A former University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) gynecologist was found guilty Oct. 20 of sexually abusing patients during his tenure at the university.
Dr. James Mason Heaps, 65, was indicted on 21 sex-related charges involving seven patients between 2009 and 2018 but was only found guilty of five counts—three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person.
The charges involved two patients, with jurors finding that both victims were particularly vulnerable and that Heaps had abused a position of trust.
The judge acquitted Heaps on seven other charges—including one count of sexual exploitation—while jurors deadlocked on the remaining nine. Prosecutors have not announced if any of those charges will be retried.
Heaps—who is set to be sentenced Nov. 17—is facing “anywhere between 21 and 28 years” in state prison, along with mandatory lifetime registration as a sex offender, Deputy District Attorney Danette Meyers said after the verdicts were read.
“He’s a predator,” Meyers told reporters shortly after Heaps was handcuffed in the downtown Los Angeles courtroom and led away to a courthouse lockup.
One of the victims whom Heaps was convicted of sexually battering told the judge, “I’m fearful. I don’t feel safe.”
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael D. Carter ordered Heaps to be taken into custody without bail shortly after he was found guilty.
Heaps’s attorney, Leonard Levine, had urged the judge to allow his client to remain free on bond, saying electronic monitoring or house arrest could be ordered if Carter had any concerns about Heaps’s whereabouts.
Defense Attorney ‘Disappointed’ With Guilty Verdicts
Outside court, Heaps’s attorney said the defense was “disappointed” with the guilty verdicts, but gratified with the panel’s decision on the counts on which Heaps was acquitted.Levine said he is planning on appealing the verdict, and Heaps would be found not guilty if jurors had heard all of their evidence they provided.
He told reporters that there were “significant issues and rulings that the court made that we think had an effect on the jury—evidence that we offered that the court would not introduce or allowed to be introduced concerning financial bias on the part of the alleged victims, the contact with attorneys well before they contacted the police, the filing of lawsuits and so forth.”
He said he also plans to ask the judge to grant his client a new trial.
Meyers countered that the prosecution would have had the right to call “all 500-plus victims” who were part of a civil lawsuit if that had been deemed admissible, saying that it would have been a “two-second verdict” if that evidence had been deemed admissible.
Fellow prosecutor Rosa Zavala said the verdict demonstrated that “no one is above the law.”
“Dr. Heaps is not above the law. These women were brave. They told their story and now he is going to be held accountable,” she said.
In her rebuttal argument earlier this month, Zavala told jurors that Heaps capitalized on the “vulnerability” of his patients and “all of these medical needs created an excuse for him to begin some sort of procedure that then turns sexual.”
Heaps’s attorney countered that the evidence showed the examinations performed by his client were “appropriate” and “for a medical purpose.”
UCLA’s $700 Million Settlement
Heaps—who was ordered in 2019 to “cease and desist from the practice of medicine as a condition of bail” after he was first charged in 2019—served as a gynecologist/oncologist, affiliated with UCLA, for nearly 35 years.At one time, he was reportedly the highest-paid physician in the University of California system and had treated about 6,000 patients, attorneys said.
More than 500 lawsuits were filed against Heaps and UCLA, accusing the school of failing to protect patients after becoming aware of the misconduct.
Attorney Darren Kavinoky—who along with colleague Jennifer McGrath represents three of the charged victims and more than 300 victims in a civil lawsuit against the University of California that resulted in a $374 million settlement—also commented after the verdict.
“Today, justice has been served. James Heaps is now a convicted felon, a convicted sex offender. While nothing can give these women back what they lost as a result of this case or reverse the trauma that Dr. Heaps inflicted, this conviction holds him accountable for his horrific actions and is a victory for us all,” he said.
The settlement came on top of a $243.6 million resolution of lawsuits involving about 200 patients announced in February, and a $73 million settlement of federal lawsuits reached last year involving roughly 5,500 plaintiffs.
The lawsuits alleged that UCLA actively and deliberately concealed Heaps’s sexual abuse of patients and continued to allow Heaps to have unfettered sexual access to female patients—many of whom were cancer patients—at the university.
UCLA issued a statement in May saying, “The conduct alleged to have been committed by Heaps is reprehensible and contrary to our values. We are grateful to all those who came forward, and hope this settlement is one step toward providing some level of healing for the plaintiffs involved.”
The federal lawsuits alleged that while patients complained about Heaps years earlier, it was not until late 2017 that the allegations were reported to UCLA’s Title IX office, and a formal investigation was opened.
Heaps was allowed to continue seeing patients—both during the investigation and after the university informed him that his contract would not be renewed when it expired on June 30, 2018.
The university ended his employment and notified law enforcement of the allegations against him on June 14, 2018.
Heaps was arrested in June 2019 and charged with multiple counts of sexual battery. Following his arrest, many more women came forward to report alleged sexual misconduct, and in August 2020, Heaps was charged with additional felonies.
In a similar case, the University of Southern California in March 2021 agreed to pay more than $1.1 billion to former patients of ex-campus gynecologist George Tyndall, the largest sex abuse payout in higher education history.
Tyndall—the only full-time gynecologist at the university’s student health clinic from 1989 until 2016—has pleaded not guilty to dozens of sexual assault charges.
