Lisa Andrews #sexist houstonchronicle.com

A Harris County jury will continue deliberating on Thursday about whether a former Baylor College of Medicine doctor raped a patient while she was hospitalized in 2013 for an acute asthma attack or he had consensual sex with the woman.

The jury mulled the question for more than six hours Wednesday before calling it a day at 9:20 p.m.

The woman reported to Ben Taub staff that she had been assaulted in the dark by an unknown physician, but it took two years for Houston police to file a criminal charge against the suspect. Investigators connected DNA from her rape kit to Dr. Shafeeq Sheikh, an internal medicine resident on call at Ben Taub that night who swiped his badge to enter her floor at least 12 times.

The 32-year-old woman, who has suffered from asthma since she was 8, told jurors this week the attack derailed her life and marriage. The woman was identified as Laura in a series of Lisa Falkenberg's columns about the incident. The Chronicle does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault.

Sheikh lost his job and had his license revoked in 2015 by the Texas Board based on the finding that he posed “a continuing threat to public welfare.” The following year a Harris County judge cleared Ben Taub and Baylor of liability in a civil lawsuit brought by the patient.

Defense lawyers at the eight-day trial introduced evidence about the woman’s career as an actress and model, noting that she showed off her cleavage and rear end in what they posited were sexually suggestive online ads. DNA evidence indicated she had sex with her husband her first night at the hospital, which meant she wasn’t so debilitated, they said.

Their client, a father of four, certainly breached the Hippocratic oath and his marriage vows, his lawyers said. But they contend the patient seduced the doctor and reported the “wild” rape story to make her husband jealous and make money off a civil lawsuit.

[...]

“He made a mistake, but he didn’t sexually assault her,” attorney Lisa Andrews said in her closing argument, pointing to her 46-year-old client. “Here we have this Latina woman with her fake boobs that came onto that little nerdy middle-aged guy, and he lost his mind.”

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