Jury deliberates doctor’s fate in rape trial
Defense claims sex was consensual; woman says attack derailed her life
A Harris County jury will continue deliberating Thursday about whether a former Baylor College of Medicine doctor raped a patient while she was hospitalized in 2013 for an acute asthma attack or he had consensual sex with the woman.
The woman reported to Ben Taub staff that she had been assaulted in the dark by an unknown physician, but it took two years for Houston police to file a criminal charge against the suspect. Investigators connected DNA from her rape kit to Dr. Shafeeq Sheikh, an internal medicine resident on call at Ben Taub that night, who swiped his badge to enter her floor at least 12 times.
The 32-year-old woman, who has suffered from asthma since she was 8, told jurors this week the attack derailed her life and marriage. The woman was identified as Laura in a series of Lisa Falkenberg columns in the Houston Chronicle about the incident. The Chronicle does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault.
Sheikh lost his job and had his license revoked in 2015 by the Texas Medical Board based on the finding that he posed “a continuing threat to public welfare.” The next year, a Harris County judge cleared Ben Taub and Baylor of liability in a civil lawsuit brought by the patient.
Defense lawyers at the eight-day trial introduced evidence about the woman’s career as an actress and model, noting that she showed off her cleavage and rear end in what they posited were sexually suggestive online ads. DNA evidence indicated she had sex with her husband her first night at the hospital, which meant she wasn’t so debilitated, they said.
Their client, a father of four, certainly breached the Hippocratic oath and his marriage vows, his lawyers said. But they contend the patient seduced the doctor and reported the “wild” rape story to make her husband jealous and make money off a civil lawsuit.
‘Power over patients’
Prosecutors say the doctor exploited a vulnerable patient, betraying her inherent trust when she was weak, sore and medicated — following several acute episodes — and tethered to an IV and a heart monitor. She was unable to fight off the attack, they said.
“Doctors know they have immense power over their patients: They have power over their bodies, over their information and their privacy,” Assistant District Attorney Lauren Reeder said in her closing argument. “Patients give this access, this vulnerability to their doctors. They subject themselves to the bright lights … the poking and prodding, in hopes that doctors will use that power to heal.”
Reeder called the doctor’s account of events “ridiculous.”
The jury had the case for more than five hours and was deliberating into the night.
Testifying in Spanish through an interpreter, the former patient said in the early morning of Nov. 2, 2013, she awoke to find a man at her bedside in a white doctor’s coat saying he needed to examine her. He pushed up her gown and touched her breasts in an “ugly way,” and she pushed the call button repeatedly, she said. Witnesses testified that it had been unplugged from the wall.
She told jurors the stranger woke her two more times that night, penetrating her digitally the first time and raping her the second time. The call button did not work and she was immobilized from her condition and treatment, she said.
The woman testified that she has 14,000 followers on Instagram. She posts photos on the site and videos on her YouTube channel for her job promoting clothes for a boutique. Under cross-examination, she said the photos were “sexy” but were meant to be humorous rather than sexually provocative.
Sheikh said, under clear duress Wednesday, that he had intercourse with the patient. He understood it was consensual based on the woman’s body language. He told the jury it was a shameful lapse in judgment on his part.
He testified that the patient grabbed his hand during a chest exam in the early morning hours and placed it on her breast. He returned to her room to check on the married mother of two because he was “curious” about her apparent breast implant, when she enticed him to go further, massaging his genitals and pulling down her panties, he said.
Not ‘medical ethics’
The defendant, who wore a dark suit and tie, testified in soft voice with his head downcast. He said when the patient touched his penis, “I took it as a sign that she wanted to have sex.”
After what he described as a one-minute interlude, he said, “It immediately sunk in that something terrible had happened and I was scared for myself. You’re not supposed to have sex with a patient. That’s part of medical ethics.”
Sheikh said he began checking her chart hourly after she told officials someone raped her. He did not come forward to hospital staff to give his account, he testified, because he was terrified.
“He made a mistake, but he didn’t sexually assault her,” attorney Lisa Andrews said in her closing argument, pointing to her 46-year-old client. “Here we have this Latina woman with her fake boobs that came onto that little nerdy, middle-aged guy, and he lost his mind.
“If he’s going to rape her, don’t you think he would have taken a condom? Is he going to keep using his badge access and going on the surveillance cameras?”
Baylor College declined to comment. But Bryan McLeod, a spokesman for Ben Taub, said, “Harris Health System has been supportive of the legal process and has fully cooperated throughout the investigation and trial phase of this case.”’
“We care deeply about the safety and well-being of our patients,” he said.