Jail for sex assault during massages
A man who sexually assaulted a girl and two women during what he claimed were "therapeutic massages" has been jailed for four years and nine months.
Robert Charles Higgins, 64, was sentenced in the District Court today after a jury found him guilty of 13 sex offences going back to 1991.
Higgins assaulted a girl aged between 14-15 shortly after she moved to Bunbury with her family in 1991.
He told the girl's mother he had skills as a spinal pain therapist and offered to give her daughter a massage on the floor of a home.
After the girl's mother left, Higgins asked the only other adult in the house to go to a shop to buy baby oil then assaulted the victim.
In 1994, Higgins started massaging a mother of two in her home after telling her he had chiropractic abilities and was able to get people in wheelchairs to walk again.
He massaged the woman's chest, groin and thighs a number of times, including once on her couch when she was holding her child.
The woman had never had a full body massage before and did not realise his actions were not part of a normal therapeutic massage until he put her foot on his genitals.
Higgins assaulted a third woman in May 1997, again while he was giving her a massage.
Judge John Staude said Higgins simply denied any of the offending had occurred.
"On no occasion have you ever admitted a sex offence," he said.
Higgins was jailed for five years 1989 after he was found guilty of deprivation of liberty and sexually penetrating a 17-year-old without consent.
He was on parole when he assaulted the girl in the Bunbury home.
Higgins twice fled to the Eastern States and failed to appear in court after he was charged.
His sentenced was backdated to January last year and he was not made eligible for parole.
