A Bacchus Marsh masseur who turned sexual predator and assaulted numerous female clients aged from 16 to their 60s has been denounced as a manipulative exploiter of vulnerable women.
A County Court judge said last week that Ronald Van Dorp’s 24 victims included two women who had had breast cancer, another who had suffered a miscarriage and one who had experienced the death of a family member.
Judge Felicity Hampel said that, for many, a massage was a “treat, a precious bit of time or opportunity to relax and indulge themselves” but these women had fallen victim to Van Dorp’s “predatory, exploitative behaviour”.
Judge Hampel told Van Dorp, 62, he had sexually assaulted the women at the massage business he ran from his home.
A jury earlier found him guilty of 26 charges of indecent assault against 15 women and acquitted him of nine identical charges.
Van Dorp, married with two adult children, told the court there was no genital contact and if there had been it was inadvertent.
After the verdicts, the prosecution discontinued some charges and Van Dorp then pleaded guilty to offences against another seven women and to charges of digital rape against two others.
Judge Hampel jailed him on all charges to a maximum term of eight years and four months, with a minimum of five years and 10 months.
In her sentencing remarks, Judge Hampel noted that 15 of the women were cross-examined at a committal hearing and again at trial so their credibility and reliability were challenged.
But after the verdicts, Van Dorp told a clinical psychologist some offending started “by accident” and it was “like a dare to see if they would move their hand and what they were thinking. It was like they didn’t care”.
Given that Van Dorp told the psychologist that in the trial he saw the “pain and suffering most of the victims had been through” and did not want to make it more difficult for the remaining victims, Judge Hampel felt there was a “breathtaking hypocrisy about this”.
She also felt it was difficult to avoid the conclusion he was prepared to take a “gamble” on the women not being believed, but having lost he sought to minimise his “losses” by pleading guilty to the remaining charges.
People who wrote “impressive” character references for him had all expressed surprise at the offending, while Judge Hampel regarded his public persona “at odds with the sexual predator you were with your victims”.
She said his wife had been “remarkably loyal” to him “in the face of what must be a terrible betrayal” and that she and their children continued to support him.
– The Age
