Caretaker accused of sex crime
Disabled woman’s ‘life coach’ forced her to have sex with him multiple times, police say
The owner of a company contracted by a state agency to provide services to people with disabilities is accused of forcing one of his patients to have sex with him multiple times.
Michael Bellamy, 56, is charged with sexual battery of a victim over 12 years of age with special conditions. He is scheduled for a first-appearance court hearing Thursday and is currently in the BrowardMain Jail.
According to a Plantation police report, a woman made the allegations against Bellamy in June 2014. The 31-year-old woman, who has a mental disability, told police that Bellamy had begun forcing her to have sex with him two to three months prior.
Bellamy, the owner of Lauderhill-based Opulent Living, was the woman’s “life coach” and assisted her with daily activities such as paying bills, grocery shopping and taking her two young children to doctors’ appointments.
On one occasion when the woman was worried about buying groceries, Bellamy told her he would help if she performed oral sex on him, police said. The woman told investigators she felt intimidated so she complied.
According to the report, the woman said she feared for her safety and Bellamy told her that people who “complain about him or his company are never seen again.”
Investigators said Bellamy had sex with the woman in her Plantation apartment about four times. She told police she kept the used condoms as evidence because she planned to eventually report Bellamy. She said she wanted to make sure detectives believed her, as she had been abused in foster care, the report said.
In June 2014, months after the sexual abuse started, the woman texted Bellamy and told him she no longer wanted to see him. That prompted him to show up at her apartment, where he forced her to have sex with him, the report said. Thewoman used her crying child in another room as an excuse to get away fromhim, it said.
Bellamy left the used condom behind and police took it as evidence, along with the other condoms Bellamy had worn during sex with the woman, according to the report.
More than a year later, in September 2015, crime lab results showed the DNA on the condomswas Bellamy’s, police said. He was arrested Tuesday on the sexual battery charge.
The woman’s attorney, Adam Horowitz, learned of Bellamy’s arrest through a Sun Sentinel reporter Wednesday. A confidential settlement ina civil lawsuitwas reached in November between his client and Bellamy and his company, court records show.
“Michael Bellamywas a life coach for the mentally disabled. These are Broward County’s most vulnerable people,” Horowitz said. “We are pleased with his arrest because putting him behind barsmakes our community safer.”
The day after the woman called police about Bellamy in June 2014, she also filed a complaint with Florida’s Agency for Persons with Disabilities, according to public records obtained by her attorney.
The agency looked into the case; however, Bellamy and Opulent Living continued to work with the state through his arrest. Thestate began contracting Bellamy’scompany in 2005.
“If there’s just an allegation and there’s no arrest, then obviously in America people are innocent until provenguilty,” saidMelanie Mowry Etters, communications director for the state’s Agency for Persons with Disabilities. “If there was no arrest, there was nothing, no verified abuse findings or anything thatwould give us some ammunition, we couldn’t terminate.”
Now Bellamy has been charged, thecontract between the state and hiscompanyhas been ended, Etters said. Etters said there had been no prior complaints against Bellamy’s company. Bellamy’s civil attorney did not reply to a message left at his office.