EL CAJON, Ca – A La Mesa doctor charged with molesting a patient in 2003 told a Superior Court jury yesterday “it’s not true.”

Nasser Alavi testified that he was stunned to learn that a 22-year-old woman he was treating for anxiety and depression from May through August 2003 had accused him of fondling her and reaching inside her pants to grope her.

“No, that’s false,” Alavi said when asked by prosecutor Renee Palermo if he had taken advantage of the woman’s illness to molest her.

The woman testified earlier in Alavi’s trial before Judge Louis R. Hanoian that Alavi touched her in a sexual manner during a series of office visits, with the touching becoming increasingly intimate with each successive visit.

She said she was uncomfortable with Alavi’s actions from the outset but didn’t question them at first because growing up in the Philippines she was raised to show special respect to doctors and nurses.

Alavi, 60, is charged with one count of sexual penetration with a foreign object and seven counts of sexual battery. If convicted, he could face up to eight years in prison.

Alavi testified that the woman never complained to him and even seemed pleased with her treatment because a drug he prescribed had eased her depression and eliminated crying jags she had.

The doctor said that he couldn’t understand the woman’s complaints to authorities because he did little more than routinely check the woman’s heart, lungs and abdomen and never gave her a more intrusive pelvic examination. He said he never reached into the woman’s pubic or genital areas.

Defense attorney Earll Pott in opening statements last week suggested that the woman’s complaints of being molested could have stemmed from hallucinations she reported having.

Alavi testified yesterday that the woman told him during an Aug. 14, 2003, session that she had “started to see things crawling the walls” and “on other occasions, she saw her boyfriend in the bed when he wasn’t there.”

Based on her comments, Alavi said he diagnosed the patient as suffering “major depression with psychosis.”

Questioned by Palermo, Alavi said he considered the woman’s report of having hallucinations serious but not so serious to warrant sending her to a hospital emergency room for immediate care. He said he allowed the woman to leave his office on her own after the Aug. 14 visit and drive home.

“She looked OK to me to go,” Alavi said.

The woman had testified that she never told Alavi that she was having hallucinations.

The woman, in her earlier testimony, said Alavi had inappropriately touched her skin around her breasts with his hands whenever he examined her with a stethoscope.

Alavi, who went to medical school in his native Iran, said he was trained to cup the instrument with his hand and hold it against the patient’s skin with his fingers to keep it from moving during an examination.

The doctor said he routinely gives patients physical exams when they visit. Prosecutors said there was no medical reason for Alavi to give such exams to a physically healthy 22-year-old woman every time she came to see him for treatment of depression and anxiety.