WHYY20%
‘There’s no compassion, there’s no empathy’: Delaware police’s human trafficking unit cracks down on massage parlors, aids victims 61%
By Cris Barrish79%
8/6/2026, 2:30:24 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Biased Writer Voice, and Availability Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 67.1% saturation with 214 hits. Analysis detected 915 faulty-reasoning hits from 319 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 48.7% and a BS Rank of 61% (11,856 of 30,356 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 60.90% of the article peer group.
When police raided a massage “therapy” spa in suburban Wilmington in July, officers said they found more than 100 red condoms inside a drop ceiling and a fake jar of peanut butter.
Up in the ceiling, officers said they also discovered $16,000 in cash hidden in the lining of suitcases.
According to police, two male customers and four female employees, including the manager, were inside the Crystal Spa, located between a sub shop and smoke shop on Foulk Road, along an affluent stretch of Brandywine Hundred.
The men admitted they were there for sex, court records state.
The three employees who serviced customers gave different accounts of their jobs, but according to court records, all told detectives they had been at Crystal Therapy for several weeks and had not left once, eating all their meals there and sleeping in makeshift beds.
But one employee allegedly admitted what undercover officers had already determined: along with massages the workers also offered sex acts for up to $200 extra.
The women, who police say didn’t have licenses as massage therapists, allegedly worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.
According to court records, one employee said they lived under the strict orders of the manager, known as the mamasan, who “cooks, cleans and yells at them,” and tells them where to get and dispose of the red condoms.
Customers at Crystal Therapy usually entered through this back entrance to avoid detection, police said.
(Cris Barrish/WHYY)
That sordid scene detailed in court records was one of several similar ones the New Castle County Police Department’s Human Trafficking Investigations Team has reported encountering in recent months.
Created last year to target what law enforcement authorities and victim advocates agree is a persistent and growing problem, the unit has been focusing on what they call “illicit massage businesses.”
Speakers
1speaker9.7%attributed speech288writer words
100%flagged-word coverage
31 attributed words100% of attributed speech87% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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