A woman from Buckinghamshire was sexually assaulted by a masseur who used his business as a cover to touch clients intimately, a court has heard.

Marcelo Oliveira, 45, went on trial for 22 counts of sexual assault and six other serious sexual offences between March 2019 and July 2021 at Birmingham Crown Court on Tuesday, September 3.

The court heard that the St Albans-based businessman, who runs MO Massage, assaulted a woman from Buckinghamshire after offering to help her recover from surgical swelling after a ‘Brazilian butt lift’ in 2018.

The woman, who was the first of Oliveira’s alleged victims, said she was given full body massages at her home in Bucks and the 45-year-old’s Knightsbridge clinic after reaching out on Instagram.

She said she would strip naked for the sessions, which cost £65 per hour, and was given what Oliveira described as “lymphatic draining massages” – which prosecutor Antoine Muller said was “a cover to sexually assault and penetrate women”.

He would pull down women’s knickers and touch their breasts and vaginas while pressing his “intimate parts” against their bodies, jurors were told.

The first victim said: “(Oliveira) said I had a lot of swelling on my pubic bone and that he would need to massage that to reduce the swelling.

“That happened every session. He would use slow movements. I just thought it was all part of the process.”

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She said the 45-year-old had on one occasion, touched an intimate part of her body without warning – and would often hold her hand and cover her eyes during the sessions.

“He would say I had a beautiful body, (that) it was the best body he had ever seen. He would ask about my boyfriend who was sometimes in the next room (and) say I did not need a man.”

She said that because of his mannerisms and the way he spoke, she thought he might be gay, but he told her he was married and had children.

When quizzed, Oliveira said the massages helped to move fluids around the body for a cosmetic effect and that he hadn’t touched the women in a sexual way.

The businessman, who describes himself as an aesthetic technician and has offices in Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham and London, denies all the charges against him, and a trial is ongoing.