massage count could bring a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

Police in Sharonville say they’ve been working closely with Blue Ash and Cincinnati police, who have had similar problems in their hotels.

Cincinnati has done sting operations similar to those in Sharonville, Cincinnati Police Lt. Mark Briede said.

So far this year, the department’s vice unit has made 12 prostitution-related arrests.

Vice officers target the activity after getting complaints. They watch Internet Web sites and the classified ads of local publications for hints of the illegal activity.

Still, most prostitution arrests are made on the streets, Briede said.

Targeting prostitution in hotels is a quality-of-life issue, he said.

“Hotels don’t want that business, and if you’re from out of town and staying at a hotel, you don’t want that going on in the room next door,” Briede said.

Similar ads are at the center of a federal lawsuit. CityBeat is suing Citizens for Community Values, a family-values organization, and several Cincinnati city and Hamilton County leaders, after CCV demanded in a letter and news conference that the newspaper stop running veiled sex-for-money ads.

The lawsuit alleges that the campaign infringes on the paper’s First Amendment right to free speech, and the paper defends the ads by saying the ads do not implicitly or explicitly solicit illegal acts.

Last month, CityBeat officials said the campaign had scared off advertisers, causing it to lose 25 percent of its ad revenue.

John Fox, co-publisher of CityBeat, said then that CityBeat has always cooperated with police in investigations and suspends advertising privileges of any business found to engage in illegal activities.

CCV vice president David Miller said: “We wanted to address the issue of human trafficking in our community. We brought in a consultant, and the first thing he said was if you have ads in publications saying there is sex for sale, you’re leaving the welcome mat out.”

Nesbit said recent Internet postings suggest that their crackdown has curbed the activity.

“Look out girls, the cops are out of the pigpen,” and “better stay …the hell away from Sharonville,” were two anonymous messages police found online soon after the city’s first bust. A good sign, Sharonville’s Nesbit said.

Detective Scott Tamm, who is responsible for much of the legwork and research on this issue, says he sees Sharonville mentioned less in these ads now.

“The girls we arrested in March, some of them we never saw on the Internet again,” Tamm said. “For some, (being arrested) is a deterrent. Some are right back online the next day.”