Appeal of psychiatrist Cimický: Prague City Court hears rape and extortion case
Prague City Court today hears an appeal in the case of psychiatrist Jan Cimický, convicted to five years in prison for extortion and sexual assaults on female patients.
Appeals court in Prague reconsiders psychiatrist Cimický
Prague City Court today hears an appeal in the case of psychiatrist Jan Cimický. A district court has imposed a sentence of five years imprisonment and a ten-year ban on practising his profession for extortion and sexual assaults. According to ceskenoviny.cz, this is the second hearing of the case by an appeal panel — the conviction verdict was previously quashed due to procedural defects.
The eighty-eight-year-old Cimický has consistently denied guilt. According to the prosecution, the criminal conduct took place between 1979 and 2019, with the victims being predominantly his female patients.
The state prosecutor charged the doctor with 35 cases of extortion and four rapes. The injured parties were primarily patients of the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital and later the Modrá laguna mental health centre, which Cimický founded himself after leaving Bohnice. The prosecutor stated that the doctor performed various sexual acts on the women and knowingly exploited the authority and advantage arising from his position as a publicly known physician. Among those harmed are also students who completed their practice placement at the Bohnice facility.
The prosecution qualified a substantial portion of the acts as extortion, since the old criminal code defined rape as coercion into sexual intercourse or similar sexual acts through violence or threat of violence. The new criminal code effective from 2010 extends this definition to also include threat of serious harm — in this respect the district court upheld the prosecution's charges.
Acts originally qualified as rape were, however, reclassified by the court as the criminal offence of sexual assault, a factual basis that was added to the law last year. For Cimický, this legal qualification is more favourable.
Source: Google News CZ — Crime (cs)