LA policewoman tells hearing of alleged inappropriate touching by Dr. Kevin Brown
LOS ANGELES (AP) — An undercover vice officer investigating reports of sexual violations by the son of Premier Dr. Ewart Brown wept on the witness stand as she told of her own alleged assault by the physician.
Officer Stacy Young testified she was wearing a wire and other officers were listening in when she went to Dr. Kevin Antario Brown's Crenshaw district office feigning an ankle injury while playing tennis.
She said he at first followed protocol while he diagnosed a possible case of tendinitis, but he abruptly lifted her shirt and bra and began fondling her breast.
"He was facing me," Young said, occasionally wiping away tears with a tissue. "It was so quick.
"As soon as I saw his hand on my breast, I pushed it away. ... I said, 'What are you doing?'
"He backed up and said, 'Oh, I'm sorry.' ... He explained he wanted to check something under my breast."
The woman was among three alleged victims who spoke at a preliminary hearing Tuesday that will help a judge determine whether there is enough evidence for Dr. Kevin Brown to stand trial.
Dr. Brown, 37, faces 33 felony sex counts involving 12 alleged victims over five years.
Last year he pleaded not guilty to all the charges, including acts against an undercover police officer and a 15-year-old. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.
Earlier in Tuesday's hearing, two women testified that the doctor touched them inappropriately when they came to him as patients.
"I felt like I had cheated on my husband or something," said one woman, a mother of four who had recently given birth when she said Dr. Brown fondled her breasts and asked if she was still lactating.
The woman testified she visited the doctor at a weight loss clinic — one of two locations where he worked — to lose the weight she had gained in pregnancy.
During a visit in January 2008, she said, Dr. Brown entered a treatment room ostensibly to check on her weight loss.
When he lifted her shirt and fondled her breasts, "that's when I knew this was something different from checking on how the weight loss was going," she said.
She described him as looking at her with "a look of lusting" and said he hugged her and placed his head on her chest and began confiding things about his life.
Then she said he tried to pull down her pants. "I said, 'What are you doing?' and he said, 'Oh, I'm moving fast, huh?' I said, 'Yeah, you haven't taken me to dinner."'
She said she was fearful at that point and just wanted to get out of the room. Finally, she said Dr. Brown left the room, then returned with a slip of paper with his cell phone number on it and told her to call him.
She said she told her husband what happened but decided not to call police because "I didn't want to go through this".
But six months later she saw the doctor on the TV news being arrested and she decided to come forward.
A 20-year-old woman who went to Dr. Brown with complaints of fatigue testified the doctor lifted her shirt, exposed her breasts and ran his hands along her body in what felt like a caress.
She said he suggested she might benefit from having an older man in her life.
The woman said she reported the incident to her mother who called the police.
Dr. Brown's attorney, Blair Burke, cross-examined the woman for more than an hour, seeking to show that some details of her story to police did not match her testimony.
Charges against the doctor include forcible rape, lewd act upon a child, sexual battery and sexual exploitation by a physician.
The hearing is expected to last until Friday. Brown is free on $4 million bail.