Why Hire Me as an Expert Witness | Dr. Ben E. Benjamin

An Expert Witness for Cases Involving Sexual Misconduct in a Massage Context

I have been a massage practitioner for over 60 years, and my CV is more than ten pages, which can be daunting. In light of that, I would like to highlight the achievements I am most proud of and establish why you might appreciate my expertise for your next case. For 20 years and 50+ cases, I have been an expert witness for cases involving sexual misconduct in a massage context. I have testified for both the plaintiff and defense and only take cases that I believe in.

 

Committed to Providing Massage Students with a Quality Education

I received my initial massage therapy license in 1965, and in 1974, I founded and directed a massage school called the Muscular Therapy Institute. I was committed to providing massage students with a quality education. At first, I taught everything myself: massage technique, treatment construction, anatomy, physiology, the assessment and treatment of injuries, ethics, professional boundaries, and communication skills. Once the school grew, I further developed this curriculum and passed it on to others to teach.

 

Passion for My Private Practice

During this time, I also received my PhD in Sports Medicine in 1979 because even while teaching, I still had a passion for my private practice. I incorporated massage therapy into almost every client session and went on to design a treatment system for relieving almost any chronic injury. I am proud to have helped hundreds of my clients recover from persistent pain.

 

Sexual Ethics Task Force

In 1986, I joined the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA), which was the primary massage organization in the United States at that time. Within the AMTA, there was another organization called The Council of Schools. This was a group of owners and directors of most massage schools nationwide. I became a member, and we worked together to improve the standards and training within the United States. I also formed and chaired a Sexual Ethics Task Force for the next five years.

In the late 1980s, I and a few of my colleagues in that task force began writing about ethics in the massage profession. I authored many articles on ethical topics, such as dual relationships, a client’s Bill of Rights, sexual abuse in health care, spa legal liability, sexual misconduct in massage therapy, massage with survivors of abuse, and so forth.

From that, I worked on developing massage laws for a city in Massachusetts, and I was invited, along with others in the field, to create a more explicit and thorough Code of Ethics for the AMTA.

 

The Ethics of Touch Book

In 1994, I was invited to speak on a panel at a conference called “It’s Never Okay,” which was about the prevention of sexual abuse and assault in healthcare. Deans of medical schools and a nursing school at prominent universities in Massachusetts were also invited. During that conference, I learned that the medical schools at Harvard University, Boston University, and Amherst University, as well as the College of Nursing at Boston College only had between 5-14 hours on the topics of sexual abuse, sexuality, ethics, boundaries, and communication, while my massage school had 150 hours. It came as a complete shock at how ahead we were in teaching about these issues, and based on people’s reactions to what I presented, I realized I needed to write a book.

I then began my work on the textbook, The Ethics of Touch, which took many years of work to complete. I invited another prominent ethics teacher, Cherie Sohnen-Moe to be my co-author. The first edition of the book was published in 2003, and subsequent editions are still used as the primary ethics book in massage schools in the United States and Canada.

 

Becoming an Expert Witness

In 2004, lawyers who had read the book, in addition to my articles online, began calling me to testify as an expert witness in cases of sexual assault in a massage context. This part of my work grew organically over the next two decades.

 

Risk Management Assessments

After doing this work for some time, I received a call in 2017, from one of the largest massage and spa franchises in the United States. They wanted me to do an audit of their entire company to see how they could improve their sexual assault prevention policies. I spent several months interviewing everyone, from the CEO to the front desk to the massage therapists in the spas. I made a series of recommendations for improvements to their existing policies, and they adopted most of them.

I continued to work to help them in this regard by training their third-party investigators in the unique aspects of how predatory massage therapists groom and then assault clients. I trained former FBI agents and detectives who specialized in sex trafficking, and they realized that experience in law enforcement wasn’t enough. Sexual predators in massage therapy have a unique set of behaviors that only someone familiar with massage therapy would understand.

I have audited a number of different companies in what I now call a Risk Management Assessment. By conducting these investigations, analyses, and recommendations, I feel I am doing the greatest good. I am proud to have had a substantial impact on making sexual assault less likely.

 

Underreported Cases and Victim Memory Patterns

Since 70 to 80% of all sexual assaults are never reported, whatever the numbers are in the massage profession, it’s a bigger problem than it appears. When sexual predators are looking for a job, they look for work that allows them to be alone and unsupervised with the person they wish to assault. Sexual predators are found in the priesthood, the Boy Scouts, politics, theater, medicine, and related healthcare professions, including massage therapy. 3 to 9% of cases are falsely reported because of some grievance, but the majority of cases most likely occur as reported.

After someone is sexually assaulted, they usually go into shock, so their recollections are often disjointed, and parts of their memory come back in pieces. Whether you work for the plaintiff or the defense, it’s an important fact to understand.

 

Hope for the Future

I grew up in the massage industry and know it well. In the last twenty years, I’ve been involved in over 50 cases. My hope is that these lawsuit experiences stimulate companies to do a better job of implementing sexual assault prevention policies. Of course, they cannot guarantee 100% prevention, but they do make a difference.

 

I have created videos specifically for lawyers to learn about the unique predatory tactics of unethical massage therapists, and I am committed to teaching through these blog posts, as well.

You can find my case list, as well as my CV and references, here.

 

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If you’re a lawyer who is currently involved in a sexual assault case and needs an expert witness with a massage or spa background, schedule a conversation with Dr. Benjamin.

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Ben E. Benjamin holds a Ph.D. in Sports Medicine and has been an expert witness in cases of sexual assault in a massage/spa setting since 2004, advising lawyers, testifying in depositions and trials, and writing reports. His expertise extends beyond massage therapy and ethical behavior. He also advises spas, both large and small, on the creation of comprehensive sexual assault prevention strategies that ensure safe and ethical practices in the industry.