Massage therapy sex case highlights limitations of law - Victoria Advocate

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A third woman who reported to law enforcement that she was groped by a Victoria massage therapist also is questioning why officials never stopped the man.

The therapist, Charles Hank Krebs Jr., continued to work even though he was not licensed because officials said he had not yet raped or injured someone.

"Maybe mine wasn't serious enough, but to me, it was. It was awful," said a woman who reported to the Victoria County Sheriff's Office she was groped by Krebs on March 29.

The woman fought back tears as she described being lured into a sense of security by Krebs' wife and by the crosses and religious books decorating the couple's trailer on state Highway 185 where they saw clients.

"This should have never happened to the next lady," she said about a woman who reported being sexually assaulted by Krebs exactly one month later.

In the latter woman's case, Krebs was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.

Krebs' case highlights what sexual assault victim advocates describe as a little-known problem in Texas' law. Although touching the genitalia of a child is a felony, doing the same to an adult will net someone little more than a fine in municipal court.

Working for stronger legislation

This discourages victims from reporting an already underreported crime, said Chris Kaiser, director of public policy at Texas Association Against Sexual Assault.

"Everybody is really surprised to find out that it's not already a serious crime," Kaiser said about groping. "It's been probably 40 or 50 years of states unfortunately catching up to modern ideas of what is or isn't decent. I think for a long time, states were in this historical mode of not really taking sexual violence seriously."

Kaiser will be working with the Legislature during its next session to create a law that criminalizes unwanted touching of an adult's genitalia that doesn't result in a physical injury. He hopes it will either be between a class A misdemeanor or a third-degree felony.

"This kind of conduct overlaps with attempted sexual assault. This isn't necessarily just somebody on a bus who decides to be creepy and grope somebody," Kaiser said. "We're talking about really serious, sometimes serial conduct."

He hopes the new statute will be a tool for prosecutors because proving someone committed attempted sexual assault beyond a reasonable doubt is difficult. Prosecutors have to show not only what a defendant did, but what he was thinking and what he intended to do. Juries normally cannot be convinced, Kaiser said.

"There are a lot of stereotypes out there, and people are really reluctant to believe people about their rapes when they come forward about them," Kaiser said.

Law's language shocks officials

The legislator who spearheaded the effort to license massage therapists in Texas rather than register them also was surprised to learn nothing substantial could be done for the women who reported Krebs groped them.

State Rep. Rafael Anchia read through the Texas Penal Code on Thursday and questioned why Krebs could previously be charged only with offensive contact, a class C misdemeanor.

"I'm not a criminal attorney, but I am an attorney," he said. "If they are using that high a bar for sexual assault, why wouldn't this be regular assault? Why couldn't they prosecute it under that?"

Victoria County DA Stephen Tyler said to prosecute it as an assault, there has to be an injury. The first two women didn't report being physically injured.

About 10 years ago, Anchia's constituents in West Dallas asked him to do something about a proliferation of massage parlors that were obviously a front for prostitution.

He was met with little resistance when he moved to have the Texas Department of State Health Services license and regulate massage therapists.

How local law enforcement can respond

If there's any failing of House Bill 2969, it's that local law enforcement do not realize they, too, are empowered to go into any establishment holding itself out as a place touching clients for a health benefit and ask to see its license, Anchia said.

If the business owner cannot show a license, local law enforcement can arrest the person right then and there, he said.

Practicing massage therapy without a license is a Class B misdemeanor that can be punishable with jail time.

"The reason we included local law enforcement and gave them jurisdiction to do this is because there are so few state inspectors to monitor massage-related activity," Anchia said.

The Department of State Health Services has only seven investigators covering not just the licensing and regulation of massage therapists but all professional licensing programs, department spokesman Chris Van Deusen wrote via email.

Other professions for which a license is needed in Texas include dietitians, midwives and certain therapists, according to the department's website.

At the end of the last fiscal year - Aug. 31 - Texas had 28,062 licensed massage therapists. Statewide, the department received 299 complaints last year and completed 105 complaint investigations, Van Deusen wrote. Most complaints involve an unlicensed person or facility and don't require a full investigation.

Public records show it took the department two years to resolve a complaint it received about Krebs in 2013. That's when a woman reported Krebs not only groped her but also gave her medical advice about a perceived thyroid problem.

The complaint about Krebs and a complaint about one other local massage therapist not keeping proper records were the only ones received by the state originating from a seven-county region for the past five years.

