A doctor who claimed he used his penis to perform "tantric healing" on a woman and a teenage girl at a Sydney sleep clinic has been found guilty of 22 charges including multiple counts of indecent assault.
Ali Khorami, 49, a GP who worked as a night-shift sleep technician at the Woolcock Clinic in Glebe, faced trial accused of indecently assaulting five female patients at the clinic in 2018 and drugging one of them with a sleeping tablet.
Ali Khorami outside court last month.Credit:Peter Rae
All of the patients, aged between 16 and 29, had gone to the clinic for overnight sleep studies, which involved them being connected to wires and being filmed as they slept, with Khorami watching over them.
Khorami was shown on CCTV repeatedly going into the patients' rooms throughout the night. He was also shown unzipping his pants, placing his penis into the teenage girl's hand, and appearing to rub his own genitals.
On Monday, a NSW District Court jury found Khorami guilty of drugging one of the women with Temazepam with the intent to commit aggravated indecent assault, as well as 19 charges of indecent assault and two counts of committing an act of indecency relating to the remaining four patients.
He was found not guilty of three other charges, after the jury deliberated for just over two days.
Khorami did not speak to waiting media as he left court. Prosecutors will seek on Tuesday to have him detained before sentencing proceedings, where he is facing a maximum 25 years' imprisonment.
Khorami denied during the trial that he touched three of the women but agreed he touched his penis while he was in the room with the 29-year-old woman and placed his penis on the hand of the 16-year-old girl.
He maintained that they were not sleeping at the time, telling the jury his actions were performed with the patients' permission as a form of "tantric healing" which required their eyes to be closed.
Khorami claimed the CCTV did not show him masturbating, but rather engaging in sacred and non-sexual "penis rubbing" which was "different from masturbation" and a form of worship or prayer.
He gave evidence that the human body has seven chakras, six of which can have energy transferred to them using someone's hand. The remaining "sacral chakra", located in the genitals, has energy transferred "with penis of healer".
"If you search 'penis blessing' you can see a lot of blessing on YouTube," he said. "Penis is not just for sex, not for urination. It's to transfer tantra energy."
In closing submissions, Khorami's barrister Tony Evers said it was possible the 16-year-old and 29-year-old agreed to the "treatment" then later became embarrassed by what they agreed to. He said CCTV was unclear in the remaining three cases.
Crown prosecutor Roger Kimbell said in his closing address that the case had nothing to do with tantric healing or penis worship but was all about a man taking advantage of girls and women who were vulnerable and alone.
Khorami is the subject of an interim prohibition order by the Health Care Complaints Commission, which says he "must not provide any health services, either in paid employment or voluntarily, to any person".
In a statement, the Woolcock Clinic said it has carried out an external audit of sleep studies since Khorami's time at the clinic and implemented "a number of additional patient security measures" including an independent surveillance system.
"We also enhanced our protocols so that all sleep technicians must be monitored by another staff
member if they enter a patient’s room during a sleep study," the clinic said.
"The Woolcock Clinic assisted NSW Police at all stages of its investigation."
Georgina Mitchell is a court reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.
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2020-07-06 07:44:15Z
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