Boundaries, Safety and Professional Practice
Boundaries, Safety and Professional Practice
SAFETY FIRST
This page is a safety and professional practice guide for everyone working in hair, beauty, massage and wellness. It covers the inappropriate behaviour some clients bring into the treatment room, from sexualised messages to boundary testing, what UK law says about it, your right to refuse or stop a treatment, what salon owners are now legally required to do, and where to get help. It is based on UK survey research led by Sue Davies of Salonpreneur Magazine, alongside international studies, and it includes practical steps, a free downloadable notice for your salon or website, and two surveys where you can add your own experience.
The week I was putting this page together, a man booked an appointment at my own salon. He filled in our pre-visit questionnaire and used it to say he wanted his therapist to be naked while she massaged his tight groin. I shared that questionnaire on my Facebook page and named him. I don't recommend doing the same, but it went viral, and the number of therapists who replied to say the same thing had happened to them was sickening.
So if you have experienced this, this page is here to help you. But please know one thing before you read any further: you always have the right to say no.
I told Sue we had been lucky
When Sue first told me about her survey, my instinct was that we had got off lightly. Thirty years of doing massage myself, mostly positive. No serious cases at the salon. I said we had been lucky, and I meant it. I also said I knew most therapists were not.
Then I started telling her what actually happens here.
The men who ring and say something offensive, who I leave holding on a line in another room so they are not going anywhere in a hurry. The fact that almost every therapist who has worked for me in the last fifteen years has either refused to treat men or had an incident where I have banned someone. The comments left on our pre treatment questionnaire that are bad enough that I cancel the booking before they ever arrive.
I had another one today. A man used the medical questionnaire, the form that exists so we can treat him safely, to describe how tense his groin was and to suggest it would be more special if he were naked. It has left one of my therapists frightened to be alone in the salon.
That is what I called lucky.
That is how normal this has become. I have a firm policy, I ban people without hesitation, my team know that if they are ever uncomfortable they stop, leave the room and come and get me, and I still described this as a good run. If this is the good version, ask yourself what the rest of the industry is absorbing in silence.
My stance has not changed and it will not. Banned, no question, no second chances, no benefit of the doubt.
What has changed is that I am no longer willing to be quiet about the response. When this gets raised, it gets laughed off. It was only a joke. He did not mean anything by it. There is nothing funny about making someone feel sexualised at work. It is not humour, it is control, and it works because it puts the other person in the position of deciding whether to make a scene.
I am also not going to thank men who do not behave like this. That is not an achievement, it is the baseline. What I want is for men to understand what it feels like on the receiving end, including the ones who genuinely think they are being funny.
We are professionals. We should be treated as professionals. That is the whole of it.
Who wrote this
Sue Davies
This guidance is led by Sue Davies, founder of Salonpreneur Magazine.
Sue began investigating this after a therapist in a professional group was told, by fellow professionals, that inappropriate messages were part of the job and that she could not refuse male clients because of the Equality Act. Both claims were wrong. The therapist deleted her post and left the conversation. Sue did not.
What followed was a cross industry survey, a twenty five page investigation published in Salonpreneur Magazine under the title Behind the Treatment Room Door, and ongoing work with her MP, the Beauty and Wellbeing All Party Parliamentary Group, the Safeguarding Minister's office and the White Ribbon organisation.
Sue has been collecting data in the UK and it would be great if you could take a min to fill in her survey
Massage and beauty treatments are therapeutic. They are not sexual services. Yet research across three countries now shows that being propositioned, tested or harassed by clients is close to a normal part of the job, and most professionals have nowhere to report it.
This page sets out what UK professionals are reporting, how it compares internationally, what is and is not a crime, what salon owners are now legally required to do, and the practical steps that reduce risk. It also asks you to add your experience, because patterns are what create change.
During this article we aren’t bashing men, we are working with the stats and lived experienced. Statistics will tell you that in the uk 98% off sexual offences are committed by men and in 30 years of massage I have never heard one story involving a women but every therapist I talk to has multiple about men. My male clients are great and I would never want to put men off having any kind of treatments, this isn’t about men, it’s about the sexual predators
Helen Ward
Helen Ward
I've been a qualified massage therapist for thirty years. I hold a foundation degree in bodywork, and I taught massage for fifteen years. I own a busy city centre salon, and I'm the founder of The Hair and Beauty Directory. I've contributed the additional research for this page, alongside Sue's work, because after thirty years in treatment rooms I know exactly how much of what's on this page goes unsaid.
