Neurosurgeon accused of sexually assaulting patients
|
Version 0 of 1. An eminent neurosurgeon sexually assaulted 10 female patients and tried to cover his tracks by failing to complete medical records, a jury has been told. Nafees Hamid, 50, is alleged to have betrayed his profession by performing "entirely inappropriate" intimate examinations, including one of a patient waiting to be taken to an operating theatre. Birmingham crown court was told that Hamid removed patients' clothing himself and made inappropriate sexual remarks during the alleged assaults. Hamid denies committing 14 sexual offences against women aged from their early 20s to their mid-60s between 2009 and 2013, while he was employed at the Queen Elizabeth and Priory hospitals in Birmingham. Opening the case against the consultant, Jonas Hankin QC, prosecuting, claimed: "Mr Hamid performed inappropriate and medically unjustifiable intimate examinations on each of those 10 women. "He ignored General Medical Council guidelines about intimate examinations and failed to record the examination findings in the case records so as to cover his tracks. His purpose in touching the private parts of these women was not medical but sexual. In failing to observe the first rule of medicine – to do no harm – he betrayed the trust of his patients and of his profession." The court was told that at least one of the alleged victims was reluctant to contact the police because of Hamid's "eminent" status as a highly-regarded consultant. But he was arrested after a complaint made by a woman who was being treated for back pain. She told police she was "frozen to the spot" after being sexually assaulted by Hamid, who allegedly told her she was a "sweet girl". Another patient, aged in her 40s, claims Hamid said she was "attractive" and indecently touched her private parts while he was not wearing a surgical glove. Jurors were told that an expert witness due to called by the prosecution believed there was "no need and no urgency" for Hamid, whose job was to treat patients with disorders of the brain, skull, spine and nervous system, to have examined the woman intimately. In police interviews, Hankin claimed, Hamid tried to float the idea of witness "contamination" despite none of the patients being known to each other. The prosecutor said Hamid will argue that his examinations of some of the women were medically justified. In other cases, the court heard, the surgeon will claim the incidents complained of never happened. Concluding his opening remarks to the jury, Hankin said: "The defence case in simple terms is that Mr Hamid acted in good faith. He denies that he ever had any sexual purpose in relation to any of these women." But Hankin claimed Hamid's explanations were "confused, inconsistent and contradictory". "They appear to be an attempt to bluff non-medical people ... into thinking what he did was legitimate when it was not. The fact that 10 women who have not been influenced deliberately or unintentionally by the complaints of others, have made complaints of a similar kind against the same man is powerful evidence that coincidence or some sort of malicious motive can be excluded." The case continues and the court is expected to hear from its first witness on Friday. |