SEATTLE – A jury convicted a Seattle-area gynecologist on Wednesday of four counts of rape in the sexual assaults of two patients.
Charles Momah, 49, also faces civil lawsuits in which women claim that they were also sometimes deceived into being examined, operated on and sexually fondled by his twin, Dennis Momah, a general practitioner who is not certified in obstetrics and gynecology.
During Charles Momah’s criminal trial, prosecutors said he sexually preyed on vulnerable, desperate women, many of whom had few other places to get gynecological care or were addicted to drugs.
In the trial, Momah testified that he did have sexual relations with two women in his practice but said the relationships were consensual.
He faces up to 16 years in prison after his conviction by a jury in King County Superior Court.
In the trial, attorneys for Momah asserted the women testifying against him weren’t credible, saying one sought drugs from him and another extorted him.
Momah operated practices in the suburban cities of Federal Way and Burien, south of Seattle. The state Board of Health suspended his license in September 2003 after one patient, a main witness in his current criminal trial, reported that he raped her.
In the civil cases due to go to trial by the end of the year, the women assert that the two brothers, who are U.S. citizens born in Nigeria, sometimes switched identities and assaulted them.
On some occasions the doctor they believed to be Charles Momah was jovial and talkative with little accent. He bore certain scars and other physical characteristics.
On other visits, the man they thought was their doctor stuttered, had a heavy accent, and even appeared to be a different weight, the women claim. Neither Momah nor his brother could be contacted for comment.