TITUSVILLE, Fla. — One of 21 women who reported to police that a Titusville medical massage sexually violated them when they were patients is demanding to know why the Florida Department of Health has not taken action against Thomas Grasso more than four months after police arrested him.

The FDOH is sending a dangerous message by not holding Grasso accountable, Amanda Ferruzza told Spectrum News 13.

“It’s something that — it really, really hurts me as a practitioner. It hurts me as a person,” said Ferruzza, who also received her medical license from the FDOH. “It hurts me as a human being that the Department of Health has still not acted upon taking his license away.”

Grasso was arrested in December on multiple misdemeanor and felony charges. The incidents under investigation go as far back as 10 years. He remains in jail and is scheduled to be arraigned in one of four open cases in May.

“The whole thing is we need to be heard. We need to be taken seriously,” said Ferruzza, who talked to News 13 after the State Attorney’s Office reduced the felony charges in her case to misdemeanors, citing lack of evidence. “It’s so much bigger. Each woman’s story and each woman’s experience matters.”

Ferruzza was one of five women who shared their stories with Spectrum News 13 in January, hoping to protect others and change what they said they believe is a broken system, but she did not reveal her name and face publicly at the time.

The Florida Department of Health received the first complaints about Grasso on October 9, 2020. FDOH then filed an emergency restriction of Grasso’s license on November 20, 2020, concluding he “constitutes an immediate, serious danger.”  As of March 30, his license had not been revoked, and FDOH has not accepted a voluntary relinquishment.

In response to queries about the case, an FDOH spokesman said in an email statement that Grasso’s case would be heard this month. The board is scheduled to meet April 8.

“April was the first available full board meeting with disciplinary proceedings,” the FDOH spokesman said in the email. “Again, there is a condition in the voluntary relinquishment that prevents Mr. Grasso from working in any capacity as a massage therapist during this time.”

According to the board’s website, however, a full meeting with disciplinary proceedings was held in January, and Grasso’s name was not among those listed. A spokesperson did not respond when asked why the board didn’t discuss Grasso’s case during that meeting.

Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) said the process is taking too long.

“DOH moving very slow in actually ensuring this individual is held accountable to his actions,” Eskamani said. “It is alarming because it also raises questions of how slow are they being in responding to other cases that could be similar in nature.”

Eskamani, who is on the House’s Professions and Public Health Subcommittee, supports Republican sponsored House Bill 1579, which seeks to toughen disciplinary actions against health-care practitioners.

 “There is an effort by legislators to close loopholes, but I think the other side of this conversation is the expediency of that license being formally removed,” Eskamani said.

Ferruzza agreed.

“Department of Health is lackadaisical,” she said. “How many more people out there are hurting other people? And there is a certain standard that I hold myself to, and it’s very sad to see the Department of Health is not holding everybody accountable.”