A well-known gynecologist was convicted in two rape cases: "I was paralyzed"

Dr. Elias Khoury, deputy director of a department with 25 years of experience, raped and sexually harassed patients at his private clinic in the north. "He did me mental harm that I still suffer from," the complainants told Walla !. Cry for Heaven "

Yoav Itiel

03/01/2022

Monday, 03 January 2022, 11:55 Updated: 12:07

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

• Share on general

• Comments

  Comments

In the video: The detention of foreign nationals suspected of raping a young woman has been extended (Walla!)

The Haifa District Court last week convicted Dr. Elias Khoury, a 63-year-old senior gynecologist with 25 years of experience, name and floor rate, in two rape cases of young patients in their twenties who did not know each other, as well as committing indecent acts and sexual harassment In one of them. Dr. Khoury, former deputy director of the obstetrics and gynecology department at the Holy Family Hospital in Nazareth, performed most of the cases at his private clinic at the entrance to Kfar Yafia, where he treated, among other things, Clalit HMO members. The sentence will be handed down after the sentencing arguments are heard.

Police investigators, who were exposed to the first victim's complaint, were in no hurry - and Khoury continued to work.

However, when another complaint was joined, backed by a recording, the investigation gained momentum.

Thus, Justices Avi Levy, Eran Cotton and Eyal Baumgart noted in the verdict, according to which there were additional faults.

"We did not ignore at all the serious omission in the work of the investigating and prosecuting authorities when it was not clarified at all whether the statements of the complainant and the defendant were filmed and recorded, and what happened to the bulk of the recordings as it was," the judges criticized the work of police and prosecutors.

However, the factual basis laid before the judges convinced them "beyond a reasonable doubt" to convict the doctor, and in the bottom line they ruled that they found themselves "forced to make harsh determinations regarding the defendant's conduct and to decide unequivocally that he took advantage of opportunities. In order to do the serious deeds he did. "

More on Walla!

• A psychiatrist at the hospital where Yael Melnik was hospitalized was arrested on suspicion of sexual offenses by a doctor

• Boys were questioned on suspicion of serious sexual offenses in a southern locality

• More money in the account: Where is the most profitable to open a savings plan?

Police investigators were in no hurry.

Dr. Khoury (Photo: Official Website, None)

Ahlam (pseudonym), who was 26, was scheduled for an appointment at Dr. Elias Khoury's clinic in August 2015, when she was suffering from lower abdominal pain and her regular gynecologist was unavailable. There Dr. Khoury instructed her to go to bed after taking off her clothes from the bottom of her body. He examined her on the internal ultrasound device, without covering her body, and while asking her intimate questions unrelated to treatment.

He then "examined" her using in an inappropriate gynecological procedure during which he told her "you are beautiful," and asked intimate questions unrelated to treatment. When she started to cry, the doctor held her hand and tried to calm her down, saying - "This is a normal test, do not be afraid." Later, he told her to turn her back to him, and when she was in shock, not understanding what had happened and trying to turn back, he continued to perform in her acts that were inappropriate to a gynecological procedure.

When Ahlam left the clinic she cut out a business card he had given her and got into the car crying.

To her husband she replied that it was due to her pain.

"The feeling was hard, I did not know what exactly I was going through, I was shocked, confused and upset," she told Walla !.

"It took me maybe two weeks to digest what happened there and until I understood at all. I decided that I wanted to talk, that the blame was not on me, and that I would say everything to my husband."

She said her shocked husband objected to her wanting to complain to the police.

"He told me, 'No, remember we are in the Arab sector.'"

She went to the police anyway, testified - and did not hear from the police until a year later.

"I already thought they did not believe me and then I was called again, and I learned that there was another woman who had complained about him."

"All I thought was how I get out of there"

Bushara (pseudonym), who was 25, came to the clinic in April 2016 for a cervical examination and surgery. According to the indictment in which Elias Khoury was convicted, he committed criminal acts on her while she told him that she did not feel comfortable and that it hurt her. In response he told her that maybe she should go to the bathroom and stroked her in the abdomen until he came with his hand under her chest. She panicked, insisted she should go to the bathroom, but before that he had an ultrasound done on her and made obscene remarks to her. When she returned to the treatment room from the bathroom, he told her that he would perform the requested surgery for NIS 2,000 instead of NIS 4,000, because she was "special."

"I understood from the first minute what was happening there, but I was like paralyzed," Bushra told Walla !.

"This is not the first time I have been to a gynecologist. The clinic was empty, no one was on the floor and when he locked the door I started to feel uncomfortable. Then I started to feel really scared. He ordered me to take off my pants without closing a curtain, so he stood and looked at me. I waited. That he would turn around or something. Then he said 'well?'. I thought maybe because he's a veteran he wants to do it fast without all the steps. "From there safely. I do not have a phone in hand. I am tense. I can not think and I try to think why I can not think. Trying to find a solution and there is no. This nightmare took 35 minutes, he does the deeds and I panicked."

