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The extended jury is facing a complicated task
Photo: Taylan Gökalp / picture alliance / dpa
It's about very personal, even intimate things that the witness is supposed to speak about in court on that day.
The presiding judge advises him that he does not have to testify in front of everyone.
The viewers and journalists could be excluded from the hearing.
But the witness does not shy away from the public.
So everyone can hear what they have to say.
The first irritation occurs right at the beginning when the witness announces his age: 53 years. The judge is taken aback. According to his information to the police, the man should be three years younger. The witness explains it by saying that he was 20 years old when he came to Germany from Iran in 1987. At the time, he had promised himself advantages if he pretended to be a minor. Therefore, he made himself younger. In the meantime, that has been corrected, he asserts. It is not the only irritation for the court.
The judge asks the witness to report in as much detail as possible about what should have happened to him in Heiko J.'s practice in Berlin-Schöneberg.
The doctor is charged with allegedly sexually assaulting five patients between 2011 and 2013.
Section 174c of the Criminal Code prohibits doctors from exploiting treatment situations for sexual acts on their patients.
Such abuse is punishable by imprisonment from three months to five years.
The attempt is also punishable.
"I should take off my clothes"
Section 174c is intended to protect patients from doctors abusing their position of power. Regardless of whether the patient agrees to sexual acts or not. The legislator assumes that a patient is not able to determine himself or herself at all or only to a very limited extent in a treatment situation. Because he lacks the knowledge of which treatment is really appropriate. Because he's impressed with the doctor's authority. Because he is inhibited in the examination situation by his nudity. Because the whole situation makes it very difficult for the patient to say no. A patient should be able to trust that what a doctor does with him is not for the doctor's desires but for the patient's well-being. That’s the rule.
It is more complicated in specific individual cases.
In Heiko J.'s case, inserting the finger into the anus and manipulating a patient's penis is part of the medical craft.
The 63-year-old is a specialist in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
Heiko J. denies any sexual act, any sexual motivation.
On an earlier day of the trial, he had stated that the patient could well get an erection during treatment.
However, he did not mention ejaculating patients.
“A doctor who crosses a red line.
And is good. "
The extended lay judges' court of the Berlin-Tiergarten district court, chaired by Judge Rüdiger Kleingünther, faces a complicated task. This is also because the events were many years ago. The witness that day does not make it any easier for the court. He hardly remembers. And what he remembers contradicts on many points his earlier testimony to the police.
At some point in 2010, 2011 or 2012 he was a single patient in Heiko J.'s practice.
He went to the doctor because he had a sexually transmitted disease.
He suspects syphilis, but doesn't know.
"I was supposed to take off my clothes, then they would take a sample and play a bit too."
Played?
Heiko J. "played" on his penis, he specifies.
He got an erection and eventually ejaculated.
"I didn't see it as abuse," the witness said, too.
"That was all with my consent."
The court asked him to describe the situation in more detail.
The witness now adds that he too had touched the doctor's penis.
The judge asks and asks and asks and confronts the man with his deviating information at the police in 2014.
At that time, according to the protocol, he said that Heiko J. had presented him with his own penis, but that he had not touched it. In practice, the incident should not have occurred between 2010 and 2012, but in April or May 2013. Further details in the interrogation protocol also do not match his testimony in court. "What it says is very likely true," says the witness. It was all too many years ago. He didn't experience the whole thing as stressful at the time. “For me it was just a doctor crossing a red line. And is good. "
Even before the witness gave his testimony, Heiko J. let it be known through his defense lawyer that he had no memory of this patient himself.
However, the practice documents show that he had not been to the practice once, but several times.
Heiko J. did not carry out any sexually motivated acts.
Such behavior would also have been "very remote" since the witness was "highly infectious".
Rumors in the gay scene
The prosecution lists the witness's case as one of five charges against Heiko J.
All of the other four patients named as alleged victims participate in the trial as joint plaintiffs and are represented by lawyers.
Two have already testified, one with and one without public.
The witness has decided against an accessory prosecution.
For him, the incident was an experience in practice, as he has with many men, he says.
He also reports rumors about the practice in the gay scene.
"You get even more extras," they said.
A co-plaintiff quotes from the minutes of his police interrogation.
Accordingly, he went to Heiko J.'s practice because it was close to his workplace and because he had heard that the doctor "offers more patients of certain types" and that he belongs to this type himself.
What type does he mean? The lawyer asks.
"Arab type," says the witness.
She doesn't ask what he meant by "more" and "extras".