Former X-ray technician, John Stephen O’Brien, 47, has been convicted of illegally touching and groping a female patient for his sexual arousal. Submitted photo
The District Attorney’s Office has won conviction of a former X-ray technician for sexual battery of a patient, the Office announced July 29.
D.A. Dan Dow said a jury convicted John Stephen O’Brien, 47, of misdemeanor “sexual battery and for willfully and unlawfully touching an intimate part of a patient against her will for the purpose of sexual arousal, sexual gratification, and sexual abuse while he was working as an X-ray technician at a local medical office.”
The case began in May 2024, according to the D.A.’s news release. According to what was presented at trial, the D.A. said the unidentified female victim had gone in for an X-ray of her injured back, “and needed assistance tying her gown. After the X-rays were completed, O’Brien offered to untie the gown. When the victim agreed, O’Brien untied the gown, touched and rubbed her back, kissed her back, pressed his erection against her back, and then reached around the front of her body in an embrace and grabbed and squeezed her breasts twice.”
The victim was not named, and the medical clinic where this occurred wasn’t identified, however, the San Luis Obispo Police Department investigated the crime.
The victim reported the groping incident to the medical office and law enforcement that same day. Police interrogated O’Brien the following day and he reportedly admitted that he grabbed the woman’s breasts, “but claimed she had come on to him,” the D.A. said.
He tried that same ploy at trial, claiming that her “movements and body position were an invitation for the sexual touching,” the release said. The jury didn’t buy his story and convicted O’Brien. The fact that another woman came forward with a similar story helped bury the lies.
That prior victim said O’Brien groped her back in 2016. She said O’Brien’s actions “included unwanted touching of her private body parts.”
Normally, uncharged prior bad acts can’t be used as evidence, but the D.A. said this case fell under an exception in the law.
“This evidence was allowed,” the news release said, “under a provision of the Evidence Code that allows for certain uncharged prior conduct to be admitted as evidence when a judge rules that it is permissible for a particular purpose.”
O’Brien is slated to be sentenced in December. He potentially faces the maximum of a year in County Jail plus what is likely to be a hefty fine and possible loss of his X-ray technician license.
D.A. Dan Dow commented, “Patients place extraordinary trust in medical professionals, and that trust is especially important when a patient is in a vulnerable position during treatment.
“This verdict holds the defendant accountable for violating that trust and for the unlawful sexual abuse of a patient who did nothing to invite this conduct.”
Judge Michael Frye presided over the case and SLOPD was the investigating agency. Prosecutor was Dep. D.A. Amy Fitzpatrick. Victim Advocate Tristan Milledge, and Witness Coordinator Iris Martin, also worked on the case.
