He has also said, along with MacDonald, Zolnikov, and the members of the Yellowstone County task force, that the goal is to prosecute traffickers, not further criminalize people selling sex.ĭuring SB 147’s first hearing, representatives from the ACLU of Montana and the Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence presented concerns to the committee.

Details of the investigation have not yet been released, but the indictment alleges that Petrie “developed a scheme and enticed and encouraged individuals to travel from outside the State of Montana to Montana for the purpose of commercial sexual activity.” The counts specifically allege that Petrie violated Montana state laws prohibiting prostitution in their existing form.įorcing someone to work and forcing someone to engage in sexual activity are both crimes under Montana’s existing human trafficking and sexual assault laws, but changing state law so that all possible commercial sex acts are criminalized will make it easier for law enforcement to investigate the parlors, Baker says. The lack of a law against assisted masturbation did not stop a federal investigation from resulting in the indictment of a Billings-area spa owner, Scot Donald Petrie, on prostitution-related charges, as reported on Tuesday by the Billings Gazette. “If we get information right now that someone … was giving massages with a happy ending, a handjob, you couldn’t investigate that further, because that’s not a criminal act right now,” Baker said the week before SB 147 was passed. He supported Dudik’s successful push in 2015 to pass House Bill 89, which established the state’s trafficking laws. She’d been approached more than a year earlier by Missoula Police Detective Guy Baker, who had discovered that Missoula police couldn’t bring prostitution charges against a woman whose neighbors complained that she was seeing clients in an apartment complex because they suspected she was only providing legal handjobs.īaker has worked both state and federal trafficking cases in partnership with various task forces. HB 749 has passed the House and is scheduled for a third Senate reading on Wednesday.Įarlier in the session, state representative and 2020 candidate for attorney general Kimberly Dudik, D-Missoula, introduced a since-tabled bill that would have added “assisted masturbation” to the state’s list of commercially prohibited activities.

Daniel Zolnikov, R-Billings, has introduced House Bill 749, which would require massage businesses to display therapists’ licenses, allow officials to interrupt therapy sessions of two hours or longer, and allocate more than $500,000 for the biennium to hire two dedicated trafficking investigators in the Division of Criminal Investigation.

Margie MacDonald, D-Billings, introduced SB 147 - which expands the definitions of and penalties for trafficking in addition to expanding the definition of prostitution - after being approached by Yellowstone County Area Human Trafficking Task Force cofounders Penny Ronning, a Billings city councilperson, and Stephanie Baucus, a Billings attorney, with concerns that the businesses could be fronts for trafficking. At least 13 of the state’s approximately 20 such parlors are in Billings, according to business listings referenced in bill testimony.

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