Still, others think Texas should better train its massage therapists, that one bad apple doesn't necessarily mean the bunch is spoiled or that the whole system of regulation is broken.

Ben Benjamin authored "The Ethics of Touch," a book used in massage therapy schools throughout the U.S. and Canada. He's also been asked to consult on at least 14 civil cases brought by clients of spas who claimed they were sexually assaulted by a massage therapist employed there.

What Benjamin found is that more and more spas are hiring younger, and therefore immature, massage therapists and worsening the situation by not supervising them properly.

Texas requires 500 hours of training to be a licensed massage therapist. 45 hours must be spent on professional ethics.

That's far too little, Benjamin said.

"That's the absolute bottom of the country. It should be a bit more like 650 or 750. My school had 900 hours 15 years ago," he said.

Les Sweeney, president of Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals, and James Specker, director of government and industry relations for American Massage Therapy Association, meanwhile, think no amount of training will stop "a bad guy."

"Bad guys don't follow the rules," Sweeney said. "The fact that he's sexually assaulting someone, it's not surprising he would also be practicing without a license."

Specker added: "If you don't have ethics, no amount of education is going to give you that."

Licensing quandaries

The Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards has tried for years to set up a database so massage therapists who have had their license taken away for misconduct in one state do not just set up shop in another. But states don't like to share personal information about licensees, especially with a private entity, Specker said.

He thought Texas already performed rigorous background checks of those applying to work in the profession.

For example, if people apply for a license five years after completing their massage therapy education, that would be considered a red flag. The state could look into whether the massage therapists omitted a previous employer because they left under bad circumstances, Specker said.

Current case

The woman who reported Krebs groped her March 29 now regrets what she describes as her "trusting nature."

After experiencing pain in her neck, she searched for massage therapists online and found Krebs' phone number. He sounded like a good fit, especially when she learned his business was called "In His Hands Massage."

When she arrived at Krebs' trailer, Krebs was working on a man. A woman and a child were also present, and the door was open.

Krebs' wife, Jean, handed her a form to sign that may have been some sort of acknowledgment that Krebs was no longer licensed. She didn't read it closely.

She was told that Krebs wasn't licensed, but that was only because he had chosen to retire.

"I thought, 'Well, that's not a big deal,'" said the woman, whom the Victoria Advocate is not naming because she may be a victim of a sex crime and has asked for anonymity.

Jean Krebs also told her, "Oh yeah, he knows what he's doing. He's good at what he does," the woman said.

Unlike when Krebs was working on the other family, he shut the door when he was with her, covering her eyes and using a hand massager. He told her it would emit more than 160 pulses per minute. She thought Krebs needed the device because he was older and his hands might not be strong.

Krebs admitted to the department that he uses an Oster 103 hand massager. Benjamin said massage therapists do not and should not use such a device.

The woman said Krebs massaged her genitalia over her clothes and shoved his fingers in her ears and mouth.

She said when he was massaging her neck, his hands on her neck became tighter and tighter.

"I was like, 'I can't breathe,' and he said, 'Well, we wouldn't want that now, would we?'" the woman recalled. "I'll never forget the sound of him panting. It was disgusting. I was yelling in my mind, 'Stop!' but it wasn't coming out. I was in shock."

The woman contacted the Victoria Advocate because she wanted other victims to know what happened to them is not their fault. She also wanted to get the Legislature to pass a law that would punish groping more severely.

"They need to get on the ball," she said. "This man has been getting away with this for years."

In the case of a woman from 2013, records show Krebs admitted to a Victoria police detective a day after the incident that he knew what he was doing and that it was wrong.

"Krebs again verified that this contact did not have anything to do with the massage and that he 'over stepped,'" the detective wrote in her report. "I asked Krebs what happened that day to lead him to that point, and he sighed and shrugged his shoulders."

His story changed as time wore on.

He told the Department of State Health Services the woman had a "wardrobe malfunction" in 2013 and he had meant to kiss her shoulder, not her breast.

In a letter he sent the department in February 2015 before surrendering his license, he wrote his mind had wandered during the 2013 incident.

He begged to keep his massage therapy license and wrote about how he'd voluntarily massaged veterans during Warrior's Weekend in Victoria one year.

"I feel like I have a lot to offer to the community of people in pain and strive to keep God in the center of my life, work and activities," he wrote.

A phone number for In His Hands Massage that was still listed online Friday and which worked a few weeks ago is now disconnected.

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