Buster

Cops: Male Massage Therapist "Digitally Penetrated" Female Customer Who Bought Sessions Via Groupon

A licensed massage therapist was arrested yesterday on a sexual battery charge for allegedly improperly touching a female client who had booked sessions via a Groupon offer, police report.

The 53-year-old woman told investigators that Ronald Bruinius violated her during appointments at Ronnie’s Body Work Massage, the Largo, Florida business run by Bruinius. 

According to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, detectives began investigating the 36-year-old Bruinius last month, when the woman first reported that she had been touched in a “sexual manner” during a July massage (the last in a series of five massages she purchased through Groupon, the online coupon firm).

An arrest affidavit alleges that “during the course of a full body massage” on July 24, Bruinius “digitally penetrated the Victim’s vagina.” The woman “was not looking for this type of massage and ended the massage immediately,” an investigator added.

During the third of her five massages, the woman told cops, Bruinius touched her in an inappropriate manner, though she did not confront him because she thought the contact may have been inadvertent.

Bruinius, pictured above, was arrested last night on a felony count and booked into the county jail (where he is being held in lieu of $50,000 bond). According to a sheriff’s statement, “Detectives say there may be other victims,” so they have asked anyone with further information to contact a detective in the office’s Special Victims Unit.

A Groupon deal description reports that “Bruinius views himself as a humble tool to keep” a body running smoothly. “In the comfort of a private room, Ronnie can coax away aches with flowing Swedish strokes or call on firm deep-tissue pressure to access lower-layer muscles.”