A 75-year-old Clyde North masseuse has been jailed for raping and sexually assaulting a customer in his home studio.
Michael Stelios Sergides, trading as ‘Mobile Just Massage’, had been messaged by the woman in response to a Gumtree ad on 26 June 2018.
Seeking help for soreness and fatigue, she asked for a 60-minute deep tissue massage.
Sergides told her he couldn’t go to her home. She needed to meet at his address because he had car troubles.
During the session, he digitally raped and sexually assaulted the client on the massage table for about 20 minutes, Victorian County Court judge Martine Marich said in sentencing on 10 August.
It was an “opportunistic” and “grave example” of offending.
“You took advantage of her vulnerability in an entitled way which has caused deep and enduring trauma to her.”
There was no prior consent. Not till after the assaults did he ask if he could massage her intimate parts.
When she said no, he replied: “I always ask”.
He denied this conversation to police.
The client declined a shower and a glass of water at the studio and left as fast as she could.
She rang her friend to say “we basically just paid for me to be molested” and reported the incident to her mother and to police.
She stated she felt frozen, worthless and empty during the assault.
Afterwards, she felt lost, out of control and isolated from friends and relatives.
“Nothing brought me joy anymore,” she wrote in her victim impact statement.
She self-harmed, paused eating, couldn’t bear to leave the house. The thought of seeing Sergides again “terrified me”.
“He took more than a small piece of me. For a moment he took away my reason for getting up each day, my only reason to live.”
She worked hard to heal, sought help to become strong again and to reclaim her life, she stated.
“I decided he wouldn’t win any more.”
Sergides pleaded not guilty to the charges in a judge-only trial.
Judge Marich said she found inconsistencies in Sergides’ evidence, but accepted the complainant’s account beyond reasonable doubt.
The victim’s friend had later rang Sergides who told her the contact was a “regular part” of his service, but thought he’d asked her consent.
In a police interview, he denied the allegations, saying he would not massage lower than the stomach. Below that was a “no no”, he said.
Sergides, a former Narre Warren-based real estate agent, received glowing references from an employer, a developer, relatives and family.
He had taught at Knox Gymnastics in 1979 and was owner and head coach at Grips Gymnastics Club in Dandenong from 1983-2004.
Judge Marich noted Sergides’ lack of criminal history, prior “good character”, the trial’s delay, his age and ill health and his unlikeliness to reoffend.
Sergides was jailed up to five years and nine months. He will be eligible for parole after three-and-a-half years.
His term includes 55 days already served in pre-sentence remand.
