BY VINAYA SAKSENA

CENTRAL FALLS — A North Providence man who had been looking to open a massage parlor on Broad Street will now have to start from scratch if he still wishes to do so, according City Council President William Benson Jr.

At the council's meeting Monday night, Bryan Dempsey appeared before the council again in hopes of garnering approval for a license request the council had previously held a hearing on in April. The council, whose members had expressed frustration with the manner in which Dempsey and his family had dealt with them, elected not to conduct a yes or no vote on Dempsey's request, while telling him that he could attempt the application process again at a later date if he wished.
Dempsey said this would be his first venture as a business owner. A former auto service manager, he said he had become interested in the idea of opening a massage business after experiencing the benefits of massage therapy firsthand while recovering from medical ailments.
“I had two heart attacks,” Dempsey said. “I was recommended to go through massage therapy. And it did help me out greatly.”
Following Monday's meeting, however, Dempsey said he was not looking to engage in the permitting process again- a process he had said cost him over $100,000 in renovations and other expenses and a considerable investment of time over the last few months. The council's decision, or lack thereof, convinced him to address the matter in a different manner, he said.
“I'll be filing a lawsuit against the city,” Dempsey said. He cited “the threats, the defamation of character” he said he had experienced in the process as his reasons for doing so.
Dempsey had previously said he had grown frustrated with what he saw as attempts by city officials to stall his effort to acquire a license for his business, Simple Pleasures, LLC. When he had attempted to speak to Mayor Charles Moreau about the problem, Dempsey said, the mayor had threatened him, saying that if he went to the news media with his story, he would “stuff it your (expletive) so hard it won't be funny,” and plant cocaine on Dempsey. In speaking to NBC 10 about the matter, Moreau had denied the allegations, asking “why would I say something like that?”
Dempsey also confirmed that he had reported the alleged threats to the Rhode Island State Police, saying that he had gone to them in part because he did not trust local law enforcement to deal with the situation. When reached last week, the State Police had declined to confirm whether or not they were investigating the alleged threats.
City officials, meanwhile, alleged that members of Dempsey's family had behaved in a similar manner at an April 23 hearing that had been set up specifically for Dempsey. City Clerk Marie Twohey played the Times a portion of a cassette tape recording of that meeting, during which Dempsey's brother, who identified himself as Robert Dempsey, could be heard engaging in a heated discussion with City Solicitor John Gannon, in which Gannon said he had been approached in an aggressive manner and been the subject of what he said sounded like a challenge to a physical fight.
“He came right at me,” Gannon said.
The tape played by Twohey also included a recording of an undetermined number of people yelling, and council members telling them to come up to a microphone designated for public input and speak one at a time, with Benson at one point threatening to end the hearing on the spot if the atmosphere did  not calm down.
Speaking to the Times following Monday's meeting, Bryan Dempsey acknowledged that some of his family members may have been somewhat unruly at the hearing. However, he also alleged that council members had acted unprofessionally, with Councilwoman Eunice DeLaHoz calling him on his cellular phone after 10:00 p.m. on June 2, allegedly to harass him. He also alleged that at least one council member had suggested he speak with a Providence businessman who had opened up a similar business, as that businessman may be able to familiarize him with what Dempsey said sounded like a bribery process by which he could finally garner approval from the council.
DeLaHoz strongly denied these allegations, saying that the aforementioned call had been placed to let Dempsey know that the documents he had submitted to the City Clerk's office had been found to be insuffient, and that he would have to come back in with the necessary documents the next day in order for his request to be heard at the council's next meeting. She said that Dempsey did come into City Hall with more documents the following day as the result of her call. As for the bribery allegation, DeLaHoz, Benson and fellow Councilman Richard Aubin said they had never made any such suggestion to Dempsey.
“(We) never had a discussion like that about any business in Providence,” DeLaHoz said. “If that's what we were going to do, we would just approve it (his license request).”
Asked why no motion had been made by any council members on Dempsey's license request, Benson said that support for the idea didn't seem to be there on the council, particularly in light of the fact that another massage business, the Sundance Spa, had been the subject of a prostitution sting by local police on April 23- shortly before Dempsey's hearing that night. And while Benson said that the council's decision did not reflect its opinion of Dempsey or those he intended to employ, he and DeLaHoz said that residents of their districts did not appear to like the idea of another such business coming to town.
Furthermore, Benson said that the conduct of Dempsey and members of his family had not encouraged him to look favorably on the idea of issuing him a license. He told the Times that in addition to what happened at the April 23 hearing, city officials had been receiving incessant phone calls from Dempsey and his family since then, with Moreau eventually asking the council to hold another hearing on the matter so that the calls might stop.
Samantha deGroff, one of the potential employees of Dempsey's who attended the meeting with him, said that the type of business they were looking to operate had been unfairly stigmatized by stories of “massage” businesses offering a little more than therapeutic rub-downs. But deGroff, Dempsey and another potential employee of the business, Lori A. Lawrence-Silva, said that this stigma did was not an accurate reflection of the type of business they wished to operate, and that they would not grant sexual services of any kind to customers.
“I'm not going to give anybody a 'happy ending,'” Lawrence-Silva said. “I'm not a Friendly's Restaurant.”