March 11-17, 2004

city beat

Royal Flushed

Judgment day: Before sentencing, Truong Duong Ton (right) said he didn't fear going to jail. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

With claims of imperial roots, a masseur is sentenced for assault.

by Helen i-lin Hwang

At the Gayborhood spa Reset on Camac, Truong Duong Ton’s massage room was more than unusual. The same could be said about the 33-year-old masseur, who claims he’s related to the last Vietnamese king, Emperor Bao Dai, who officially abdicated in 1945.

As opposed to the standard massage table, Ton used a floor mattress. An enormous fish tank, apparently one of his hallmark decorations, lined one wall of the dark room that was practically lit only by the tank's fluorescent light. For company, he cared for the dazzling orange fish and birds he kept on the premises.

"He lent a different facet to the facility," says spa owner Lorenzo Alston.

I had met Ton, who also goes by the name Tony, last year because he'd given me a chair massage, fully clothed and in public view, in the adjoining 12th Street Gym lobby. He even showed me his special room, but there was just something that persuaded me not to book a private massage. It turns out there was good reason for concern.

Last month, Ton was sentenced to one to four years in state prison for assaulting a female client.

The young woman, who'd just finished last year's Broad Street Run, lay half-clad when Ton decided to try out what he says was a "friendly" massage. Ton admits he kissed her and she froze. Then he tried to take her underwear off. At that point, according to an arrest affidavit, the woman snapped out of her daze and said "they were finished."

Ton stopped and apologized, but then asked where she lived and whether she had a boyfriend.

That same day, the victim called the police, who eventually built a case against Ton that resulted in his November conviction for attempted sexual assault and indecent assault.

Alston said he was shocked at the details of the assault, which he first heard at the sentencing. They left him worried that his company's reputation would be marred.

This wasn't the first time a Philadelphia-area masseur found himself facing such charges. In October, a massage therapist pleaded no contest to one count of aggravated indecent assault and six counts of indecent assault against three female clients at Toppers Spa in Newtown. He was sentenced to house arrest, probation and community service.

Pennsylvania massage therapists aren't required to be licensed or certified, though other states do have various requisites, according to the American Massage Therapy Association.

The first time I saw Ton since the chair massage was the day before his Feb. 27 sentencing. His composure was eerily placid. He'd promised to deliver the "red book" written in Vietnamese that traced his royal family tree to prove his royal lineage, but he never produced it, claiming his parents forgot to bring it from Syracuse when they traveled here for the sentencing.

This story started as an examination of whether Ton truly had royal lineage, but it took countless unusual turns.

Saying he now has no contact with his estranged wife and three children who still live in Philadelphia, and facing substantial jail time, Ton mused about returning to Vietnam, where he said his brother lives in a 400-year-old ancestral home in Hue. (Ton says he used to pray at the temples with nearly 100 other members of the once-noble family.) Ton also says people have told him he looks like a famous majesty, and he offers a photograph as proof that he hails from regal bloodlines. (During his last trip to his homeland, between the day of the assault and the trial, Ton had pictures taken of himself dressed in an emperor's yellow robe and crowned with an ornate arched hat decked with dragons like the rooftop of the Thai Hoa Palace in front of Hue's Forbidden Purple City. )

So is this masseur royalty or just a low-grade sex offender with delusions of grandeur?

The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, D.C., says the government in Hanoi has no record of royal descendants, and Loi Ma, executive director of the Vietnamese United National Association of Greater Philadelphia, says Ton attended some events at the nonprofit but never openly claimed royal lineage.

As for the legal issues, Ton said before his sentencing that he'd accept "whatever" the victim told the judge. After Judge Thomas Dempsey announced his sentence, Ton attempted to wear both his leather jacket and trench coat out of the courtroom, as if readying himself for a pleasure trip instead of a ride to prison.

But while his newly hired attorney plans an appeal, city officials say Ton's case finally has reached a fair conclusion.

The District Attorney's Office, spokesperson Cathie Abookire says, is "pleased for the victim that justice was served."

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