When massage therapists cross the line, state board rarely acts - MyAJC

[massage]

LICENSE SUSPENDED

• In 2010, William Stringfellow was accused of fondling a client at a Massage Envy on Camp Creek Parkway in Atlanta, then forcibly performing sex acts on her as she repeatedly told him to stop. The woman, who had been given the massage as a birthday gift from a friend, called police from the hospital where she was examined after the assault. Stringfellow’s license wasn’t suspended until March 2014, after he’d been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
  Photo credit: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office

The Massage Envy complaint

That wasn’t the case with the woman who filed the board complaint against the Midtown Massage Envy.

After the Dec. 26, 2016 incident, she found out that chiropractor Patrick Greco owned the business, and she asked to meet with him and the manager. She said she knew the therapist hadn’t complied with standards, which include draping clients to ensure safety and privacy and immediately stopping when a client says to.

“I told them what happened,” she told the AJC, which does not identify those who may have been victims of sexual misconduct. “I said I know he broke your policy. I have on my chart that I don’t want my gluts massaged. When I say he moved my underwear, I mean he split them down the middle aggressively … I told them I told him to stop four times and he didn’t.”

She also filled out the board’s online complaint form. After the meeting with Greco, the woman said, the state called and she spoke with two investigative agents.

When the investigators contacted the clinic, it fired the therapist. The woman said she didn’t know the board hadn’t disciplined him until she talked with the AJC. “From the conversations I had with them, I thought they were going to take his license,” she said. “It’s like my complaint was never taken seriously.”

In an interview with the AJC, the therapist she accused said a state investigator spoke to him once about the complaint, but he never heard back. He has since gone on to work at two other clinics.

He admitted he shouldn’t have massaged her buttocks, since she had put in her chart that she didn’t want that. Massage Envy could get so busy, therapists wouldn’t bother looking at the forms, he said. He denied pulling her underwear or continuing after she told him to stop, or having any sexual motivation.

Asked about any other complaints against him, he said that another woman had later complained that he hadn’t covered her properly, then that while stretching her leg he had pulled on her underwear. He denied doing that, too.

Male massage therapists, he said, are in a vulnerable position — no chaperones, no cameras, and sometimes dealing with vindictive clients who want free massages. “It’s a risky job,” the therapist said. “If a female client decides to lie on you, what can you say? It’s your word against theirs.”

The AJC is not naming him because he isn’t identified in any board order or criminal complaint.

Greco, the franchise owner, declined to speak to the AJC and referred questions to Massage Envy’s corporate office. The AJC received a written statement from the company saying, “We cannot comment on the specifics of any specific investigation by a franchisee, but we can tell you that the therapist is no longer employed by the franchise location.”

In December, the Atlanta private equity firm Roark Capital Group, which acquired Massage Envy in 2012, issued a plan to address more than 180 sexual assault allegations across the country. The plan, posted on the company’s website, includes mandatory background screening for all therapists annually. It doesn’t call for notifying police in sex abuse cases, but rather for franchisees to offer customers a private room to make their own calls to law enforcement.

The proposed solution

The American Massage Therapy Association wants to see stronger regulation, and for the past three years has been pushing an overhaul of Georgia massage regulations.

House Bill 915, which has both Republican and Democrat sponsors, would mandate reporting of some violations to the board. Licensed massage therapists would have to report any other therapist they believe is unable to practice because of alcohol or drug use and those criminally convicted of sexual offenses or drug crimes. Employers would have to report any firings or resignations resulting from impairment or drug or sex crime convictions.

Nothing in the proposed law would require businesses to report an employee after they’ve been arrested for a sex crime, much less complaints or firings where police aren’t involved.

The bill would also increase the fines the board can levy, prohibit ads that show people depicted or posed in a way to appeal to prurient interests, and give the board authority to conduct inspections of facilities, equipment and personnel. At present, it only can inspect during investigations.

The bill would also cut off another loophole for illicit activity by bringing bodyworks treatment — a practice that can be nearly indistinguishable from massage, yet exempted from regulation — under the board’s purview.

Much of the language is geared to protecting the profession from prostitutes, pimps and sex traffickers.

“It is one of the most frustrating things in the profession, striving to always be the most professional in the midst of those few that don’t work professional,” said Jane Johnson, owner of Clinical Massage Associates in Marietta and the massage board’s first chairwoman, from 2006 to 2013. “Because we have gone so far with getting licensure in Georgia. That in itself was a miracle.”
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One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, said massage therapists are being swept into cities’ and counties’ battles against the sex-for-hire industry. Just to open their doors, therapists can be subjected to municipal fees of up to $1,500, or forbidden to open in malls close to churches or schools. The bill would limit such local government regulations by giving the board broader authority to set statewide standards.

“Licensed massage therapists that are really above board and legitimate are often being lumped in with the questionable, more for-pleasure masseuses,” Cooper said. “They’re making it where the ones that are truly trained in massage and helping people with pain and muscle problems, and athletes, they can’t find places to be in business.”

When HB 915 reached the Regulated Industries committee this year, Rep. Harrell, its vice chair, proposed a substitute bill that would have abolished the board. He pointed to two prior reports, from 1997 and 2002, saying the industry doesn’t need regulating because the public can determine who is and who isn’t a qualified therapist.

“If someone claimed there was illegal touching, I would hope the first phone call would be to the police,” Harrell said. “My initial reactions, if I was an employer in a situation like that, would not to be to call my regulatory board that issued my license.”
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Now the board will go through a review process, probably during the summer, to determine if licensing is still warranted.


About massage therapy

Over the past 15 years, massage therapy has grown into a $16 billion industry that is estimated to serve more than 47 million adults a year, with therapists working in hospitals, nursing homes, shopping center spas, and as sole practitioners.

Georgia started licensing therapists in 2005 to protect the public from unqualified practitioners. The Georgia Board of Massage Therapy has the authority to set education and training requirements and promote high standards. It also can issue, deny, suspend or revoke licenses and conduct investigations.

The board also can impose fines, capped at $500 for each violation.

Most of the 55 public actions posted on the board’s website since 2015 involved therapists who practiced without a license or failed to complete continuing education requirements.

Seven orders in that time involved therapists with criminal convictions. Most did not cost a therapist his or her license. Among those still licensed is a therapist who had two felony convictions and had served time in prison in Louisiana.


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