Texas doctor Shafeeq Sheikh was found guilty of raping a sedated patient in her hospital bed last week but will not face any time behind bars. Instead, the court sentenced the 46-year-old rapist to a mere 10 years probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender. (He lost his medical license after his arrest.)
“The rape occurred in 2013, when Sheikh was working as an internal medicine resident at Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital. The woman, identified in several Houston Chronicle articles only as Laura, said that Sheikh came into the hospital room where she, then 27, was heavily sedated and tethered to machines while being treated for an asthma attack.
In 2015, Laura described the incident to the Chronicle in detail. She said the doctor came into her room and began to grope her, but the sedation made her too weak to protest or fight. She says she was able to press the room’s call button, but no one responded, and ultimately Sheikh turned her over and raped her. A police report later revealed that the apparatus connected to the call button had been unplugged.”1
Although Sheikh admitted to sex having sex with the woman, he claimed it was consensual. Indeed his lawyer went on to intimate that perhaps it was the victim’s fault for causing Sheikh’s overwhelming desire:
“Here we have this Latina woman with her fake boobs that came onto that little nerdy middle-aged guy, and he lost his mind.”2
That a jury could find this obviously ill man guilty of rape but only recommend probation, rather than prison time, is confounding, infuriating and quite frankly- disgusting.
