Winnipeg doctor guilty of sexually assaulting teen patient in hospital bed
Posted May 24, 2013 9:52 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A Winnipeg doctor has been convicted of sexually assaulting a teen patient inside a children’s hospital.
Walid Abdelhamid, who is 32, will be sentenced later this year after learning his fate on Friday.
Abdelhamid was working at Health Sciences Centre in 2009 when he twice assaulted the 15-year-old boy, who had suffered a serious back injury while riding a motorbike.
Now 18, the youth testified he awoke twice in the night to find Abdelhamid fondling him — both incidents occurred when he was immobilized and being dosed with morphine for pain.
Defence lawyer Marty Minuk repeatedly suggested the young man may have been too high to comprehend what happened.
But the young man denied that was the case, saying he knew exactly what was going on.
A videotaped police interview was taken in his hospital room hours after the alleged attacks.
A copy of the statement was played in court and shows the boy in obvious physical discomfort hooked up to tubes as he awaits surgery.
“At first I was thinking it was like normal and he was checking something,” he told police in the statement.
Abdelhamid was released on bail following his arrest. He left Canada and was arrested in Greece and sent back to Canada in May 2011, where he has been in custody ever since.
