City Council approves cross-gender massage law

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2002 | 9:23 a.m.

Massage therapists in Henderson will be the first in the Las Vegas Valley permitted to travel to homes and hotel rooms to give rubdowns to members of the opposite sex.

The Henderson City Council approved the new laws Tuesday after about six months of fine-tuning.

Vahan Tafralian, CEO of the Dahan Institute of Massage Studies in Las Vegas, was ebullient after the meeting.

"No wonder Henderson is the fastest-growing city in America," Tafralian said. "They researched it. They checked it out. They understand the massage therapist's plight in Southern Nevada.

"It's the only place in the country where they (therapists) can't reach out to their clients without the interference of business licensing and police departments and being falsely accused of being a prostitute."

Tafralian said he would immediately petition Las Vegas and Clark County to adopt similar laws. Both municipalities specifically prohibited outcall, cross-gender massage in an effort to discourage prostitution when they updated massage laws in the mid-1990s.

David Lee, director of business licensing for Henderson, said new requirements of national certification and completion of 500 hours of classes at an accredited school would "discourage anyone who wanted to get into prostitution from using massage as a front."

The Henderson Police Department will assist the business licensing department with background checks, Deputy Chief Monty Sparks said.

Spa directors at Henderson's luxury hotels have said that many customers expect room service for massages just as they do for other services.

Henderson's aging residents, some of whom are confined to their homes, also will benefit from the new laws, Mayor Jim Gibson said.

The new laws will also allow independent massage therapists to operate their businesses out of their homes, but not in their homes.

Before the change in the laws, no outcall massage had been allowed in Henderson and all massage establishments were required to have a storefront.

Councilman Jack Clark, who works for Metro Police, asked that Henderson Police and the city business licensing department monitor prostitution-related arrests and new licenses closely.

"I just don't want to see this thing turn into something we're fighting over the years because then it taints the hundreds of people working honestly," he said.