AN OSTEOPATH asked schoolboys and adult male patients to get naked before sexually touching them during treatment, a court heard.
Mark Piraino has gone on trial accused of unnecessarily removing patients' underwear, and touching their genitals, as he examined and massaged them.
Guildford Crown Court heard how he performed a sexual act on a 13-year-old boy on his couch, telling him he needed to check his prostate muscles.
The 40-year-old, of Ivydene Close, Redhill, is charged with sexually assaulting two schoolboys in his treatment room at The Westway Clinic, formerly in Linkfield Corner, now in Hatchlands Road, Redhill.
Three previous adult patients learned about his suspension from practice in the wake of the allegations, and came forward to claim they too had been indecently assaulted.
None of the alleged victims can be named for legal reasons.
Prosecuting, Samantha Cohen said it was not normal procedure to ask patients to remove their underwear, or to deliberately touch their genitals.
"In the case of each complaint, the crown say Mr Piraino used the cover of osteopathic treatment to take the opportunity to touch each of those complainants in a deliberate and sexual way," she said.
Following his arrest, Piraino, who is married with two daughters, told police who seized his computers, that he used both gay and heterosexual pornography on the internet to pleasure himself.
"Mr Piraino reiterated these sites are adult sites," Miss Cohen said.
"He said he was interested in people in their 20s and 30s. He said he had accessed this pornography material in the office at work in between seeing clients, as well as in the evenings."
The court heard from one boy, who was 13 at the time of the alleged assault, and believed he was treated about ten times by the defendant for a knee complaint.
In video evidence recorded after he reported the crime in 2011, which was played to the jury, he said: "By the second or third session he was asking me to remove my boxers for the session."
He said Piraino told him not to be embarrassed if he became aroused during massages on his thighs and buttocks, which he did.
"On the last session I went to, he said 'do you know what masturbation is?'" said the boy, now 16.
"I said 'not really'.
"He explained fully what it was and then he said 'I will have to do that to you, because in order for your prostate muscles to be tense, and for me to feel how tight they are, [you] have to be erect'.
Defending, Selva Ramasamy suggested his client never removed the boy's underwear completely, and had not performed a sexual act on him.
Piraino denies three counts of sexual activity with a child in 2009, two counts of sexual activity with a different child, aged 15, in 2010, and six counts of indecent assault, against three adult patients, between 1998 and 2001.
The trial continues.
