A massage therapist who was found guilty of indecently assaulting a client has been sentenced to five years in prison.
Indian national Rahul Manhukumar, who worked as a masseur, had been found guilty of indecent assault by Magistrate Philippa McFarlane in the Summary Court, and appeared in the Grand Court on Monday morning for sentencing.
Manhukumar faced between six and nine years in prison according to sentencing guidelines. He was given a five-year custodial sentence by Justice Cheryll Richards, who said that she had taken six years as a starting point but was reducing his sentence by a year due to mitigating factors, including having no previous convictions and having had to wait a year for the legal process to conclude.
Richards also handed down a sexual harm prevention order to last for five years after his release from prison, forbidding, among other conditions, Manhukumar to work as a massage therapist, which would apply if he remained in Cayman after his release.
However, his attorney, John Furniss, told the court that his client intended to apply to serve his term in India.
Manhukumar, 28, has protested his innocence throughout but was found guilty of the assault which occurred in November last year. The court heard that the victim, a doctor who was visiting the Cayman Islands as part of a work conference, was assaulted by Manhukumar during a treatment when she was lying down covered in a towel and wearing an eye mask.
When she stopped the treatment after the assault and left the room, Manhukumar reportedly followed her out of the room and told her not to report the issue. She immediately informed hotel staff and the police, and Manhukumar was arrested and later charged with the offence.
‘A violation’
In a victim impact statement, the woman said that recalling the incident was “still very upsetting and still very distressing” and has made her feel vulnerable. She described the attack as “a violation” and said it had impacted her travelling, and that she had had to cancel a trip back to the Cayman Islands.
Appearing by video-link from custody, Manhukumar continued to plead his innocence, saying that he had worked as a massage therapist for six years before coming to the Cayman Islands and had given more than a thousand massages to several hundred clients and never received a single complaint.
He told the court that he had come to Cayman to build a better future for his family, sending money home for medical and school expenses, and that his father and grandfather had also worked in the same profession, calling it “my family legacy”.
The court heard that Manhukumar had no previous convictions either here or in his native India and had a low risk of re-offending, but in passing down the sentence, Richards said that the offence was “an egregious breach of trust” and that the touching “was not consensual or fleeting”.
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