Why she smiled and carried on
Why if it's so common are therapists not calling this out and embarrassing the men?
I'm a pretty confident person and I will call a man out if I feel missed treated but there is still something about been in a treatment room alone and they say something and you try to laugh it off, but why?
When this happens, a great many professionals do not stop the treatment. They do not challenge it. They laugh it off, change the subject, finish the appointment, and only fall apart afterwards. Then they blame themselves for not saying something.
That is not weakness and it is not consent. There are two things going on, and both are well documented.
The first is conditioning
Girls are raised to be accommodating. Do not be rude. Do not make a fuss. Do not embarrass anyone. Smooth it over. By adulthood that is not a decision, it is a reflex, and it does not switch off because the situation has become frightening. Add a professional obligation to be welcoming and a client who is paying, and the pull towards carrying on as if everything is fine becomes very strong indeed.
So she smiles. She keeps her voice light. She finishes the massage. Not because she is comfortable, but because the cost of confrontation feels higher than the cost of enduring it.
The second is biology
Under genuine threat, the body does not only choose between fight and flight. It also freezes.
A study of 298 women published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica found that 70% experienced significant involuntary paralysis during a sexual assault, and 48% experienced it in the extreme. Researchers call it tonic immobility. It is the same response that stops a rabbit moving in headlights. The brain circuits that give voluntary control over movement are blocked, and the person cannot act even though every part of them wants to.
It is not a choice. It is not available to override by being braver. And it is the most common response there is.
None of these responses, in women or men, entails consent or cowardice. None is evidence of resistance too insufficient to warrant our respect and compassion.
Dr Jim Hopper, clinical psychologist, writing in the Washington Post on why many victims do not fight or shout
The researchers behind the Swedish study noted that their finding matters in two places: in legal settings, where cases have historically turned on whether someone resisted, and in helping survivors understand that what happened to them was a normal physiological response rather than a personal failing.
WHAT THIS MEANS
Compliance is not consent. Politeness is not consent. Silence is not consent. Not fighting back is not consent.
And if you are reading this having carried on with a treatment and hated yourself for it since, that reaction was your body doing exactly what bodies do. It was not a failure of nerve.
What Sue found in the UK
Sue's survey was built after a single incident revealed how little support exists. She opened it to massage, beauty and wellness professionals across the UK, anonymously, and asked people to respond whether or not they had experienced anything, because balance is what makes data credible.
The patterns that came back were consistent:
Sexualised emails, calls, texts and social media messages
Vague enquiries that escalate into explicit requests
Challenges to draping, professionalism or treatment protocols
Anxiety around lone working and mobile appointments
Uncertainty about how or where to report concerns
The finding that matters most is that these incidents are rarely isolated. Many professionals describe repeat behaviour from the same individuals, sometimes over years. Yet there is currently no shared reporting or intelligence framework for this sector, so nobody is joining the dots.
For the men reading this
This section is not addressed to men who behave badly. They already know what they are doing. It is addressed to everyone else, because there is something here that genuinely is not obvious from the outside.
If she laughed, she was not fine.
The laugh is the most misread signal in this entire subject. It is not amusement. It is the fastest available way to defuse a situation without a confrontation she cannot be sure she would win, in a room where she is alone with you and you are undressed. She laughed because it was the safest thing she could do.
If she did not stop it, that does not mean it was welcome.
Seventy per cent of women in that study could not move at all. Most of the rest are carrying thirty years of training in not making a scene. Absence of resistance tells you nothing about whether something was wanted, and if you have ever taken it as permission, you have been reading the wrong signal.
The joke is not separate from the rest of it.
People say that a comment is harmless, that it is banter, that everyone is too sensitive now. Here is why it is not harmless. A remark works as a test. It costs the person making it nothing, and it tells him exactly how much this woman will tolerate before she objects. If she laughs, that is information. It is the first rung of a ladder, and the professionals in Sue's survey describe exactly that escalation, from a joke, to a request, to something worse.
That is why there is no version of this where it is only a bit of fun. It is a small exercise of control, and it works precisely because she has been raised to absorb it quietly.
What it actually feels like.
It means going into a room to do the job you trained for and calculating, while you work, whether you can get to the door. It means deciding whether to remove your photograph from your own website. It means therapists giving up forty per cent of their income rather than treat men at all. It means someone finishing a treatment with steady hands and shaking afterwards in a back room, then apologising for making a fuss.
