SAN JOSE
– The Gilroy doctor accused of sexually assaulting six women
during pelvic exams defended his innocence Friday before a
courtroom split between members of the alleged victims’ families,
the doctor’s family and a handful of his former patients who drove
to San Jose from Gilroy to support their form
er doctor.
SAN JOSE – The Gilroy doctor accused of sexually assaulting six women during pelvic exams defended his innocence Friday before a courtroom split between members of the alleged victims’ families, the doctor’s family and a handful of his former patients who drove to San Jose from Gilroy to support their former doctor.
Following the second day of testimony from the defendant, Dr. Raul Ixtlahuac, 41, several of his supporters remained outside the courtroom at Hall of Justice in San Jose to lend their support for the doctor they call “trustworthy,” “caring” and a “great doctor.”
“It’s a shame people read about this in the paper and it comes out so negative,” said Vivian Gonzalez, who came to San Jose from Gilroy on her day off Friday to support Ixtlahuac. Gonzalez and her three children had been patients of Ixtlahuac’s at Kaiser Permanente, 7520 Arroyo Circle, for more than 11 years until his May 2001 arrest. Gonzalez also knew the doctor from her former job as a lab technician at Kaiser.
“(Ixtlahuac) is the type of doctor where if you were in trouble and didn’t have an appointment, he would drop everything to help you,” said Gonzalez, who had at least one pelvic exam by the doctor. “He would always go that extra mile.”
Ixtlahuac is facing up to 14 years in prison for four counts of alleged felony penetration with a foreign object and two counts of alleged felony sexual battery between the fall of 2000 and spring of 2001. Ixtlahuac has plead not guilty to the charges.
As he had done Thursday during his first day on the stand, Ixtlahuac, spent his time on the stand Friday repeatedly denying sexually assaulting any of the alleged victims whose views of the doctor during the exams were obstructed by a large drape.
The doctor who practiced as a family physician at Gilroy’s Kaiser Permanente facility for 12 years prior to his arrest also denied previous allegations by the prosecution that he removed a used condom from the trash can of an exam room.
One of the alleged victims had testified earlier in the trial that she found the condom in the trash after her exam and a nurse summoned by the woman also testified to seeing the condom; the defense says it was a latex glove.
On Friday, Deputy District Attorney Chuck Gillingham asked Ixtlahuac why he didn’t include anything in his patient chart about the post-exam conversation between the doctor and the woman who said she found the condom following the September 2000 exam.
“You didn’t write anything in your chart about her statement about seeing a condom, her complaining that you were standing too close to her or that the questions she was asking you made you feel uncomfortable,” Gillingham said. “Only that she asked questions and you answered.”
Ixtlahuac said that when the then 24-year-old patient confronted him about the exam, he checked the trash and found no condom and saw no reason to include the specifics of the conversation in his chart.
“When she started to ask me those questions, it made me uncomfortable,” said Ixtlahuac, whose often-eloquent and confident testimony concluded Friday. “I’d never been questioned like that before.”
Throughout the doctor’s trial, four alleged victims of Ixtlahuac’s testified the doctor penetrated them with his penis during pelvic examinations, and two women claimed he rubbed them in a sexual manner with his fingers. Each of the victims – ages 25 to 42 – have filed a civil suit against Ixtlahuac, and most have done the same against Kaiser.
Several of Ixtlahuac’s longtime female patients also have testified on his behalf, along with a nurse who said she observed at least one of the exams in question and that the doctor did nothing improper.
On Friday, Gonzalez said she is not surprised at the support Ixtlahuac is receiving from his former patients. Ixtlahuac had given thousands of pelvic exams to hundreds of women with no complaints until September 2000, which makes her wary of the alleged victims’ testimony, she said.
“I still know a lot of people around Kaiser, a lot of patients, and 95 percent of the people don’t believe the doctor could’ve done this in a million years,” Gonzalez said. “Knowing his personality – he is a very open doctor – I think some of these patients took this the wrong way.”
“If he was acquitted tomorrow,” she said. “I would go back to him in a heartbeat.”
Ixtlahuac’s defense attorney Doron Weinberg is expected to use the testimony of a Kaiser San Jose “measurement expert” doctor to show the jury of seven men and five women that the victims’ allegations are physically impossible. Last week the doctor reported to the jury Ixtlahuac’s erection size and the distance from his pelvic bone to the ground.
The argument is expected to be that the exam table – which there is a replica of in the courtroom – is too high off the ground for the 5-foot, 8-and-a-half-inch-tall doctor.
“We believe the physical evidence will show you have to be either an acrobat or someone of superhuman proportion to do the things they’ve alleged he’s done,” Weinberg said last week.
Ixtlahuac was arrested in May 2001 and has since been free on a $250,000 bond and placed on administrative leave from Kaiser. His medical license also has been suspended pending the trial outcome.
