‘Groping’ spa boss: I thought massage customer was gay
She claims he lay ‘provocatively’ while awaiting masseur
I felt offended, quite embarrassed, it was awful, really awkward KERRY BROCKLEBANK SPA OWNER ACCUSED OF ASSAULT
A HEALTH spa owner accused of sexually assaulting a client texted his masseur after the alleged incident saying: “Sorry did I interrupt gay time?” a court has heard.
Kerry Brocklebank, 43, claimed she was trying to put the customer “at ease” after walking in to find him without his towel on as he waited for his male therapist.
She told the jury he was lying on the massage table with no towel on in “the wrong position the wrong way around”.
She told police who quizzed her she had found him in a “provocative position” and thought she may have interrupted something “inappropriate”, a court heard yesterday.
She told the court: “I felt embarrassed for him. I tried to put him at ease. I said, ‘I’ll start massaging your calves until he gets here’.
“He said, ‘No. I’m here to see Henry, not you’. I thought it was strange turning down free time.
“I was offended, I felt quite embarrassed, it was just awful, really awkward. I tried to make the situation better and it was getting worse by the moment.”
Brocklebank said she wanted to avoid getting sports oil on her towels, so rubbed it on to his calf.
THIGHS
She denied she rubbed the man’s lower back, thighs, shoulders or pants but only his calf muscles, which she described as “not an erogenous sexual zone”.
She added: “Absolutely nothing sexual about it at all. The minute he said ‘no’ I stopped and left.”
The court heard masseur Henry Godfree, 21, found her in the room and asked: “What are you doing in here?” Brocklebank told the jury: “[I said] ‘He doesn’t want me, he wants you’ and I left.”
Later she allegedly wrote in a message to Henry: “Sorry did I interrupt your gay time?”
She was allegedly drunk and wearing a bikini when she entered the room. But she told the jury she was wearing a swimsuit after a hot-tub session with a friend and had been drinking champagne.
She said she was not attracted to the man. She said: “[My type is] stronger... bigger men, more traditional type men, proper men.”
Brocklebank, who runs Huntingdon Spa and UK Sports Massage in Cambridgeshire, denies sexual assault, battery and perverting justice by sending “offensive and threatening” messages to Mr Godfree, including one reading: “If this goes to court I will ruin the pair of you.”
The trial continues at Cambridge crown court. louie.smith@mirror.co.uk