L.A. doctor who regarded female patients as 'prey' given 12-year jail sentence for string of sex attacks 

• Kevin Brown is second of former Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown's four sons to be jailed

By Gareth Finighan
Updated: 12:51 EDT, 22 April 2012

The son of Bermuda's former Premier has been jailed for 12 years and eight months for a string of sex attacks on vulnerable women.

Dr Kevin Brown, who ran a medical practice in Los Angeles, was found guilty of 21 charges including sexual battery by fraud, sexual exploitation by a physician, sexual penetration with a foreign object and committing a lewd act upon a child. He had pleaded not guilty to 30 felony counts including forcible rape.

The attacks on nine patients - including a 15-year-old girl - took place at Brown's surgery during routine medical check-ups between 2003 and 2008.

Predator: Kevin Brown, pictured during his trial in July, took advantage of women visiting his Los Angeles surgery

At today's sentencing, Brown was also ordered to pay $18,000 in fines and penalties to his victims. He must also register as a sex offender for life.

During his trial in July, prosecutors said Brown, 40, ran his Crenshaw Boulevard practice as 'his personal playground' and viewed female patients as 'his prey'.

The married father had faced similar charges in 2004 and 2006 but was acquitted on both those occasions. However, he was arrested yet again in July 2008 after assaulting an undercover police officer posing as a patient. The police sting operation had been launched a year earlier after detectives received yet another complaint against Brown.

Playboy: Brown rubbed shoulders with celebrities at a charity poker tournament just weeks before his arrest

The female officer, who made an appointment with Brown for an injured ankle, testified that Brown lifted up her shirt and bra and fondled her breast during an examination. The assault was recorded on monitoring equipment worn by the detective and played back to the jury during Brown's trial.

The trial jury also heard how other patients were given inappropriate pelvic and breast examinations. One victim who visited Brown to be evaluated for weight loss treatment said she had her breasts fondled and Brown also nuzzled his face in the breasts of another victim and sucked on her nipples, the court heard.

Deputy District Attorney Ann-Marie Wise had estimated Brown could get a maximum term of 16 years and ten months in state prison for his crimes.

'I am extremely pleased with this verdict, and the women who came forward were very brave,' she said after Brown had been found guilty.

Just weeks before his 2008 arrest, Brown - whose father Ewart Brown was Premier of Bermuda between 2006 and 2010 - organised a celebrity poker tournament at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in support of his own charity, the Urban Health Institute. Actor Don Cheadle, reality TV star Khloe Kardashian and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner were among the celebrity guests, as was Brown's father.

The charity, which has now been disbanded, later came under scrutiny after it was revealed that only a small proportion of its funds was ever spent on the needy.

In the dock: Brown insisted he was innocent and his defence team claimed the authorities had a vendetta against him

Brown had to post $4million bail following his arrest because LA authorities were concerned that he could abscond to Bermuda while awaiting trial. He is now being probed by white-collar crime investigators over allegations that he defrauded a national health insurance scheme.

Kevin Brown is the second of Ewart Brown's four sons to be jailed. Younger son Maurice Pitt, 29, is currently serving a ten-year sentence in California for armed robbery.

Father courted controversy during his four years in charge of Britain's oldest colony

Controversial: Ewart Brown's premiership was dogged by scandal

Ewart Brown - who attended the Criminal Court House in Los Angeles throughout his son's three-week trial -  also practiced as a doctor in the city, but returned to his native Bermuda in 1993 to pursue a political career.

He eventually took over the premiership of Britain's oldest colony in 2006 and secured a third general election victory for the Progressive Labour Party in 2007.

But his four-year premiership was beset by controversy. Bermuda's national debt ballooned from $300million to more than $1billion under his flamboyant and confrontational leadership and Brown was often accused of squandering taxpayer money.

In one nine-month period he ran up bills of $265,000 on overseas travel alone, staying at exclusive resorts such as the seven-star Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai and travelling in limousines accompanied by crews of bodyguards and flunkeys.

In 2007, leaked police documents revealed Premier Brown had been a focus of an investigation into multi-million dollar corruption at a government-run housing quango set up to provide affordable accommodation for the poor.

Prosecutors later stated that they could find evidence only of  'unethical rather than illegal' behaviour, and no charges were filed. Brown later demanded that control of Bermuda's police service be transferred from the Crown to his own government.

And the regime was constantly accused of cronyism and corruption - particularly when lucrative government contracts were 'awarded ' to associates rather than put out to tender, only to then run massively over budget.

Hobnobbing: Despite being a fervent supporter of independence, Dr Brown hosted a state visit by the Queen in 2009

Premier Brown's successor, Paula Cox, has promised to launch an inquiry into how one such contract was awarded, while the Auditor General's office has been granted fresh powers to investigate government contracts under Brown's premiership.

Premier Brown - who was also held the Tourism Ministry portfolio during his leadership -  came in for further criticism after it was revealed he attended his son's 2008 charity poker tournament at the Playboy Mansion. Newspapers on the island claimed that Brown's Tourism Ministry had donated prizes for the charity event in the form of free holidays to Bermuda. The expose caused outrage on the deeply Christian and conservative territory, where gambling and pornography are illegal.

And the controversial leader also survived a 2009 no-confidence motion - and a public demonstration outside Parliament - after personally negotiating an under-the-table deal with the White House for four Guantanamo Bay prisoners to be repatriated to the North Atlantic territory.

The incident embarrassed Downing Street which is responsible for Bermuda's national security and foreign affairs. The Queen's representative on the island, Governor Sir Richard Gozney, was unaware of the deal until the plane transporting the four inmates touched down on the island.

Three-times married Premier Brown, 65, a staunch advocate of independence, later claimed he had acted on humanitarian grounds, but critics argued the move was a calculated snub to Britain and, with his son awaiting trial in the U.S., a deliberate attempt to curry favour and influence with lawmakers in Washington.

Always claiming that he would stand for just one term in office, Premier Brown quit politics last year and has remained largely out of the public eye ever since. He spends his retirement in lavish properties in Manhattan, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Martha's Vineyard and Bermuda.

A petition requesting a Royal Commission of Inquiry 'into the numerous and various allegations and implications of Government fiscal impropriety and corruption' is now being circulated across the island.

And in Britain, MP Andrew Rosindell - chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Overseas Territories - has written to the Foreign and Commonwealth office and Bermuda's governor calling for an investigation into corruption on the island.