Joshua Salazar

A Douglas County judge on Monday ordered a 32-year-old Lawrence massage parlor worker to stand trial on one count of rape after a 19-year-old university athlete testified that he sexually assaulted her during a massage last spring.

The woman testified that she went to Lawrence Thai Massage, 951 E. 23rd St., on the evening of April 29 to get a deep-tissue massage after a sports practice to relieve soreness. She arrived near closing time, when she said the only people at the business were the defendant, Joshua Salazar, and an older woman who left shortly after she arrived.

The woman said she had gotten massages at the establishment eight to 10 times before, including once by Salazar, with nothing inappropriate happening.

On this occasion, though, while alone with Salazar in the building, she was sexually assaulted, she told Judge Stacey Donovan at Salazar’s preliminary hearing.

The woman said the hourlong massage started off appropriately but that toward the end, when she had flipped onto her back for routine neck and shoulder work, Salazar quickly lowered the sheet and grabbed her breasts.

“I was shocked,” she said.

Deputy District Attorney David Melton asked what was going through her mind when Salazar did that. She responded that she was mentally running through her options, noting that she was undressed and vulnerable and didn’t know what would happen if she tried to get up and grab her clothes across the room. She said she thought about hitting him, “but that probably wouldn’t turn out well,” she feared, especially considering that they were alone in the building at night. She said she decided that she would call the police as soon as she felt safe to leave. Meanwhile, she lay there “hoping it wouldn’t get worse.”

But it did get worse, she said, when he pulled the sheet down to her legs and began penetrating her vagina with his fingers.

“What if he gets on top of me?” she wondered, and becomes physically violent? “Is he going to start hitting me? To strangle me?”

“I was frozen in fear and shock,” she said.

Afterward, Salazar, who she said did not speak at all during the assault, left the room like it had been a “normal massage” and went to the front counter where customers would normally pay.

The woman quickly got dressed and left, telling him on the way out, “I’m not going to pay for that.”

Outside in her car, she locked the doors and called the police to report the incident. She said it took 10 to 15 minutes for the police to arrive, and in the meantime she sat there crying and could see Salazar locking up the massage parlor and pacing around outside. He knocked on her car window, she said, but she ignored him.

Cpl. Skyler Richardson, of the Lawrence Police Department, was the only other witness to testify at the preliminary hearing Monday. He said that when he arrived at the scene he asked Salazar for his name and license, neither of which Salazar would provide. Richardson said he asked Salazar if he worked at the massage parlor, and Salazar responded “not really.”

The City of Lawrence requires massage therapists to be licensed.

A spokesperson for the city told the Journal-World that it has no record of Salazar ever having applied for a Bodywork Practitioner License. It’s not clear how Salazar was able to work at the massage parlor, which remained open as of Monday.

When Richardson searched Salazar after arresting him, he found car keys, which he matched to a vehicle in the parking lot. He ran the license plate and discovered that the car was registered to a Joshua Salazar.

Judge Donovan, who had completely sealed the affidavit for Salazar’s arrest, found that probable cause existed to bind him over for trial, which she scheduled for Feb. 10.

Salazar is being held in the Douglas County Jail on a bond of $250,000 cash or surety.

He is the second male massage therapist to be charged with a sex crime this year in Douglas County. As the Journal-World reported, Aaron Borger, who worked at Om Grown Yoga & Wellness Collective in downtown Baldwin City has been charged with multiple sex crimes. In that case, Senior Judge Nancy Parrish released a 16-page arrest affidavit with only slight redactions.