Massage Envy is back in the news, this time in connection to a civil lawsuit that was recently filed by five women. In the suit, the women allege that “male massage therapists sexually assaulted them before and during massages at franchise locations in the Bay Area, Sacramento and Southern California.” It was filed in San Mateo County and comes nearly a year after an investigation conducted by Buzzfeed News found that “more than 180 people have filed sexual assault lawsuits, police reports, and state board complaints against Massage Envy spas, their employees, and the national company.”
Massage Envy is back in the news, this time in connection to a civil lawsuit that was recently filed by five women. In the suit, the women allege that “male massage therapists sexually assaulted them before and during massages at franchise locations in the Bay Area, Sacramento and Southern California.” It was filed in San Mateo County and comes nearly a year after an investigation conducted by Buzzfeed News found that “more than 180 people have filed sexual assault lawsuits, police reports, and state board complaints against Massage Envy spas, their employees, and the national company.”
Thompson Law Offices, P.C. and Laffey, Bucci & Kent, LLP, the law firms representing the plaintiffs, said in a recent statement that the “suit seeks to stop a statewide epidemic of sexual assaults occurring at Massage Envy locations by Massage Envy’s massage therapists.” According to the complaints detailed in the suit, Massage Envy, “the largest chain of massage franchises in the country, is not doing enough to prevent, investigate, report and track sexual assaults.” As a result, it is seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial.
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What are the specific complaints, though? For starters, one of the plaintiffs claims a male massage therapist at a Burlingame location “forced a female client to touch his penis and groped her before raping her in the massage room.” According to the plaintiff, when she reported the incident to Massage Envy management, “managers refused to fire the massage therapist in question because “their stories did not match up.” That massage therapist in question has since been charged with 13 counts of sexual assault and was allegedly “accused of inappropriate sexual behavior before the incident and allowed to continue to work.”
The other women included in the suit joined because they were all allegedly “sexually assaulted or sexually harassed at Massage Envy locations in Elk Grove, Redondo Beach, Beverly Hills, and West Covina.” Additionally, the suit argues that managers at “various Massage Envy locations have mishandled or covered up incidents of alleged sexual misconduct.”
In response to the allegations, Massage Envy issued the following statement:
“While we aren’t able to comment on active litigation, we can tell you that we remain focused on our Commitment to Safety plan, which is further strengthening our existing policies. Safety is and will always be our priority and we will never stop working on it.”
The company’s Commitment to Safety plan was developed and implemented in response to the allegations detailed in the Buzzfeed News investigation. At that time, the company said:
“The recent, heartbreaking stories of sexual assault suffered in Massage Envy franchise locations caused us to take a hard look at our business and at how we protect the members and guests who have placed their trust in the brand.”
According to Massage Envy, the new safety plan will update “background screening for the company’s roughly 20,000 massage therapists on an annual basis,” and calls for “more thorough investigations into sexual assault claims, a review of policies and procedures by an anti-sexual violence organization and better support for people who report alleged sexual misconduct.”
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