A GYNAECOLOGIST from Larnaca yesterday pleaded guilty to 44 charges of sexual abuse of his patients, including raping two girls aged 15 and 17.
He will be sentenced on March 22 and faces life in prison.
The 56-year-old doctor admitted raping six women including the underage girl and the 17-year-old.
Eleven of the charges to which he also pleaded guilty involved taking photos of naked women and placing his genitals on their bodies.
He also admitted to using a pharmaceutical product that should be administered by an anaesthesiologist, indecent assault, and humiliating and inhuman treatment of others.
The charges relate to 35 women who were the doctor’s patients between July 2010 and October last year.
The gynaecologist was remanded on October 27 last year after a 26-year-old woman told the police that she woke up from ‘surgery’ to find him naked on top of her.
During the remand hearing in October, the 26-year-old who lodged the complaint told the court that she had gone in to the doctor’s private practice for an operation.
She was put under anaesthetic for an operation but woke up ten minutes to discover she was tied with two cables while the naked doctor was holding her left hand on his penis, the court heard.
When she objected the doctor told her that the drug was giving her hallucinations, the 26-year-old had told the court.
The case caused widespread shock and outrage.
The court has banned publication of evidence related to the case – including the doctor’s name – to safeguard the confidentiality of patients who gave testimonies.
On the day of his arrest, police found around 150 pictures of naked women on his computer as well as pictures on his camera of the 26-year-old who complained.
The police eventually gathered around 500 photos of naked women from the doctor’s computers, his camera and its memory card.
The 26-year-old who complained in October last year was examined by state pathologist Eleni Antoniou who said that the only signs of a medical operation dated back to three years to when she had given birth.
There is no legal obligation in Cyprus for doctors to have a nurse present when seeing patients.
The Cyprus Medical Association (CMA) has since issued a list of suggestions to its members urging them to have a nurse present with them whenever possible or allow patients’ family members in an examination room.
“But doctors are not obliged to have someone else present, not even in Europe, as it may be too expensive or impractical or maybe even the patient may have an issue with some family member having to be in the room with them,” a member of the Cyprus Medical Association told the Mail yesterday.
Following the woman’s complaint in October, a 25-year-old woman also approached the police and by November the police had 43 written testimonies from patients and around 100 testimonies in total.
The Cyprus Medical Association said that a complaint had been filed about 18 months before the doctor was first remanded, which the police did not pursue for lack of evidence.
The doctor has been in custody in the central prisons in Nicosia.
The state’s legal services will study a report by a forensic psychiatrist who examined the doctor in early February.
The prosecution material will be examined and a sentence will be set on March 22. There is no need for witnesses to physically testify in court given the doctor’s plea.
“It may be unnecessary to strike him off the medical record if he is locked inside for life but if he’s not then we must strike him off. If we don’t do it for this case, then when would we ever and for what kind of case?” the CMA member told the Cyprus Mail.
