Leading surgeon ‘carried out sex attacks confident status would protect him’
AN INTERNATIONALLY respected heart surgeon raped and sexually assaulted women in his workplace confident they would not complain because of his renown, a court has heard.
Mohamed Amrani, who was based at the Harefield Hospital in Hillingdon, Greater London, is credited with saving hundreds of lives through his pioneering work.
But the 53-year-old is accused of using his status and reputation to bully women into having sex with him while groping and touching others.
On one occasion he allegedly raped a woman in his office. He is said to have carried out the attacks against five women between 2001 and 2014.
Mr Amrani has performed a number of life-saving operations around the world and in 2007 performed Britain’s first double heart valve replacement using keyhole surgery.
Three years earlier he led a team that carried out the first heart bypass operations on patients who were awake and he was also part of the team that conducted the first double lung transplant from a donor whose heart had already stopped.
But opening the case at the Old Bailey, Peter Clement, prosecuting, said Mr Amrani’s professional reputation hid a darker side to his character.
He told the court: “His position conferred a high degree of authority, power and trust. He breached all three for his own sexual gratification confident that those whom he assaulted would not dare make a formal complaint.”
One alleged victim told the court she was first attacked between 2001 and 2002, saying “He just reached out and grabbed my breasts. I was just shocked. I just slapped him away.”
Asked if she had made a formal complaint, she said: “No. I didn’t feel it would ever be taken very seriously.”
The consultant surgeon was arrested in 2015 when one woman made a formal complaint and others then came forward. Mr Amrani denies six counts of indecent assault, two counts of assault by penetration, one count of rape, and two counts of sexual assault.
A fake doctor who gave bogus medical advice to a terminally ill woman was told by a judge that he wished he could send her to jail. At Bournemouth Crown Court, Judge Donald Tait told of his frustration that he was unable to jail Julie Higgins, 54, because the maximum sentence for a charge of impersonating a doctor was a fine. Higgins, who claimed to be a surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital, was given a criminal behaviour order, a 12-month community order and 200 hours’ community service.