An eminent consultant neurosurgeon has been jailed for 16 years for sexually assaulting six female patients during intimate medical examinations.
The sentencing judge said Nafees Hamid was the most intelligent man he had seen in a court dock, and he had been brought down by lust and arrogance.
Hamid, 51, performed “entirely inappropriate” intimate examinations, at times removing patients’ clothing himself and making sexual remarks during the assaults, Birmingham crown court was told.
Jailing him for the “most extreme breach of trust”, judge Patrick Thomas QC told Hamid: “You liked doing what you did, touching sexually your female patients, and you took the opportunity to do it because you could.”
Hamid, from Moseley, Birmingham, denied sexual offences against women aged from their early 20s to their mid-60s while he worked at the Queen Elizabeth and Priory hospitals in the city. He was found guilty of offences relating to six women aged 24-47. He was cleared of charges relating to four other women.
The surgeon was arrested after a complaint by a victim in her 20s who had gone to Hamid suffering chronic back pain following an accident. The woman told jurors she felt “frozen to the spot” on the examination table as Hamid carried out an assault lasting 20 minutes.
She said: “He was doing this rubbing thing on my legs and just kept going higher and higher. He then started asking about my sex life … the whole thing was mortifying.”
After the attack, Hamid told her: “You’re a sweet girl.” As the woman walked to her car, she burst into tears and called a relative to tell her: “I think I’ve just been sexually assaulted.” She reported the assault to the police.
Speaking after the conclusion of the trial, she said: “I’ll now always insist on seeing a female doctor, and if there’s not one available I’ll wait and put up with the pain until one is free.
“I don’t hate him, I pity him. He’s abused his position of trust and sacrificed his career, his livelihood and his reputation, and for what? A few moments of weird gratification.”
DI Ian Ingram, of West Midlands police, said: “It may be that we get further victims come forward. It’s important that if they do, we will help them.”
Alan Jenkins, defending, claimed during the trial that the surgeon carried out “appropriate and legitimate” medical examinations and was “fitted up” by police. He told the jury: “How likely is it he is a sexual predator and yet nobody around him has ever seen anything of it?”
