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
