A Jerusalem judge recently acquitted a doctor charged with
sexually molesting a teenage girl, although the judge believed the girl’s
story.
“The complainant’s account of the event, her police
interviews and testimony in court all left a positive and reliable impression,”
wrote Judge Jacob Zaban, deputy president of Jerusalem’s District Court in the
verdict he released last week.
Despite this, the judge acquitted the doctor on reasonable
doubt, stating he found it “hard to assume” that the doctor, a respectable
family man, would sexually molest a girl in a public clinic in broad daylight.
On December 9, 2012, an ultra-Orthodox 13-year-old girl with
an ear ache came to see Dr. Alexander Rotnemer at the Meuhedet clinic at Tel
Zion.
When the girl returned home she called her mother in tears
and asked her to come home right away. She told her mother, after much
cajoling, that the doctor not only checked her ears but touched her stomach
close to her groin.
She said the doctor then told her to lie on her back, put
his hand under her skirt, tights and underpants, touched her private parts and
asked “does this tickle? Does it hurt? Are you having fun?”
The girl said she answered with embarrassment, that she was
“having fun.”
“You come to the clinic to have fun, too,” the doctor told
her, continuing to touch her for several minutes.
While he was touching her private parts, the doctor said,
according to the complainant: “If you come with your mother, I won’t be able to
do this to you, she’ll go crazy. Don’t tell her I did this, don’t tell anyone.
Nobody needs to know about it. If you want more, tell your mother you’re sick
and come. It’s up to you, no obligation.”
On the day of the examination, the doctor called the
complainant at home several times and told her the medication he had prescribed
for her was unavailable at the pharmacy and he wanted to change it.
The girl’s mother lodged a police complaint against the
doctor, who admitted in his investigation that he had touched the girl’s lower
stomach but denied touching her private parts for a prolonged period. The
doctor was indicted and tried soon afterward.
Asked what the connection between the patient’s earache and
stomach was, the doctor told the court that since it was the girl’s first visit
to his clinic, he gave her a “preventive medicine” examination.
The prosecution said the doctor’s telephone calls to the
girl after the examination corroborated her story - that he intended to check
whether the girl had told her mother anything.
“The complainant’s story to the police, court and her mother
about what happened and the main details were consistent and almost identical.
Her testimony and watching her interviews with the police’s child investigator
create the impression that this is an intelligent, decent girl who testifies
confidently and eloquently,” the judge wrote in his summary.
Nonetheless, Zaban said he acquitted the doctor “because the
version he gave about the goings-on was reliable and his testimony left a
favorable impression.”
Zaban believed the doctor’s explanation that he had called
the girl at home several times to tell her the medication he prescribed was
missing, because it transpired that the prescribed drug was indeed unavailable
at the pharmacy at the time.
Finally, the judge said “it’s hard to assume the defendant,
a family man and respected doctor in his community, would take such a great
risk and molest a 13-year-old girl sexually while having a conversation of a
sexual nature with her in broad daylight in a bustling, public clinic.”
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