Surgeon who groped woman spared jail ‘in the public interest’
A WORLD-RENOWNED heart surgeon who groped a patient’s breasts has been spared jail after a female judge said it may be in the “public interest” to allow him to continue his career.
Mohamed Amrani, 54, was found guilty of twice groping a woman’s breasts through her clothes at Harefield Hospital in west London between 2003 and 2004.
A decade later, in 2014, he smacked another woman’s bottom at Bupa’s private Cromwell Hospital in Kensington, west London.
The consultant achieved national recognition in 2007 when he performed the UK’S first double heart valve replacement using keyhole surgery.
Judge Anne Molyneux described him as an “outstandingly good heart surgeon” as she sentenced him to six months imprisonment, suspended for a year, at the Old Bailey yesterday.
She told Amrani: “You have saved lives, you have done work others were not willing to do, you have shown commitment to the NHS, you have given time to work for charity.”
The court heard Amrani, of Harrow, north-west London, has been suspended since 2015, and now faces disciplinary action by the General Medical Council. But his barrister, Stephen Vullo QC, said Amrani has been offered a job in Morocco, where GMC restrictions do not apply, adding he hoped he would receive a suspension with the prospect of returning to work in the UK.
The judge said “the public interest may well be in favour of your operating again”, as she concluded a suspended sentence could be imposed.
Amrani stood trial over accusations from five women between 2001 and 2014. He denied all of the allegations, but last month a jury found him guilty of two indecent assaults and a sexual assault on two different women.
The court heard how the first had complained to the hospital about being indecently assaulted and was allegedly told: “Just ignore him – he does it to everyone.” Her husband described it as “a pretty devastating event” in her life.
The judge described the attacks as “workplace bullying of a sexual nature”, adding: “This was an abuse of power arising from the trust placed in you by the hospital and by those who worked with you.”
The court heard that when Amrani smacked his second victim on the bottom in an operating theatre she turned around to slap his face. She told jurors: “He looked surprised. He said ‘would you really hit me?’ I said ‘yes I would’.”
Amrani received concurrent fourmonth sentences for two counts of indecent assault and a consecutive two-month jail term for sexual assault. The six-month prison sentence was suspended for a year.