Katie Piper’s surgeon ‘molested patient after trying to seduce her with vodka and Julio Iglesias’
THE eminent plastic surgeon who treated acid attack victim Katie Piper molested another patient after getting drunk in his surgery, a tribunal was told yesterday.
Mohammad Ali Jawad, 56, allegedly dimmed the lights, shut the blinds and asked her to dance to the music of Julio Iglesias before massaging her neck and touching her breasts.
To the strains of the Spanish singer crooning on his iPhone, he is claimed to have asked her: ‘Do you see me as a man or a surgeon?’
The woman, known as Patient A, told a hearing considering Dr Jawad’s fitness to practise that when she went to him for a consultation about treatment for facial scarring, she took a bottle of vodka from her native Poland as a gift.
He opened it in front of her, brought out two shot glasses and when the next patient cancelled his appointment, he gulped down some vodka, Patient A said.
‘We had a shot first and I think he had a few, then he put the vodka in the bigger crystal glasses,’ she added. ‘The more he drank, the more he kept staring at my cleavage and telling me I looked pretty. He asked about my employment. He offered me a job at the clinic.
‘I was a little bit uncomfortable. I wouldn’t say I was distressed, but it was becoming a little weird. He was becoming increasingly drunk.’
Patient A, a former personal assistant in her 30s, said: ‘He reentered the room and dimmed the lights, pulled the blinds down and played Julio Iglesias on his iPhone. He then opened a bottle of red wine, then he asked me to dance with him. He didn’t really say anything – he grabbed me.
‘I didn’t stop him, I was paralysed. I pushed him away and managed to remove myself from his grip. I told him I would show him something on the internet, so he let me go.
‘I showed him pictures of my friends on Facebook and that’s when he stood behind me and started massaging my neck. He then moved his hand from my neck to my collarbone and the front of my chest. I was paralysed.’
She added: ‘He then sat down on the chair next to me, facing me. He pulled his legs round one of mine and squeezed my leg with his. He put his hands on my knee and asked if I thought he was pretty. He then asked me if I saw him as a man or a surgeon.
‘When I said I saw him as a surgeon, he said: “Well if that is the case, there is nothing for us to discuss.” I got up, took my bag and coat and left in a hurry.’
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester was told the incident happened in October 2012 during a three-hour consultation at his Nip n Tuck surgery in Marylebone, London.
Dr Jawad came to prominence when he led pioneering reconstruc- tion surgery on Miss Piper, 31, who suffered horrific burns to her face and body after being covered with sulphuric acid in an attack arranged by her ex-boyfriend in 2008.
Patient A told the hearing he had bragged about his connection with the TV presenter, adding: ‘He had promised to tell me details about Katie Piper, but he wasn’t sharing details about her treatment. He was telling me how she was healing and that she was very good.’
She said he had showed her a clip on his laptop of his appearance at the Pride of Britain awards before trying to instigate sexual contact.
The tribunal heard Dr Jawad and Patient A first met for a consultation in January 2010 and had at least two other meetings before the incident, but they communicated by text message and email.
The surgeon denies all of the allegations of misconduct and will give evidence via videolink from Karachi, Pakistan, where he is currently living and working.
In 2012, Dr Jawad featured in the Oscar-winning documentary Saving Face, which followed his journeys to Pakistan to perform reconstructive surgery on female survivors of acid attacks.
He is a trustee, alongside Simon Cowell, of Miss Piper’s burns charity, the Katie Piper Foundation.
‘It was becoming a little weird’