Top doctor’s ‘grope victim told: He does it to everyone’

A HOSPITAL manager dis- missed complaints that a renowned surgeon sexually assaulted a woman because ‘he does that to everyone’, a court heard yesterday.

The alleged victim said the hospital manager appeared to ‘laugh it off ’ when she said heart surgeon Mohamed Amrani had grabbed her breasts.

She later told police he had made repeated sexual assaults against her, but that she had felt ‘powerless’ to stop him after the hospital manager and told her: ‘Just ignore him, he does it to everyone.’

Amrani, 53, is accused of raping one woman and sexually assaulting four others at two prestigious hospi- tals, the Harefield in Middlesex and the private Cromwell Hospital in Kensington, West London.

Prosecutors claim he carried out the assaults over 13 years and believed his position as one of Britain’s leading surgeons meant his victims would never dare to complain.

The eminent specialist performed Britain’s first double heart valve replacement using keyhole surgery in 2007, and has carried out life-saving transplant operations.

He denies all the attacks and any sexual contact with the women, and claims they have invented the accusations against him.

A jury at the Old Bailey heard evidence from a woman who claims she was repeatedly assaulted by him grabbing her breasts in a series of encounters in 2003. On one occasion he put his hands inside her bra and on another occasion he shoved a hand between her legs before she protested.

She said she had felt shocked and ‘violated’ and attempted to report him to a female hospital manager at the Harefield who told her to ignore Amrani’s behaviour.

She said: ‘I felt she was dismissive and did laugh it off, as if it was all part of how things were… It made me feel powerless.’

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, added: ‘There were mixed feelings of incredulity that this was something that was known about and that we were just expected to ignore it.’

The married woman said she contacted the hospital again after learning another woman had complained about Amrani assaulting her in 2014, and he was arrested in 2015.

She angrily denied suggestions from Amrani’s barrister, Stephen Vullo QC, that Amrani ‘ does not agree that he touched you in a sexual way’.

She said: ‘I can only tell you what happened - that’s all I can do.’

Fighting back tears, she later told the court it would be ‘categorically untrue’ to suggest that she would put her family through ‘this level of distress about something that did not happen’.

Her husband told the court it was a ‘pretty devastating event’, and that she was ‘very very upset’ when she came home.

Amrani, of Harrow in north West London, denies all 11 charges against him – one count of rape, two of assault by penetration, six of indecent assault and two of sexual assault. The trial continues.

‘It made me feel powerless’