The man was sentenced last year to eight years in prison for raping patients on ten occasions. The new ruling concerns crimes committed before the first sentence, so there is no legal basis for imposing any further punishment, Uppsala District Court has concluded.
The court is therefore ruling as if all 20 crimes had been dealt with in the same sentence. The maximum sentence would then be eight years in prison.
The prosecutor, however, had wanted the man to receive at least three more years in prison.
Reports of further suspected rapes came in after the doctor's former patients heard about the first trial and sentence.
Many had been reluctant to report what had happened to them and had tried to suppress it, according to prosecutor Gunnar Brodin. The turning point came when they saw that many others had been affected.
Many found the courage to report, says the prosecutor.
The reports led to the doctor being charged with 13 further counts of rape against patients, but the court acquitted him completely in three cases and found him guilty of aggravated sexual assault in eight cases instead of rape.
The doctor has denied any wrongdoing and, among other things, argued that the examinations of the patients' genitals were medically justified. However, the court concluded that the doctor's conduct during the examinations showed that he was seeking sexual gratification.
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