UPDATE NOVEMBER 7, 2023: A judge ruled on Friday that James Heaps, the former UCLA gynecologist who was convicted last October of multiple charges of sexual abuse of patients, can be retried for sexual assault of an additional woman.
Heaps, 67, had faced a total of 21 counts in his original trial. He was found guilty of five counts of sexually abusing his female patients and not guilty of seven of those counts. The jury deadlocked on the remaining charges. The judge in the case declared a mistrial for those counts where the jury was deadlocked. The retrial date has not been determined.
UPDATE APRIL 27, 2023: James Heaps, the former UCLA gynecologist who was convicted in October of multiple charges of sexual abuse of patients, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Wednesday, reports ABC7.
ORIGINAL OCTOBER 24, 2022 ARTICLE:
Los Angeles, California – A jury found former University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) gynecologist Dr. James Heaps guilty on Thursday of five counts of sexually abusing his female patients.
Heaps, 65, had faced a total of 21 counts. He was found not guilty of seven of those counts, with the jury deadlocked on the remaining charges, reports the Associated Press. The judge in the case declared a mistrial for those counts where the jury was deadlocked.
According to the university, Heaps was employed by UCLA as an ob-gyn from 2014 to 2018. He also worked on a part-time basis at the UCLA student health center from approximately 1983 through June of 2010. He was indicted in 2019.
Heaps’ former patients said he groped them, conducted unnecessary exams, or made inappropriate comments.
Thursday’s verdict follows payments of nearly $700 million by UCLA to Heaps’ victims, a record amount paid by a public university.
UCLA is just one of several U.S. institutions of higher education that have faced lawsuits and allegations of improper handling of sexual misconduct cases involving doctors. Those other schools include Michigan State, Ohio State and the University of Southern California.
Just last week, CS reported that Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian will pay more than $165 million to 147 women who say they were sexually abused by former gynecologist Robert Hadden.