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Massage therapist accused of sexual misconduct in BC now faces similar allegation in Ontario

A man wearing a baseball cap smiles at the camera.
Conan Kyle Valyear appears in this 2019 photo. FACEBOOK/Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Centre

A BC massage therapist accused of inappropriately touching a female client is now facing another sexual misconduct allegation in Ontario.

According to a Dec. 10 College of Massage Therapists of Ontario notice, Conan Valyear has had his licence suspended following an allegation of sexual misconduct from a female client.

“There is nothing sexual about massage therapy care. We take all complaints seriously and have suspended this individual’s ability to practise as College of Massage Therapists of Ontario investigates this allegation,” the Ontario College said in a media release.

The alleged incident took place in Val Caron, a small town north of Sudbury.

The Ontario regulator’s move comes only weeks after the BC College of Complementary Health Professionals of BC issued a notice saying Valyear has been accused of stroking a client’s groin and breasts and pressing his body against their hand while registered in BC and working in Langley.

In a Nov. 20 public notice, the BC regulator said it would have suspended Valyear’s license pending an investigation, but he had already resigned and moved provinces.

Valyear had been registered in Ontario from 2016 to 2019 before moving to BC and renewed his Ontario licence, Oct. 3.

It’s not clear when the BC allegation was made, but Valyear had resigned his BC membership and re-registered in Ontario by the time regulators in British Columbia came to take action.

While the BC College knew Valyear had moved to Ontario, it neglected to tell the public, only saying he’d moved to another jurisdiction in a public notice.

The BC regulator did confirm it informed its Ontario counterpart when the information became public, but gave no explanation as to why, if it could tell the regulator in Ontario, it couldn’t tell the public.

The public notice from the BC College also said that Valyear has a prior disciplinary matter in which he admitted to professional misconduct in the form of “non-therapeutic interactions with a patient.”

What happened has not been made public and the BC College refused to tell iNFOnews.ca what this was, saying it was not authorized to disclose the details under the Health Professionals Act.

None of the allegations against Valyear have been proven. 

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Ben Bulmer

After a decade of globetrotting, U.K. native Ben Bulmer ended up settling in Canada in 2009. Calling Vancouver home he headed back to school and studied journalism at Langara College. From there he headed to Ottawa before winding up in a small anglophone village in Quebec, where he worked for three years at a feisty English language newspaper. Ben is always on the hunt for a good story, an interesting tale and to dig up what really matters to the community.

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