Drunk doctor’s 20 lewd calls to female staff
A HARLEY Street addiction specialist harassed female colleagues with obscene phone calls at 2am after he got drunk following a wedding anniversary meal with his wife.
Consultant psychiatrist Dr Nadir Omara, 49, rang the clinic where he worked 20 times – after drinking up to five double whiskies – while his wife slept upstairs, a hearing was told yesterday.
During a ‘heavy breathing’ call he made a lewd suggestion to a support worker before ‘huffing and puffing’ when the phone was passed to a colleague, a disciplinary panel heard.
Omara was arrested after the second woman recognised his phone number, which was listed on a white board in the clinic’s office.
The consultant claimed he was ringing the clinic for medication to combat the effects of alcohol and said the noises he made were ‘burping and retching’.
He was jailed for 12 weeks earlier this year for making indecent phone calls.
Yesterday graphic details of his alleged comments were given for the first time after his conviction triggered an investigation by the General Medical Council.
If found unfit to practise by the panel, Omara could be struck off the medical register. Omara made the calls to the independent Abbeycare addiction treatment centre, near Newmarket, Suffolk.
The first call, made at around 1am, was silent but a second came shortly afterwards and a support worker, Miss A, answered. ‘He introduced himself as James,’ counsel for the GMC, Nicholas Walker, told the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester.
After Omara made an obscene comment, ‘Miss A told him she was not going to be spoken to like that and put the phone down’, Mr Walker said.
Miss A, who had to keep answering the ‘vulgar’ calls in case they were from a patient, said she was ‘frightened and upset’.
When the phone rang again she woke a senior colleague referred to as Miss B. Miss B, who knew Omara, ‘was able to describe him as being breathless, excited and panting, moaning and groaning,’ Mr Walker said.
Omara made about 20 calls in two hours, the panel heard.
Police arrested him the next day at his home in Rushmere St Andrew, Suffolk.
The doctor insisted he had phoned the unit because he felt ill after drinking too much.
Mr Walker added: ‘He said he called two or three times and said he had started vomiting and forgot the conversation.
‘He said there was no sexual gratification.’
At his trial in January the doctor said he had ‘four or five’ double whiskies.
He was convicted of two counts of sending indecent communications after prosecutors said he made ‘lewd, rude phone calls to women whilst in drink for his own gratification’.
Omara collapsed in the dock after being jailed, prompting his wife to rush to his aid.
Summarising the GMC case, Mr Walker said: ‘This is a case where the doctor has never accepted the underlying conduct.
‘These were two people beneath him that should have been treated with the dignity and courtesy that one expects a fellow professional to extend in those circumstances.’
Dr Omara was neither represented nor present at the hearing, which continues.