And what we are not asking for.
We are not asking for credit for men who do not do this. That is not an achievement, it is the baseline, and applauding it sets the bar somewhere near the floor.
What we are asking is simpler. Notice it when you see it happen. Say something to the man doing it, because he will hear it from you in a way he will never hear it from her. And accept that if you have made one of these remarks and she smiled, that smile was not permission.
These are professionals. Treat them as professionals. That is all of it.
What the law actually says
The most common thing professionals say is that they did not know whether what happened to them counted. Usually, it does.
Sending indecent or grossly offensive messages
A criminal offence under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. Covers texts, emails, social media messages, DMs and voicemails. A single message is enough. Up to six months.
Messages sent to cause distress or anxiety
Malicious Communications Act 1988. Up to two years.
Sending a photograph of genitals
Sometimes called cyber flashing. A specific offence under section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, in force since January 2024.
Threatening communications
Up to five years under section 181 of the Online Safety Act 2023.
Repeated behaviour causing alarm or distress
Protection from Harassment Act 1997, including stalking, online and off.
Unwanted touching, exposure and voyeurism
All offences under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
Sexual harassment
Defined in civil law under section 26(2) of the Equality Act 2010. It does not require intent, repetition, or physical contact.
This is not only happening to women
It would be easy to read this as a women's issue. The data says otherwise.
In the US survey, 56% of male massage therapists reported unwanted sexual advances from clients, against 64% of women. Close enough that this is plainly a professional problem, not a gender war.
Male therapists also carry a second pressure that is rarely discussed. Many describe working with a constant awareness that they could be misread or falsely accused, and adjusting how they speak, move and treat accordingly. Some face a booking bias before they have done anything at all.
So the picture is this. A minority of clients behave in a way that harms female professionals directly, and harms male professionals indirectly by poisoning the assumptions around them. Both have the same interest in fixing it, and neither is served by pretending only one of them is affected.
How to report it, and what to keep
Professionals repeatedly describe calling the police and being told no offence has been committed. Sometimes that is right. Often it is not, and how the report is made makes a difference.
Name the offence. Rather than saying you have had an inappropriate message, say you wish to report an offence under section 127 of the Communications Act, or that you have received an unsolicited image of genitals, which is an offence under section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act. It changes the conversation.
Report online if calling is hard. Every force takes online reports, and it gives you a written record and a reference number without having to explain yourself out loud.
Ask for a crime reference number. Even if no further action is taken. It is proof the report exists.
If you are not satisfied, you can ask for the matter to be reviewed, and you can raise it with the force's professional standards department.
What to keep
Screenshots of messages, showing the sender's name or number and the date. Take these before you block.
The booking or consultation form, saved rather than deleted.
A written note made the same day: what was said, in their words as far as you remember, what you did, who was present.
Anything that identifies them. Booking details, phone number, email, vehicle, payment record.
Any previous contact from the same person, which is what turns one incident into a course of conduct.
Keep it even if you decide not to report. Records are worth nothing on the day and everything eighteen months later.
What this costs, honestly
A therapist charging £50 an hour and completing 20 treatments a week over 48 weeks has a potential annual revenue of £48,000. With a typical 60 female to 40 male client split, a female only policy could remove around 8 appointments a week. That takes weekly income from £1,000 to £600, and annual revenue from £48,000 to £28,800. A difference of about £19,200 a year.
This is not an argument for or against. Every professional has the right to set their own boundaries. It is here so the decision is made with the full picture.
But it raises a question the industry has to answer. If professionals are cutting their earning capacity by up to 40% in order to feel safe at work, should the responsibility for managing inappropriate behaviour really sit with individual practitioners alone?
If you employ anyone, this is now a legal duty
Most of the conversation about this focuses on the solo therapist. Salon owners have a different responsibility, and since October 2024 it has been a legal one.
The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 requires employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their staff, and that explicitly includes harassment by third parties such as clients. It requires you to assess the risk. The Equality and Human Rights Commission can act against an employer who has not taken reasonable steps even where no harassment has occurred, and tribunal compensation can be increased by 25%.
In practice that means:
Carry out a written risk assessment covering client behaviour
Have a zero tolerance policy, and tell clients about it before they arrive rather than keeping it in a staff handbook
Never ask a therapist to continue with a client who has crossed a line
Never ask them to keep it quiet
Keep a written record of incidents
Give your team a plan they do not have to think about
The single most useful thing an owner can do is remove the decision from the moment. In the moment people freeze, and much of what they are freezing about is working out whether they are allowed to react at all. A pre agreed action solves that.
