DUNWOODY, GA — A metro Atlanta influencer announced she is taking legal action after she was molested at a massage spa.
Health and wellness podcaster Melanie Avalon’s lawsuit filed in DeKalb County targets Tokyo Massage, its owner and managers, and the man who sexually assaulted her repeatedly.
“She thought that she was going to be safe,” says Avalon’s attorney Mawuli Davis. “She thought that she was going to have an opportunity to relax on Valentine’s Day and instead, she went from a spa to the police station.”
The Dunwoody woman recalls growing increasingly uncomfortable during the appointment with Iben Franklin Hernandez-Bartolon. The complaint describes how he gradually moved her thighs before touching her inappropriately, even after she protested.
“I think he was trying to make it happen slowly so maybe I wouldn’t quite realize what was going on,” she says. “I remember I drew mental, like, borders on my body and I thought, ‘If these borders get crossed, then I will know something is happening here.’ And when that happened, that was confirmation for me.”
Avalon says she froze in that moment, but made an immediate outcry to friends who encouraged her to file charges.
“I really do remember the moment where I thought, ‘If I don’t go, he will do this to somebody else,’” says Avalon.
Dunwoody Police arrested Hernandez and charged him with misdemeanor sexual battery. The case in the DeKalb County solicitor’s office was ultimately reduced to a charge of disorderly conduct, and he received probation.
Attorney Harold Spence used his laptop to show how quickly Tokyo Massage could have searched for Hernandez’s qualifications on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website. It took less than one minute.
“Had they spent 45 seconds, we might not be here today,” says Spence. “This is not a case about a mistake, this is a case about choices. When a business ignores the rules that are designed to protect human dignity and safety, it creates the very conditions for abuse. The law requires more and this lawsuit is about enforcing that responsibility.”
In July of 2025, Avalon heard that two women who had also been molested during their massages at a spa in Atlanta by the same man had been awarded $13 million by a jury. In that case, Davis says, Hernandez was investigated but Atlanta Police did not file charges.
Davis says since winning that case, their firm has received dozens of calls from women who say they’ve also been sexually assaulted in massages. He says unfortunately, some cases have never gone forward because the women are often told that they must have been confused and in error about what had happened to them.
“It is just deeply troubling how law enforcement to the judicial system questions what a woman’s experience has been,” he says. “They know the difference in a massage and someone engaging in their own sexual pleasure at their expense.”
Davis and Spence want a jury to hear Avalon’s negligence, premises liability, and sexual battery case and decide compensatory and punitive damages. The filing targets Tokyo Massage, its owner and managers, and the man convicted of his actions against her.
Avalon says with therapy, she has since resumed massages--not without some trepidation which she feels when there and has managed to keep PTSD at bay. She has read all of the Georgia law about massage spas and therapy, and was surprised to learn that when you go into a massage parlor, the state requires therapists’ licenses to be displayed on the wall with a 2″ x 2″ photo of them.
She hopes to empower other victims to come forward, recalling that when she was in court on her case, she was also told that maybe she’d been mistaken about her experience.
“These things do happen. If this happens to you, you’re not alone. You’re not going crazy, you’re not making it up, it’s not all in your head,” says Avalon. “You can tell somebody. There are laws to protect you, and by doing it you’re not only helping yourself, but you’re helping so many others as well.”
WSB Radio’s Veronica Waters and Miles Montgomery contributed to this story.