The former patient of chiropractor Ruben Adam Manz agreed that, before she spoke with police, she wasn’t sure if the way Manz touched her was a crime.
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A 50-year-old woman told court Wednesday that she knows a false accusation can ruin someone’s life.
The previous day, under questions from Crown prosecutor Jackie Lane, she testified that we live in a world where sexual assaults occur, but so too do false accusations.
“I wanted to make sure I was not falsely accusing someone,” she said of her considerations in coming forward with her own story about Ruben Adam Manz after hearing he’d been charged in relation to a separate incident.
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The woman made her statements from a witness stand in Regina’s Court of King’s Bench, where she testified in Manz’s ongoing trial.
The chiropractor stands charged with sexually assaulting the aforementioned witness and six other complainants, all of whom are said to be his former patients. None can be identified due to a standard publication ban protecting their identities.
The charges include dates spanning from 2010 to 2020.
Manz pleaded not guilty to all seven counts when his trial began Monday.
The witness whose testimony continued Wednesday was the second complainant to be called by the Crown.
Under questions from the prosecutor, she said that during the course of treatment, Manz conducted a stretch of her neck that involved his hand initially being placed on her shoulder. However, she said at each appointment his hand would dip lower on her body until one instance in which she felt her breast beginning to lift out of her bra. She said she felt his touch near her nipple and testified she’d not given him permission to touch her breast.
This account resembled that of the first complainant, who testified that Manz touched her breast in a similar circumstance.
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The second complainant told Lane the chiropractor let go after she told him her breast was moving, and he may have apologized. She recalled him saying something like “see you next time” but the woman said she did not return to Manz, as the incident made her uncomfortable.
It also affected her trust, she said, noting that she’d second-guessed herself. She testified that if she’d heard the incident had happened to someone else, she would’ve considered it inappropriate right away.
Through her testimony, it was unclear what year the incident took place. She at one point said she believed her last appointment with Manz would’ve been sometime between 2015 and 2019. She did not contact police until 2021, after she’d heard Manz had been charged.
The woman testified that she called police to find out whether the charges against Manz were “along the same lines” as what occurred with her.
She didn’t make a full statement to police until after she’d had a conversation with her current chiropractor about the “technique” Manz used on her, she said.
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Under cross-examination, she agreed with defence lawyer Blaine Beaven that up until 2021 when she contacted police, she wasn’t sure that what had happened to her was a crime.
“That also doesn’t mean it wasn’t,” she added.
The woman agreed with the defence lawyer that she couldn’t see the chiropractor’s hand during the stretch, but she said she could feel it.
The defence lawyer suggested to the witness that she wasn’t sure if what she’d felt was the chiropractor’s hand on her breast or her breast moving in her bra.
“What exactly would it have been, sir? she responded. “His head? A book?”
The defence lawyer put it to her that she’d told police she wasn’t sure if it was the movement of her breast within her bra that made it feel as if his fingers were there.
“On the nipple, yes,” she replied.
Chiropractic treatments sometimes need to be progressive and the stretch leading to the allegation was always the last in a series of treatments Manz would provide each session, the witness agreed.
The trial is scheduled to continue Thursday.
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