DOCTOR IS ACCUSED OF GROPING PATIENTS
HOSPITAL CONSULTANT ON TRIAL FOR ALLEGED SEX ASSAULTS ON PATIENTS AND STAFF
A HOSPITAL consultant allegedly sexually assaulted patients and staff during a 20-year period, a court has heard.
Former Royal Gwent Hospital and University Hospital Llandough consultant Channarayapatna Krishna is accused of groping female patients during their medical examination after asking them to remove their shirt and bra.
Yesterday, Cardiff Crown Court heard how Krishna reportedly abused his patients’ trust in order to gain “sexual gratification from unnecessarily exposing and touching” his patients’ breasts.
In total, the 58-year-old faces 12 allegations involving seven different women, including patients and staff, during a period between 1996 and 2017.
On one occasion Krishna is also accused of kissing a colleague on the lips against her will and forcing her against a wall until she was forced to “shove him off.”
Opening the trial, Matthew Cobbe, prosecuting, said each incident started as a “legitimate” medical examination but went “beyond what was necessary” to a “wholly unnecessary and intimate” way.
Mr Cobbe said: “The patients were left uncomfortable, upset and bewildered by his examination and we will hear that several recognised that the examination had been obviously unnecessary. But it is the prosecution’s case that he was a doctor, and he got away with it until 2017.”
During one incident at the Royal Gwent Hospital dating back to 1996, it was heard how a patient was allegedly told to remove her blouse and unhook her bra during a routine appointment before the defendant touched and rubbed her breasts in a “circular motion”.
One another occasion at University Hospital Llandough, Mr Cobbe described how a patient was reportedly told to remove their clothes “from the waist up” before being examined with a stethoscope. Despite feeling uncomfortable, it was heard how she had “persuaded herself that Dr Krishna was a doctor and therefore professional”.
In subsequent appointments, the patient was reportedly subjected to further breast examinations despite them being “neither necessary or justified”, and having received an all clear from a breast clinic.
The patients cannot be named for legal reasons.
Describing one allegation, Mr Cobbe said one patient had been asked to remove her shirt during an examination when the defendant “then lent over and without any warning took hold of the underwiring of her bra and flipped it up, exposing her breast”.
Turning to the most recent allegation, from 2017, he added: [The complainant] told herself he was a professional and so did as she was told.
“Without warning he lifted her breasts with the palm of his hands in order to look underneath”.
Mr Cobbe added that Krishna went onto to allegedly “push his hands” inside the patient’s bra and touch her breasts and nipples.
During the trial, it was heard the defendant’s alleged behaviour came to light after a patient complained to her GP and hospital. The matter was referred by Cardiff and Vale University Health Board to South Wales Police.
During police interviews, Mr Cobbe said Krishna, of Clos Yr Erw, Penarth, denied one patient had taken off her top and denied touching her breasts.
He also said he could not remember seeing a number of other patients but accepted he had made medical notes relating to their appointments.
In another case, he denied rubbing his patients’ breasts and when asked about forcefully kissing his colleague said it was not his intention to kiss her on the lips.
Krishna, who is represented by Fiona Horlick, denies 11 counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault.
The defendant, who is shielding due to health reasons, appeared via videolink from his home on the first day on the trial.
The trial continues.