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Tiergarten District Court in Berlin
Photo: Taylan Gökalp / picture alliance / dpa
A lay judge gets to the point.
Why, he asks the witness, why didn't he just interrupt the doctor indignantly when he found his actions sexually assaulting?
Why didn't he get up and leave the treatment room?
Unfortunately, it is not that easy, said the witness on Thursday in front of the Berlin-Tiergarten district court. “It doesn't work in that situation. Somehow there is not the right moment to break it off. ”To confront a doctor with self-confidence and at the same time to accuse him of sexual assault with a“ stop ”,“ that is not possible ”. The doctor could have just said it was just a medical exam. And then he, the witness, would have stood there stupid.
The witness, an academic, in his 30s, is a joint plaintiff in the trial. And he was several times as a patient in Heiko J.'s practice in Berlin-Schöneberg. The practice sees itself as a »gay neighborhood practice«, as the defense had said at the beginning of the trial. As a homosexual man, he felt that he was in good hands in a practice with "doctors who belong to the community" and their patients are on good terms with their patients, says the witness. Until May 7, 2013. At that time the doctor is said to have become sexually assaulted.
Heiko J., 63, has to answer in court for abuse of the doctor-patient relationship. It is said to have passed on five patients between 2011 and 2013 during treatment. The doctor rejects the allegations as false. Everything he did was medically necessary and never sexually motivated. Heiko J. is a specialist in sexually transmitted diseases. Penetrating his patient's body anally, grasping their penis and testicles is part of his everyday work.
The presiding judge, the assistant judge and the two lay judges are faced with the challenge of finding out whether the doctor has taken advantage of his position of power, his specialty and the treatment situation, possibly too long, too intensively and not for medical, but for sexual reasons has put on his patients.
Where is the border?
It is a question similar to that which the witness claims to have asked himself: When is a genital and anal examination no longer an examination but a sexual act?
Where is the border?
And how can a doctor be shown that he has exceeded them?
The witness says he expected the doctor to take a swab in his mouth, a urine test and a swab in the front of the anus.
Heiko J. was not prepared for Heiko J. to examine him anally with one or two fingers and to stimulate his prostate.
He calls this an "unsolicited intrusion".
When Heiko J. massaged his prostate with one hand and his penis and testicles with the other hand, he realized that it was not a medical treatment.
He got an erection.
"It all works fine!" Commented the doctor.
Then Heiko J. asked him: "Can you make something come out of this?" He understood that as an invitation to masturbate.
"No, do it yourself"
According to the witness, that was the moment when he himself went on the offensive in order to no longer feel himself an object. The doctor could just go on, he told him. "Nah, do it yourself," Heiko J. is said to have said. So the patient masturbated while the doctor caressed him. The witness came to the ejaculation. "He wanted to hug me when he said goodbye," he says, "but I didn't want that." He said to Heiko J.: "From now on we will have a completely normal, formalized doctor-patient relationship here again."
The witness wrote a memoir after the incident. It is not a document as lawyers would like it to be. It does contain detailed descriptions of the action, but also thoughts, reflections and interpretations. But above all: There are two versions. It is not really clear which version the witness changed afterwards and at what point in time. Neither to the medical association, to which he complained about Heiko J. in 2013, nor to the criminal proceedings, he never mentioned the protocol.
The defense does not speak of anger, it speaks of astonishment.
"It is astonishing that we are confronted for the second time with a memory protocol on the day of the questioning of a witness," says defense attorney Stefan König.
Another co-plaintiff had surprised the defense in the process with a memory log.
In the memorial protocol that the witness's lawyer handed over to the court on that day, it is stated that Heiko J. penetrated him with his hand.
There is no mention of one or two fingers, but of "fisting".
The defense confronts him with it.
The witness says that he was not precise enough.
By fisting he did not mean the fist or the whole hand, but the hand in general, which also includes the fingers.
The presiding judge is astonished.
The witness is eloquent, speaks differentiated and well-considered.
And then he speaks of fisting when he doesn't mean a fist but only one or two fingers?
The witness says that at the time he thought that fisting also meant anal penetration with only part of the hand.
"I'm not a specialist," he says.
Defender Johannes Eisenberg interprets it differently.
The witness wanted to incite others against Heiko J. "through dramatization".
Shortly after the witness had contacted the medical association, other patients came forward to complain about Heiko J.
The defense suspects a plot.
The witness confirms that he had contact with other patients.
But he did not incite anyone.
He wanted to prevent Heiko J. from going on like this.
That's why he was looking for other victims.
Already in the summer of 2012, before his own experience, he learned of a sexual assault.
At that time he was skeptical.
The description did not match his own "very positive experience" in the doctor's office.
The man who told him that back then lives as a woman today.
The witness says: "Maybe she seemed a bit overly sensitive to me." At the time he thought: Maybe she just misunderstood "the touchy way" of Heiko J.