LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former gynecologist on the College of California, Los Angeles was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in jail for sexually abusing feminine sufferers, in a prison trial that got here after the college system made practically $700 million in lawsuit payouts related to the case.
Dr. James Heaps, 66, has been in custody since a jury convicted him in October of three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of two sufferers.
After sentencing Heaps, Decide Michael D. Carter ordered him to register as a intercourse offender, the Los Angeles County District Lawyer’s Workplace mentioned.
Heaps, a longtime UCLA campus gynecologist, had pleaded not responsible to 21 felony counts within the sexual assaults of seven girls between 2009 and 2018.
The jury discovered him not responsible of seven of the 21 counts and was deadlocked on the remaining prices.
Heaps was indicted in 2021 on a number of counts every of sexual battery by fraud, sexual exploitation of a affected person and sexual penetration of an unconscious particular person by fraudulent illustration.
Within the wake of the scandal that erupted in 2019 following the physician’s arrest, UCLA agreed to pay practically $700 million in lawsuit settlements to a whole bunch of Heaps’ sufferers — a report quantity by a public college amid a wave of sexual misconduct scandals by campus docs lately.
UCLA sufferers mentioned Heaps groped them, made suggestive feedback or performed unnecessarily invasive exams throughout his 35-year profession. Girls who introduced the lawsuits mentioned the college ignored their complaints and intentionally hid abuse that occurred for many years throughout examinations on the UCLA pupil well being heart, the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Middle or in Heaps’ campus workplace.
Heaps continued to follow till his retirement in June 2018.