The Holy Family Hospital (Photo: Google Earth, Yevgeny Priest)

Even after the second complaint, it took a long time for the suspicions to escalate into an indictment filed only in August 2018, three years after Ahlam’s complaint was filed and more than two years after Bushra’s complaint. The trial has been going on ever since. "We listened to what he said during a number of meetings with great attention, an open heart and a willing mind," the judges concluded. ; Orderly and logical; One that will succeed in cracking the cloud of harsh accusations that have been leveled against it. "

But, they were forced to add, "Unfortunately, this hope was dashed and at the end of the day, his testimony was to strengthen the strength of the evidence against him and not to weaken it. Unfortunately, our direct impression of the defendant's testimony was very negative; With regard to their internal reasoning; both with regard to their reasonableness; they are certainly correct as to their integration into the evidentiary fabric before us. In his testimony before us, cracks and contradictions were revealed; Who said during the interrogation. "

"He even made allegations, the degree of absurdity of which cried to heaven and placed his version under a heavy cloud of unreliability and his testimony in general under a dark cloak of unreliability. "He was willing to make any claim in order to try to keep the accusations leveled against him away from him, absurd and illogical as it may be."

"He did me mental harm that I still suffer from. I am still ashamed of my husband sometimes," Ahlam told Walla!

After the verdict she did not reach her because of the difficulty of seeing again who had harmed her.

"I could not come to the hearings anymore. It is difficult to see him because I remember everything. Even when I hear about it in the news it is difficult for me. The truth also brought my husband and me to the brink of divorce. There was a long period of problems and shouting. "I also no longer believe in any doctor. At first I also started to be afraid of an ophthalmologist. It took me a long time to get out of it. Even when I went to a gynecologist I was scared. It only happened to me after years when I got pregnant for the third time and went back to the doctor."

She concludes, "I am now a bastard. In the end we succeeded and I hope he gets what he deserves. He will get the pains I got from this case. I am a religious woman. But it has nothing to do with religion. It is the honor of the woman and the family. You could say it even endangered My Life".

"He deserves the worst there is"

Bushra, who also did not reach a verdict, said she preferred not to be there, "because I did not know what my reaction would be if he was acquitted. A few weeks ago my daughter had a fever of 40.1 due to a urinary tract infection, I took her to her pediatrician but could not agree to lower it. "Pants. I took her to my gynecologist, who told me what you bring a 4-year-old girl. I said it was my decision. I was angry with myself. Granted I no longer believe in doctors but I do not want to cause my girl trauma."

She added that "after the decision my sister told me 'you need to feel happy'. But I feel double pain, double anger and double fear. It made me not feel good about it. Sometimes it would make me physically hot. About it.Now everything is rising and floating again.Since the cases I may not have wanted to take care of myself because I was waiting for his conviction.Now probably it's time to take care of myself and those feelings.I need mental care.I am not a bad person.Can not think extreme about a person's fate. "He deserves the worst there is. He took from me the confidence, the joy, the way I look at myself as a person. I was a strong person. Since what he did to me he seemed to have taken my strength. I hope they will start coming back."

"As far as the complainants are concerned, there is a sigh of relief that justice has been done, and whoever harmed them will come to his punishment and will not be able to harm other women," said attorney Reli Guttman, who accompanies the two on behalf of the Justice Department. "Sex in his patients, and when at that given moment there are other gynecologists suspected of committing sexual offenses in the women they treated, we witness a moral and ethical lesion that has spread to alarming proportions among those who trust us in our most intimate situations and this of course omits the basic trust between therapist and patient.

" With us. When I heard that an indictment had been filed, I stopped his work, "he told Walla! Dr. Ibrahim Harbji, director of the Holy Family Hospital in Nazareth," he caused harm to himself and the patients whose pain I feel. And the patient must be respected,And I recommend that any doctor check with a nurse or relative. "

More on Walla!

49 victims in the case: An indictment was filed against Lt. Col. Dan Sharoni

To the full article

Haifa District Court (Photo: Screenshot, Google street view)

The State Attorney's Office, represented at the trial by plaintiff Adv. Anat Steinshind, stated that "the District Court accepted the position of the Haifa District Attorney's Office and ruled that there was no doubt regarding the truth of the complaints and the guilt of the defendant's actions.

The judges made harsh rulings regarding the defendant's conduct and clearly and unequivocally ruled that he took advantage of the opportunities that came his way in order to commit the heinous acts he committed.

The prosecution seeks to strengthen the hands of the victims, who bravely testified against the doctor who harmed them.

And as it is written in the verdict: "Now that the verdict has been decided, the complainants who made their complaint before us knew that their words were heard, weighed and won our full trust."

Advocate Avigdor Feldman, who represented Dr. Elias Khoury together with Adv. Yifa Becker, stated that “the court chose to believe the complainants and not to believe the defendant even though I understood their testimony raised serious issues of credibility. It also became clear during the trial that many tapes documenting the investigations of both the accused and the complainants had disappeared and although the police officer who recorded the investigations said unequivocally that he recorded the investigations that disappeared, the court ruled that it was not possible to find out whether the investigations were recorded. The court chose to end its judgment by addressing the complainants, 'the complainants who made their complaint before us knew that their words were heard, weighed and gained our full trust', and the court chose to give the press a trending and unilateral summary of the verdict. The question arises as to whether the court feared to acquit the accused, lest it be written in the newspaper headlines that the court chose not to believe the complainants? The conclusion is that in the Me Too era, there is no chance for a defendant that the court will believe him and determine that a complainant will lie.As for myself, I believe in the defendant and not in the complainant, who admitted during her testimony that she lied several times to several parties. "

The response of the Israel Police has not yet been received.

• news

• News in Israel

• Criminal news and law

Tags

• gynecology

• Ounce

• Sexual offenses