PHILIPSBURG--The Court of First Instance has fully acquitted a man accused of groping two women who came separately to his health store in Cole Bay for a wellness check between August 2023 and April 2024.
F.R.C. (64) stood trial on Thursday charged with two counts of sexual assault for allegedly touching the women on their breasts and buttocks.
Both women, who were between 26 and 31 years old at the time, had come to the store run by C. and his wife for a wellness check on a Zyto Hand Cradle machine.
C. told the court on Thursday that he operated the device in an open upstairs room, where the machine would send electrical signals into a client’s palm and later issue a report diagnosing a health problem. The report would also issue advice on changing one’s diet or lifestyle, usually with homeopathic products like those sold in the store.
This device is a product of American company Zyto Technologies, Inc., which last year received a letter threatening legal action from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to the FDA, the device is being marketed illegally, as it was never approved to diagnose health issues or recommend treatments and can only be used to measure how well skin responds to electrical pulses.
It was during these examinations that the women claim C. had unexpectedly grabbed their private parts. One woman, who had been alone with C. at the time, claimed that he had asked if she currently had a sex partner and whether she needed a “sugar daddy”.
“I don’t have sugar daddy money,” C. told the court on Thursday, explaining that he is now collecting pension and does not earn a salary from the store that he opened in 2022.
He also completely denied having touched either of the women inappropriately.
“I’m surprised by these charges,” C. told the court. “I have no sexual intentions when I do my job. That’s not on my mind.”
C. did admit to touching the women as part of the routine examination, saying that he checked one woman’s lower back after the report indicated a problem with her coccyx bone, while he claimed to have only touched the other’s shoulder to illustrate better sitting posture.
The prosecutor questioned why C. had to examine them at all, considering that he had no prior experience in the medical field and with the report having already indicated supposed issues.
C., who has a background in banking, entertainment and media, told the court that he was taught examination techniques during a three-month online course that certified him to use the device. But the prosecutor doubted that this was enough of a qualification, pointing out that physical therapists must do at least seven years of training to become certified.
The prosecutor considered the charges proven and demanded 180 hours of community service and a six-month conditional prison sentence.
Although each woman’s statement does not meet the burden of proof needed for a conviction on its own, as there is no other supporting evidence besides their testimony, the prosecutor tried to use the legal doctrine of “linking evidence” to make his case. He argued that one woman’s statement can be used as supporting evidence in the other’s because C. had a specific and distinctive pattern.
According to the prosecutor, both women reported that the sexual assault took place in the upstairs examining room and only after they had been scanned. Both women also testified that C. had asked them to stand up, and later asked for a hug and tried to kiss them.
“They describe almost the same thing, the same modus operandi,” the prosecutor said, noting that the women did not know each other and that they had filed their respective police complaints roughly eight months apart. “There is no reason to doubt what they are saying is not true.”
Defence lawyer Safira Ibrahim pleaded for her client’s full acquittal, disagreeing with the prosecutor that the two statements supported each other.
Ibrahim disputed one woman’s reliability by pointing out that she had been examined with two family members in the room, neither of whom told police that they saw anything strange.
Ibrahim also read an excerpt of this woman’s interview with the police, where she said she was dealing with a lot of stress at the time and was “not in all my senses.”
The judge sided with Ibrahim in his verdict, saying he too had doubts after considering that the two family members had not witnessed anything during the “15-minute examination.”
Although the women’s testimonies were similar, the judge ruled that there were still enough differences to exclude them from being used as linking evidence. For example, one woman had testified that C. had asked invasion questions about her sexual partners and willingness to have a “sugar daddy”, while the other – the one with her family in the room – had not.
The Prosecutor’s Office has two weeks to appeal Thursday’s full acquittal. If it does file an appeal, then C.’s case will be retried at the Joint Court of Justice before a panel of three judges.
