Doctor Faces Arraignment on Assault Counts

A 31-year-old doctor at Huntington Memorial Hospital is to be arraigned Friday on felony charges of sexually assaulting two women patients in the hospital last year.

Pezhman Ebrahimzadeh, a resident in surgery at the Pasadena hospital, faces proceedings in Pasadena Superior Court on charges of rape with a foreign object and sexual battery.

A lengthy preliminary hearing that ended Dec. 15 included tearful testimony from the two victims, a 33-year-old married woman and a 27-year-old single woman, Pasadena Police Detective Bud Ireland said. The women’s names were withheld at their request, the detective said.

“There is a possibility there might be other victims,” he said.

A 1990 graduate of Rush Medical Center in Chicago and a former County-USC Medical Center resident, Ebrahimzadeh began working at the Pasadena hospital in July, 1993, as a surgical resident, Ireland said.

The criminal accusations against him arose in October, 1993, when the 33-year-old woman reported to police that she was attacked when she came to the hospital emergency room for treatment and Ebrahimzadeh was called to examine her.

In February, 1994, in the midst of the police investigation, the 27-year-old woman came forward. The woman said she had been assaulted in July, 1993, when she came to the hospital for an outpatient checkup, but that she had never reported the incident.

Months after the alleged assault, the woman told police, she had entered the hospital, seen Ebrahimzadeh’s photograph on the wall among those of other doctors and finally confided to a friend that she had been attacked, Ireland said.

“When you’re attacked by a doctor, there’s an element of doubt, that it really didn’t happen,” Ireland said, explaining the woman’s delay.

Ebrahimzadeh is no longer working at Huntington and is free on $50,000 bail awaiting trial. His attorney, Charles English, did not return calls seeking comment.