It needs three things. One action, decided in advance. No requirement to judge whether it was bad enough. And absolute certainty that they will be backed.
What that looks like will depend on your setup:
With others on site. Stop, leave the room, and go to whoever is in charge. Nothing else. No explaining themselves to the client, no finishing the treatment first. This is the policy at Sirens City Retreat, and it is deliberately blunt.
A code word or phrase. Something ordinary that a colleague on reception will recognise, so help arrives without the situation escalating. Useful when leaving the room is not straightforward.
A call button. Where there is no colleague within reach, or where a therapist works behind a closed door.
Working alone. There is nobody to fetch, so the plan has to be different. End the treatment, get the client out of the building, then call someone. Agree in advance who that person is.
Write it down. Tell every new starter on day one. Tell them again when nothing is happening, because that is when people can actually take it in.
Give them the words as well as the action
People freeze partly because they cannot think of what to say that will not sound rude. Rehearsed lines remove that problem. These are not aggressive and they do not require an argument:
"I'm going to stop the treatment there."
"That's not something I'm willing to discuss. I'm ending the appointment."
"I need you to get dressed. I'll wait outside."
"This is a professional treatment. If that's not what you're looking for, you need to leave."
Practise them out loud in a team meeting. It feels awkward and it is worth doing, because the first time should not be the real time.
ONE MORE THING THAT WORKS
Use your pre treatment questionnaire as a filter, not just a medical form. Ours has stopped bookings before they reached the door more than once. What someone chooses to write on a form they know a professional will read tells you a great deal, and it gives you a written record before anyone is in a room together.
Practical steps that reduce risk
Before the booking
- Put a visible safety and behaviour statement on your website and booking pages. Clients who see your expectations before contacting you often do not contact you at all.
- Be precise about what you offer. Avoid ambiguous language or imagery, and consider whether personal photographs of you are necessary.
- Specify how clients should contact you. Ignoring that is an early warning sign.
- Screen properly. Incomplete forms, vague requests, last minute bookings and challenges to your professionalism all warrant caution.
In the treatment room
- Consider a call button placed where both you and the client can see it. Spas using them report fewer incidents, and the deterrent works whether or not it is ever pressed.
- Hold firm on draping. Requests to alter or remove coverings are a recognised red flag and you can end a session immediately.
- Know your exit route and keep your phone within reach.
- Trust discomfort. You never have to justify declining a booking or stopping a treatment.
Working alone or mobile
- Share your location and schedule with a trusted contact.
- Agree a check in time and a code word.
- Consider a lone worker app or personal alarm.
- Avoid isolated settings where you can.
After an incident
- Write it down straight away, with date, time, wording and any identifying detail.
- Screenshot messages before you block.
- Report it even if you think nothing will come of it. The record is what builds the pattern.
- Tell someone. Isolation is what makes this corrosive.
Our global survey
Sue's work established the picture in the UK. This one takes it wider, to every country and to the whole industry, not just massage. Hair, nails, aesthetics, brows and lashes, holistic, spa. The behaviour does not stop at the treatment room door and neither should the data.
It asks some things Sue's does not, including questions for salon owners and employers, and questions about what would actually help. Anonymous, about five minutes.
Please complete it even if nothing has ever happened to you. Responses from people who have not experienced this matter just as much, because without them the data only shows one side and is easy to dismiss.
Frequent Asked Questions
CIs it legal for a therapist to only treat female clients?
Yes, in the right circumstances.
The Equality Act 2010 starts from the position that you cannot refuse a service because of someone's sex, but Schedule 3 contains exceptions. The Explanatory Notes to the Act use a female massage therapist declining male clients as their own worked example of a lawful single sex service, so this is not a grey area invented by therapists. Parliament chose that illustration.
The exception is not automatic. It has to be justifiable, and the usual grounds are privacy, dignity and safety in an intimate one to one setting. Write down your reasoning and keep it. This area of law changed in 2025 and 2026, so check the current Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance before relying on it.
What is definitely wrong is the claim, often repeated in professional groups, that you must treat everyone regardless.
Is a sexualised message actually a crime?
Usually, yes.
Sending a message that is grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing is an offence under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. It covers texts, emails, social media messages, direct messages and voicemails, and a single message is enough. If the message was sent to cause you distress or anxiety, the Malicious Communications Act 1988 also applies.
