Doctors & Sex Abuse: Undercover agent became a patient to catch abusive doctor
Swanee Owen was working undercover for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation when she walked into the Cumming office of Dr. Abbas Demetrios more than two decades ago. She had a problem with nail-biting, she said, and was hoping the doctor could help.
“He scanned me up and down with his eyes, and then told me to come back that night at 9 o’clock,” Owen said. “I had never in my life had a doctor tell me to come in at 9 o’clock at night. I told him OK.”
What started that day as a cover story turned into Georgia’s most successful prosecution of a predatory physician — a case that offers lessons even 20 years later about what it can take to build a case against an abusive doctor.
Owen took on the dangerous assignment after cops and prosecutors had a credible report that the doctor had sexually assaulted a patient after sedating her, and they feared she might not have been the only victim.
“I also knew if I didn’t let him do this that he would never get arrested,” Owen said in recalling the case.
Read the full story in the AJC’s national investigation, Doctors & Sex Abuse, on doctors.ajc.com
