Beverly Dance Studio Owner Considering Legal Action Against Blog

BEVERLY, MA -- The owner of a Beverly dance studio fired back at the gossip blog that claims she went on lavish trips and shopping sprees after posting a GoFundMe page to solicit help to pay medical bills. Candy Dennis, owner of Revive Dance Xchange, said in an email to Patch that she is being targeted in a smear campaign by the Website Turtle Boy Sports and suggested she is considering legal action against the site.

"This guy is known to cause great harm and already has done so. He is a slander blogger," Dennis said. "I have [a] lawyer and can prove everything he is stating is false....they are ruining lives, children's lives at that."

Dennis believes Turtle Boy Sports was contacted by a handful of parents who she had asked to leave the program this spring after repeated incidents of bad behavior by their children. On Tuesday, Turtle Boy Sports published the fourth installment in what it says will be a five-part series on Dennis and her business. While the author of the un-bylined blog posts claims to have interviewed "dozens" of people over the course of several weeks, the story is primarily based on negative reviews of Revive Dance Xchange left on Websites like Yelp and the fact that Dennis posted pictures of shopping trips and vacations after requesting for the financial support.

Dennis believes that same contingent of parents who were kicked out of the dance school is responsible for the negative online reviews cited by Turtle Boy Sports.

Dennis and her husband live in Gloucester and raised about $1,200 in the GoFundMe campaign that was set up last year for treatments for cerebellar degeneration that were not covered by her insurance carrier. Turtle Boy Sports claims to have interviewed former clients and employees who claim she showed no symptoms of the rare disease, which include a wide-legged, unsteady, lurching walk, tremors and slowed and slurred speech.

"My lawyer has advised me to keep silent but it is so hard when someone like this is hurting my family and I," Dennis said.

Dennis told Patch that money was used to purchase supplements that her doctor had recommended. "I am blessed [that people donated to give] us a jump start on her health care," she said.

The most inflammatory portions of the Turtle Boy Sports posts were screenshots taken from Dennis's social media accounts showing photos of everything from a family trip to Florida to presents under her family's Christmas tree. In online comments left on a story Patch published Monday, Dennis said a trip to Florida was paid for by her father to visit family after her mother died. A trip to New York City was business-related, Dennis said. "I am a good and honest person," she wrote.

Elaborating further in an email to Patch, Dennis said the trips were paid for by her father or mother-in-law, and that her family has a timeshare that made the trips cheaper than they appear when taken out of context on social media. She saw an uptick in business at the dance studio beginning in January, which she founded in 2011, according to state business records and splurged on her two children.

"Yes, I was able to treat my children to some fun days out but that should not be a crime," she told Patch. "I work over 70 hours a week at my business and I am good to people....I have been nothing but good to the Beverly community and it's a shame I am being mistreated and hurt again and again from this blogger. He has many allegations against him for doing this to other good people."

The series of blog posts by Turtle Boy Sports also question the dance studio's business practices. Turtle Boy Sports accuses Dennis of not awarding scholarships she claims to have awarded in marketing materials and of underpaying her instructors. Last month Turtle Boy Sports ran a similar series of article questioning the business tactics of Beverly resident Greg Bates and his North Shore Eats Facebook group.

"His facts are false and he twists stories to harm and cause deformation [sic] of character to businesses and people," Dennis said.

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Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).