Therapist convicted for massaging breasts, vaginas without consent

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This article was published 13/08/2018 (2670 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Blumenort man who claimed he was offering a new type of therapeutic massage to female clients has been convicted of sexual assault. 

Kenneth Wall was offering massages out of his home as a private-practice massage therapist when seven women came forward to police to report Wall had touched them inappropriately during massage appointments between 2010 and 2014. He claimed he was performing pain-relieving breast and vaginal massages with his patients’ consent, but a provincial court judge disagreed.

On Monday, more than a year after his provincial court trial ended, Wall was convicted on four counts of sexual assault from 2014 and for violating a court order in November 2014 that prohibited him from contacting one of the complainants. He’d phoned the woman’s brother to ask if they could meet to discuss the allegations she’d reported to RCMP.

He was acquitted of four other charges after provincial court Judge Carena Roller decided the Crown had not proven them beyond a reasonable doubt. Roller found Wall guilty of sexual assault but not guilty of sexual interference after he gave a breast massage to a 15-year-old girl without her consent. The charge of sexual interference requires proof of a “sexual purpose” and the judge ruled there was no evidence Wall got “sexual gratification” from performing the massage.

The seven women testified in court during Wall’s trial last year, and none of them suggested Wall was massaging them for his own sexual gratification. They testified Wall didn’t properly explain his techniques, never used the words breast or vagina, and never got their consent. 

One of the women told court she agreed to a breast massage to help with her neck pain and asked Wall to stop when she was uncomfortable, which he did. He was acquitted of that sexual-assault allegation. He was also acquitted of sexual assault for an incident the judge decided could have been an accidental, brief touch of a woman’s vagina. As well, Roller found Wall not guilty of anally penetrating another female patient.

When he testified in his own defence, the 45-year-old married father of five denied sexually assaulting his patients and said he believed he had their consent to perform what he called “inguinal massage” — a term, Roller wrote in her decision, that he may have coined himself. 

“Wall has told untruths when it suits him,” Roller wrote in her decision, which was released Monday. In a letter and text messages to a representative of the Alberta-based Natural Health Practitioners of Canada Association, Wall repeatedly and falsely suggested he had been cleared of the charges against him. Wall had been a member of that association before he was charged. He has a massage therapy certificate from 2010, completed after he took a year-long course that involved one instructional session per week.

In her decision, Roller noted no massage-therapy experts were called to court to explain whether breast massages or internal vaginal massages are legitimate massage therapy techniques.

The case is an example of why massage therapy needs to be a regulated profession in Manitoba, says George Fraser, executive director and registrar of the Remedial Massage Therapists Society of Manitoba. 

“Standards have to be in place, and the conviction of Mr. Wall on four charges indicates the sooner, the better,” Fraser said. 

Fraser, who was present during Wall’s trial, said he respected the women who came forward and he wished the judge would’ve been given more information about proper massage therapy techniques. 

“He crossed professional boundaries that should not be crossed.”

Wall remains on bail awaiting sentencing. A sentencing date has not been set. The decision was delayed for more than a year, and Judge Roller returned from a medical leave to deliver it Monday. 

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca  

Twitter: @thatkatiemay