The Toronto Health Spa remains closed after police alleged it was operating as a brothel. The entrance is pictured here on Gerrard St., just west of Yonge St. in Toronto, on Thursday, December 10, 2009 (QMI Agency/Ernest Doroszuk)

TORONTO -- Teenaged girls were actively recruited from local youth shelters to work at a brothel fronting as a massage parlour perched above a downtown pub, police say.

It was this information that led downtown vice cops to raid Toronto Health Spa early Wednesday evening, Det. Frank Giancola said yesterday.

As of yesterday, 10 women between 24 and 32 years old were charged with being inmates of a common bawdy house and an 11th woman was charged with keeping a common bawdy house.

More charges, including procuring a person under 18 to become a prostitute and living on the avails of a minor prostitute, could be laid as the investigation continues.

The spa, which sits above Elephant & Castle pub, is across the street from the Evergreen youth centre and Covenant House, where Giancola alleged women from the rub-and-tug trolled the sidewalks "every couple of days" trying to lure vulnerable girls, some younger than 16.

"They're told it's just a massage, and then, 'You can make extra cash by offering other services,' " Giancola said.

No minors were found during Wednesday's raid.

Police were going through a list of employees who weren't working that night.

Covenant House program services director Carol Howes said she hears of "an incident or two a month" in which teens tell staff about someone trying to recruit them into the sex trade. "It really is the lowest of the low that these guys look for people that are very vulnerable," Howes said. "There's lots, unfortunately, of those kind of folks out there so it's an easy market for them."

"It's terrible," said Evergreen outreach worker Jan Rothenburger.

"All the kids that hang around, the young girls, they're all vulnerable. They all want to be loved."

Services offered by the spa are advertised through various means, such as tosluts.com, the Canadian Escort Guide, the erotic services section of Craigslist and local weekly newspapers.

In a review posted on sp411.com, one customer wrote: "All available girls come in one by one and introduce themselves. That reminded me of European-style brothels.

"Most of them dressed like strippers, even down to the clear plastic shoes," the review says, before describing the so-called massage.

"She began with a massage on my back and then I turned over. She proceeded to massage the front and give me a happy ending."