MANDEL: Caught with his pants down, massage therapist blames faulty zipper

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When she needed help for her lower back pain, the nursing home worker was referred to Etobicoke registered massage therapist Dylan Larios-Bonilla.

The first appointment was uneventful. It was the second, in February 2023, that sent her screaming from the room and straight to a Toronto Police station.

Last week, Ontario Court Justice Cidalia Faria found Larios-Bonilla, 32, guilty of sexual assault.

The woman, who can’t be identified, testified that after the RMT asked her to undress down to her underwear, he began working on parts of her body that she told him weren’t in pain. She didn’t speak up, thinking different massage therapists have their own methods.

But then she became alarmed when he moved on to “playing with her butt” and “like, shaking it, like how someone who is playing like a ball.”

Licensed for two years at this point, Larios-Bonilla testified that he’d asked permission to work on the woman’s glutes, and she’d said, “yeah” — though he admitted he hadn’t obtained the prior written consent that was required for such a sensitive region. He thought he would get written consent “later,” he said.

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While he told her to “shush,” she said she got dressed and then angrily confronted him, demanding if what he’d just done “was part of the job” and if he was recording her. Out in the hall, she repeated her accusations to the clinic staff and left to report him to police.

Ontario Court Justice Cidalia Faria found her account was reliable and credible — not so much the RMT’s.

In his defence, he testified that he’d lost a lot of weight but was still wearing pants that were two sizes too big. They “kept falling down” so he had to “keep pulling them up,” he explained.

While on her right side, he said he undid his belt to make it tighter when the client “turned around and just started yelling and screaming” and “losing her mind.”

He testified his zipper was down because it was “not stable.”

While the woman was screaming, he told her it was a “big misunderstanding” and he was “not doing anything.” In shock, he said he told her to be quiet and tried to explain to a physiotherapist in the hallway what was happening.

The judge found him hard to believe.

“Mr. Larios-Bonilla’s explanation as to why his belt was undone and his zipper was down, was not credible,” she wrote.

“He testified he had to dress in a ‘presentable manner’ but selected khakis he knew to be two sizes too large with an ‘unstable zipper’ that was always down at least ‘an inch.’

“Though he felt uncomfortable because his pants were ‘falling down,’ he also chose to put both the lotion bottle and the oil bottle in his pockets, which weighted him down further.”

And then there was the security video from the hallway of the clinic that would prove his final undoing.

“(It) shows his pants not to be bunched or cinched tight by his belt for being too large on him. They are appropriately fitted around his waist and not two sizes too large,” Faria concluded.

“I find Mr. Larios-Bonilla did unzip his zipper, he did undo his belt, and he did put his hand on his penis during, or after he massaged (her) buttocks to constitute circumstances that demonstrate his massaging her buttocks to be for a sexual purpose.”

A sentencing date is scheduled to be set in November.

mmandel@postmedia.com