Woman alleges assault by massage therapist - News Courier

[massage]

Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series about Rachell Pyle, who claims she was the victim of sexual assault by an Athens-based massage therapist. It contains subject matter of a sexual nature that may be offensive to some readers. The therapist, Paul Dobbs, was arrested in July on a charge of harassment, but wholeheartedly denies the allegation that he acted inappropriately toward Pyle. Part two of this series, which will be published Saturday, examines how massage therapists are regulated in Alabama and existing legal loopholes.

Rachell Pyle had gone through a rough few days when she contacted her massage therapist, Paul Dobbs, owner of an Athens-based massage therapy studio, and asked if he could schedule an appointment for her on June 30.

She had just driven 16 hours from the Naval Base in Norfolk, Virginia, where her husband Jason was participating in a month-long military exercise. Jason, a colonel in the armed forces, had recently undergone neck surgery and was also seeing Dobbs on a regular basis.

According to Rachell Pyle, the couple trusted Dobbs implicitly.

She was thrilled when Dobbs was able to schedule an appointment for her. The exhausted mother of four quickly threw on a pair of her husband's camouflage pants and an old Red Cross T-shirt and headed to Essential Kneads Therapeutic Massage at 1002 E. Pryor St., Athens. It's in the same building as Dobbs' other business, Paul Dobbs Construction Inc.

Four years ago, Dobbs exchanged the physical demands of construction work for the more sedate field of massage therapy. Though a board-certified licensed massage therapist, he retained ownership of the construction company.

According to his website, Dobbs specializes in Swedish and deep tissue massage and trigger point therapy.

The alleged incident

Pyle said she arrived to find Dobbs finishing up his lunch, so she sat down with him and started rattling off all of the areas on her body that hurt. She said her right knee was inflamed, and the muscles above both her knees were stiffened from hours on the road. Her neck was killing her, and her ankles were aching.

This marked the fourth or fifth time she had turned to Dobbs for a massage, so she said she felt comfortable going into detail, even sharing some recent personal struggles with Dobbs.

Dobbs assured Pyle he knew exactly what she needed.

Still groggy from her trip, she made her way down the hall to the last room on the left. Inside the room, she disrobed completely, dropped her earrings, checkbook and cell phone in the small tray on a side table, and crawled up on to the massage table, careful to cover her body with the light blue sheet Dobbs always provided.

A few minutes later, Dobbs appeared. Because she was face down, he focused on her lower back, thighs and buttocks. At some point, he had her flip over. Once she was on her back, he started massaging Pyle's left foot, working his way up her left side, running his hands between her breasts and ending at her neck, where he continued to rub out the strain of the last few days.

“This was new," she said. "He said it was based on some practice he had been learning about. It felt great, he was being completely professional, everything seemed fine.”

He then began working his way up the right side of her body. This time, he lingered over her abdomen.

“Next thing I know, he moves his hand down and starts rubbing my clitoris,” she said through angry tears. “I was so tired and was drifting in and out of sleep, it took everything I had to lift up my arm and grab his finger to to make him stop.”

She told him, “I don't do that.”

Dobbs allegedly responded, “I wasn't going to get up on the table unless I was invited.”

Pyle told the News Courier, “I'm trying to come to and figure out what I need to do. He was telling me that he calls that 'casual sex' and that it's okay. Then he told me he does this with another woman.”

Long-buried memories of being sexually violated as a child rushed over her, leaving Pyle frozen, unable to think or react.

“By that point, I was completely exposed, the sheet was gone,” she remembered. “I wanted to get up, but I was scared.”

She laid there for several more minutes while Dobbs massaged her neck and made crude comments about the size of her breasts, including a comment that he wasn't aroused “while he was stroking my crotch.”

The hourlong session had turned into a one-and-a-half-hour nightmare.

“I was like a zombie,” she remembered. “I just wanted him to leave, but when I realized he wasn't going to, I started getting dressed. At one point, I even asked him to hand me my bra.”

He finally left. Shaking, she somehow managed to pull her pants on and stumbled out into the hallway. She found Dobbs sitting in a chair at the front of the building, with what she described as an “expression of accomplishment” on his face.

Pyle wrote him a $60 check for the massage, and he walked her to her truck.

“He acted like nothing had happened,” she said. “I got in my truck and started driving home. About the time I passed the Krystal, I started screaming and beating the dash, asking, 'Why?'”

The aftermath

Pyle said when she got home, she took a searing hot shower and then burned her clothes in the backyard.

Later that evening, she sent Dobbs a text message, confronting him about the incident. Dobbs texted her back a response that read, “I'm sorry. I'll never do anything of that sort again. Please accept my apology.”

The next day, July 1, Pyle filed a report with Deputy Katrina Flanagan at the Athens Police Department.

At 1:45 p.m. July 3, Pyle's husband sent Dobbs a seven-sentence text.


In it, he wrote, “Rachell told me what happened. To say I'm disappointed and offended is an incalculable understatement.” He went on to accuse Dobbs of losing professionalism and acting in "direct conflict with the Christian image you portray."

Dobbs responded by text the next day at 11:23 a.m. In it, he wrote, “Jason I'm begging for forgiveness. I had a moment of insanity for which I am very much ashamed.” He claimed his "professional conduct has always been at the forefront of how to treat a client and never will there be a crossing of that line again.” He admitted he “made a mistake” and said he would pray for Pyle's husband's safety during a future deployment overseas.

Pyle provided copies of the text during a two-hour interview with The News Courier on Monday, Dec. 18. She said she came forward because she wanted to protect other women from being victimized.

Dobbs' denial

Dobbs willingly addressed Pyle's allegations during a phone interview that also took place Dec. 18.

He categorically denied all of Pyle's allegations, claiming “her story is one for the movies.”

“I did not touch her inappropriately or in a sexual way,” he said, adding that his line of work requires getting close to a woman's breasts or vagina but that massage therapy is part of the medical profession and therapists know their boundaries.

“For example, we can come up so far on the leg, but we cannot touch the vagina,” he said.

He also pointed out that when the session was over, Pyle did not show any signs of distress and paid the bill.

“She didn't jump off the table, ranting or raving, and she didn't run out of the building,” he said. “You'd have thought that if she was touched in a wrong manner, she would have been upset and she would not have paid her bill.”

Dobbs also confirmed that he sent an apology text to Jason on July 4 that matched the language of the one Pyle showed the newspaper.

As for why his text contained apologetic language, a reference to momentary insanity and the crossing of lines, Dobbs explained he was not an English major.

“I was under a lot of stress, sometimes your wording does not come out very well,” he said. “I was a businessman trying to settle a situation down.”

Dobbs also said, “Granted, they have a written statement (the July 4 text sent from Dobbs to Jason Pyle), but it isn't worth a cotton pickin' thing,” he added. “I would have never responded in written form if I had known they had already filed a complaint.”

He has pleaded not guilty to the harassment charge and has hired John Edmond Mays, a Decatur-based attorney, to represent him.


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