Bassam el Absi, 71, a former radiologist struck off in 2019 from the College of Physicians and now retired, was sentenced Monday in Bordeaux to seventeen years in prison. He was accused by eight women, former patients but also a medical secretary and a young girl aged 15 at the time of the events, of rape and sexual assault committed between 2012 and 2018, which he denied en bloc before the Assize Court.
The public prosecutor had demanded 15 years’ imprisonment against him, for facts that this practitioner from Langon (Gironde) had erected into a “system” and a “way of life”, according to the prosecution. “He believes that this verdict is unfair,” said one of his lawyers, Me Pierre Sirgue. The lawyer deplored a decision “in line with all this procedure, where everything was done to lead to a guilt which was the conviction of the jurors from the start. There was no leeway to assert doubts.
“This is the type of current case where the statements of the victims are sufficient to establish proof of guilt”, judged Pierre Sirgue, who plans to meet with his client on Tuesday to consider a possible appeal.
Three new complaints pending
At the hearing, the victims described specific facts, touching at the level of the private parts or digital penetrations. A 31-year-old plaintiff explained to the court that she had not had a “sentimental life” for six years because of the accused: “He screwed up my life, I don’t know if I will ever be able to trust a male “.
The septuagenarian accused, also sentenced to a five-year socio-judicial follow-up, firmly contested everything. He explained his way of working, supporting gestures, refuted the acts he would have committed and invoked medical reasons to deny having had an erection in contact with certain women.
“The multiplicity of victims weighed in the thinking of the jurors, especially since we learned during the hearing of the existence of three new complaints, one of which would not be time-barred”, declared Me Sylvie Reulet, lawyer for a civil party, who assured that his “very disqualifying behavior towards the victims” and his “double personality” played against the accused.
“An El Absi system”
In her requisitions, Friday, the representative of the public prosecutor had denounced “an El Absi system, an El Absi way of life” based on the grip and using “a double power”. The power “of the status of doctor and that of the money he earns to pervert the relationship with women”, she explained, in reference to the many gifts that the man made to his entourage and his employees.
Family planning welcomed in a press release the “courage” of the victims in this procedure, and recalled that the file includes a total of seventeen statements against the former doctor.