A retired Canadian Forces member who worked as a therapist offering alternative health treatments including his own “orgasm technique” has been found guilty of sexually molesting five of his patients.
Michael Norris, 63, was an unlicensed therapist who offered a “cranio-sacral” therapy that was supposed to help his female victims with head and neck pain, but instead asked the women to take off their clothes before touching them sexually, a judge found Monday.
Four of the assaults occurred in Norris’s Golden Lake home; the fifth was committed in the home of one of the women.
The assaults occurred over a five-year period beginning in 2008.
Three of the assaults, including one in which Norris exposed himself to one of the victims and asked for oral sex before other inappropriate contact, occurred after Ontario Provincial Police warned him that they had received complaints about his conduct. Police didn’t arrest him at the time because the women didn’t want to press charges or testify.
On Monday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Colin McKinnon said he believed all five of the women’s accounts of their encounters with Norris, which typically involved him asking them to strip down to their underwear before he would touch their breasts or genitals.
Court heard that in one session, Norris said “woo” when he touched one of the woman’s breasts and made remarks about how he liked women who wore g-string underwear. In another case, he told a woman “there was nothing he could not cure” after she complained about pain in her ankles. He then told her to take off her pants and underwear, which the woman refused to do.
McKinnon said some of Norris’s explanations for what happened, including that one of the women tried to seduce him, were “peculiar” and “preposterous.” McKinnon said he didn’t believe Norris’s denials that anything untoward happened with the women.
McKinnon added that Norris knew he was “skirting danger” after being warned by the OPP and by a registered massage therapist about what constituted inappropriate conduct.
Norris was a man of “remarkable conceit,” the judge found.
“Mr. Norris stated that he was not bound by the code of ethics … because he was not registered,” said McKinnon. “I take from that evidence that Mr. Norris believed he could do whatever he wished.
“I got the sense that Mr. Norris believed himself to be above the law, that perhaps the special gifts he believed he possessed made him a trailblazer in new therapies.”
Several of Norris’s victims were in court Monday to hear the verdict.
“He was preying on disabled people, people who are not well who are going to him for pain relief,” said Norris’s third victim, who suffered from chronic pain as a result of arthritis. “I knew this man had to be stopped.”
The 59-year-old grandmother, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, said the impact of the sexual assault on her has been tremendous.
“I went to therapy. I needed counselling,” said the woman, adding she was left feeling shame and guilt and even contemplated suicide. “It has totally changed me, but it is not going to stop me. It really changes you.”
Court heard that Norris had joined the Canadian Forces in 1971 and was member of the Royal Canadian Regiment and served in Bosnia. He ended his military career serving at Garrison Petawawa and retired at age 60 before setting up his therapy practice in his home.
Norris was injured in Bosnia and received “cranio alternative therapy” and it worked, so began studying it himself, court heard. He also studied lymph drainage therapy and visceral manipulation therapy. Lymph drainage therapy can involve placing hands near the breasts while visceral manipulation techniques can involve touching near the genitals, court heard.
The trial heard that Norris had also developed his own “neurotransmitter therapy” or “orgasm technique” that involved stroking his fingers. Norris claimed it could result in orgasms.
The prosecution called an expert witness who performed alternative therapeutic treatments who testified that none of the procedures required patients to remove their clothes. She also testified the techniques didn’t require the practitioner to touch the breasts or genitals, although some required touching close to them.
McKinnon expressed amazement an unlicensed therapist can perform the procedures Norris did.
“The fact that such highly intimate procedures can be performed by unlicensed and uninsured individuals should cause citizens of this country to have serious concern,” said McKinnon.
Norris has been ordered to undergo a sexual behaviour assessment before being sentenced.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/unlicensed-therapist-guilty-of-sexual-molesting-patients