Sending you a photograph of genitals is a specific offence under section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Repeated contact that causes alarm or distress is covered by the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
Most of what professionals describe as "nothing really happened" is already illegal.
.
What should I do if a client makes a sexualised request during a treatment?
Stop the treatment. You do not have to finish it, negotiate, give them a warning, or be certain it was bad enough.
Say something short and leave the room. "I'm going to stop the treatment there" is enough, and you do not owe an explanation. If there is someone else on site, go straight to them. If you are alone, end the appointment, get them out of the building, and then call someone.
Afterwards, write down what happened the same day, in their words as far as you remember. Screenshot any messages before you block them. Do that even if you decide not to report, because you cannot recreate a record later.
Can I end a treatment early and still charge?
You can set your own terms, and most salons do. Put it in writing in your booking terms rather than relying on it being obvious, and say it clearly on your website and confirmation emails.
Wording it in advance also does a second job. A client who has read that an appointment will be terminated in full is far less likely to test the boundary in the first place.
What are the warning signs when someone books?
The ones professionals report most often:
- vague enquiries that avoid naming the treatment
- incomplete intake or consultation forms
- questions about whether you work alone, or what you wear
- pushing for appointments outside your normal hours, or at your home
- ignoring the contact method you have specified
- asking about "extras", or using terminology associated with sexual services
- comments written on the consultation form that have nothing to do with treatment
- challenging your professionalism or your protocols before they have even arrived
None of these on its own proves anything. Several together is a pattern, and you are allowed to decline a booking without justifying it.
What should I do if a client asks me to change the draping?
Treat it as a red flag, because it is one of the most consistently reported.
Draping is a professional protocol, not a preference, and it is not open to negotiation. You are entitled to refuse, and you are entitled to end the session immediately if it is raised again. You do not need to debate it or explain the reasoning.
How do I stay safe working alone or mobile?
Share your location and your schedule with someone you trust, and agree a check in time and a code word. Keep your phone within reach rather than in another room. Know how you would get out.
Screen harder than you would in a salon, because you have fewer options once you are there. Avoid isolated settings where you can. Consider a lone worker app or a personal alarm.
And be precise in your marketing, because for mobile and home based work that is your first line of defence rather than an afterthought.
Where do I report it if the police say no crime has been committed?
First, try again with the offence named. Saying you wish to report an offence under section 127 of the Communications Act, or an unsolicited image of genitals under section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act, is a different conversation from saying you had an inappropriate message. Reporting online rather than by phone also gives you a written record.
Ask for a crime reference number even if no further action is taken. If you are not satisfied with how it was handled, you can ask for the matter to be reviewed and raise it with the force's professional standards department.
Beyond the police, you can report anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111, and you can tell your professional body and your insurer. Whatever happens, keep your own record.
Should I report something if nothing actually happened?
Yes.
The single clearest finding across this work is that these incidents are rarely isolated. The same individuals approach business after business, and nobody sees it because nobody is collecting it. An incident that is not written down is invisible.
As Terry Jermy MP put it, early boundary testing often leads on to more serious harm, and safeguarding is about spotting patterns early. You cannot spot a pattern nobody recorded.
What do salon owners have to do by law?
Since October 2024, the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 has required employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their staff, and that explicitly includes harassment by third parties such as clients.
In practice that means carrying out a risk assessment covering client behaviour, having a policy and communicating it, and acting when something is reported.
The duty is preventative, so the Equality and Human Rights Commission can act against an employer who has not taken reasonable steps even where no harassment has actually occurred. Tribunal compensation can also be increased by 25%.
Helpfull Links
Police- Report a crime online
If you don't want to report to the police directly, Crimestoppers takes anonymous reports. Your information is still used to build patterns and intelligence.
Rape Crisis England and Wales
The UK’s first HIV inclusion course created specifically for hair, beauty and barbering professionals. Developed to help salons better understand HIV, consultation practices, universal precautions and inclusive communication.
Personal safety and stalking — Suzy Lamplugh Trust
The UK's personal safety charity, founded in 1986. Runs the National Stalking Helpline and delivers lone working and personal safety training — particularly relevant for therapists who work mobile or alone.
Your rights in law — Equality and Human Rights Commission
Guidance on single and separate sex services, and on employer duties to prevent harassment.
Employer duty and rights — ACAS
Free advice on the employer duty to prevent harassment and on your employment rights.
Login
Sign Up