Post by dive61364 on Dec 11, 2013 11:00:33 GMT -6
By Steve Schmadeke, Chicago Tribune reporter
10:58 p.m. CST, December 10, 2013
An expectant mother, worried that she might lose her unborn baby, was raped by her longtime gynecologist 11 years ago during an exam at his office, but on Tuesday she still struggled to describe the pain after taking the witness stand.
"It's like an endless knot in the pit of my belly that never goes away," the woman said in a soft voice. "It never goes away. How do I describe to you, judge, that feeling?
"I am afraid and paranoid all the time," she continued. "I am afraid to be seen by a doctor, not just men (but) women too."
The former physician, Bruce Sylvester Smith, was charged in 2010 after a series of Tribune stories chronicled the lax treatment he and other physicians accused of sex crimes had received from police, prosecutors and state regulators. He continued to practice medicine for almost seven years after the attack, even as sexual assault and misconduct complaints against him multiplied.
On Tuesday, Smith, 60, had nothing to say before a Cook County judge sentenced him to 18 years in prison.
The Tribune review found that at least 16 registered sex offenders held physician or chiropractor licenses and none had their licenses revoked after being convicted. One doctor convicted of sexually abusing a patient was not disciplined by the state at all.
DNA evidence that would eventually lead prosecutors to charge Smith with two counts of criminal sexual assault was collected right after the 2002 rape but was never sent for testing until after the Tribune chronicled the litany of complaints against Smith.
The state didn't suspend his license until 2009 — almost nine years after receiving the first complaint from another woman who said she was raped during an exam. A total of seven women filed complaints — three of whom told authorities Smith had sexually assaulted them — before the state moved to discipline him.
His state license was revoked in 2011 — for substandard postoperative care unrelated to the sexual assault charges. He is no longer board-certified to practice medicine.
The victim at the heart of the criminal charges against Smith had previously testified at an administrative hearing that she was eight months pregnant at the time of 2002 exam at Smith's South Side office. She was lying on an examination table with her legs in stirrups when Smith grabbed her legs and penetrated her.
"I was afraid when I realized what he was doing, yes. He's a doctor, and he's down there with my baby," the woman, who worked as a teacher assistant, told authorities, according to a transcript of the hearing.
Immediately after leaving the office, the woman called her sister, who contacted a rape hotline. At a counselor's urging, the woman underwent a rape exam at the University of Chicago Hospitals the day of the assault. Days later she filed a complaint with Chicago police.
According to evidence presented at the five-day jury criminal trial in January, the prosecutor who initially reviewed the case in 2002 declined to press charges pending further evidence. The former head of medical prosecutions with the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Lisa Stephens, testified Tuesday that "to her knowledge" the agency closed its case at that time.
Meanwhile, the rape kit that had been taken sat untested for years. Shortly after the newspaper story ran in 2010, a detective had it sent to a lab and it came back as a DNA match to Smith, leading to the charges.
Smith — who practiced at Chicago's Kennedy Medical Service Corp. and Michael Reese Hospital before launching a Streator-based practice, Cameo Women's Healthcare — testified at trial that he was called to a police station in March 2003 and interviewed by a detective and a prosecutor.
At the time, he denied there had been sexual intercourse because he was afraid of ruining his career and marriage, he testified. But at trial Smith testified that he had consensual sex with his patient, telling jurors he dropped his pants after she grabbed his hand and forced him into a sexual act.
On Tuesday, Assistant State's Attorney Annette Milleville told Judge Clayton Crane that those "preposterous lies" and Smith's history of sexual misconduct while in a position of power called for him to receive the maximum 30-year sentence.
"He thought he could hide behind the closed door of the exam room. He thought he could hide behind the lab coat and scrubs. He thought he could hide behind a piece of paper that was his medical license," Milleville said. "But he can't hide anymore."
Smith's attorney, Armando Sandoval, said his client served in the Army and was a former high school science teacher in the New York borough of Queens who is twice divorced with five children and no previous criminal record.
Other complaints against Smith received by the state from female patients included one who said he rubbed his private area outside his pants and touched her buttocks, ripped the sheet off a half-naked teenage girl and tried to kiss her, and drew a picture of a vibrator on the sheet covering another woman after soliciting an affair from her.
One former patient who went public with her allegations against Smith said he raped her during a pelvic exam in 2000 when she was 19 and her legs were in stirrups. Tameka Stokes said she broke down crying as she left the exam room and a nurse immediately called police. A rape exam did not turn up Smith's semen. Prosecutors declined to press charges.
"You go into the doctor trusting them, thinking they'll do the right thing for you and you come out feeling humiliated like that's been taken away from you," Stokes told authorities during a 2008 state hearing.
On Tuesday, the one victim whose allegations led to Smith's conviction took the witness stand to read from her victim impact statement.
"How do I describe the feeling of nasty and dirty, never being able to wash that feeling away, never being able to wash him away?" she said. "I put the health and care of myself and the health and care of my unborn child in his hands, but he violated that trust and he abused his position. He violated me in the worst way possible."
