A man who groped a 14-year-old girl on a flight from Portland to Oakland was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation, including 30 days of home detention and 1,000 hours of community service.
At the time of the 2019 flight, Andrew Alex Davoodian was a resident in anesthesiology and perioperative medicine at the OHSU School of Medicine but ended up losing his job.
In December, he pleaded guilty to one count of simple assault of a minor.
“Mr. Davoodian made some big errors, and he touched the victim in a manner he should not have. This was admittedly a very poor move, and one that Mr. Davoodian will regret for the rest of his life,” his lawyer, Jeffrey A. Turnoy, wrote to the court.
U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson ordered Davoodian, now 34, to undergo sex offender evaluation, complete recommended treatment, pay a $10,000 fine and have no contact with the victim or her family or with any minors without approval from his probation officer.
The fine is to be paid to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said Kara Britt, one of the prosecutors. The sentence was jointly recommended by the prosecution and defense after lengthy negotiations.
On the July 5, 2019, Southwest Airlines flight, Davoodian took the aisle seat in the girl’s row, with an empty middle seat between them. He struck up conversation by asking the girl her age and where she attended school. Then he began passing notes to her by typing messages on his cellphone and handing it to her to read.
At one point, he asked her when she would turn 18, whether she had a boyfriend and if she’d date him if he were her age, according to the prosecutor. Toward the end of the flight, he typed out a message, telling her to hold his hand, according to court records.
The 14-year-old girl, flying alone to visit her aunt, didn’t want to but reluctantly held his hand over the empty seat between them, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Mira Chernick. Davoodian then stroked her hand and wrist and instructed her in a phone message to move to the middle seat next to his, Chernick said.
Davoodian put his hand on the girl’s leg and rubbed her thigh and then went back to holding her hand, Chernick wrote.
Davoodian asked for the girl’s phone number. She reminded him that she was just 14 and he asked if they could meet and see a movie together sometime so they could hold hands again, according to Chernick. He typed it would be OK as long as she didn’t tell anyone, according to the prosecutor.
When the plane landed, he left without saying anything to the girl. She reported the encounter to her aunt and gave a description of Davoodian, his voice and phone.
Federal agents obtained a warrant to search his phone and found the girl’s cellphone number in it. Davoodian disputed her account but admitted he touched the girl’s upper thigh on the flight.
While on release pending trial, Davoodian traveled to New York and New Mexico, where two separate women complained to police about his behavior.
The New Mexico woman reported that Davoodian followed her around a store and would not let her leave. According to the woman, he came up to her, told her he’d been following her and asked if she was single, according to the prosecutors.
When she said no, he claimed he was a photographer, asked if she was a model, offered to take headshots of her and asked for her phone number. The woman told officers that she “panicked” and gave him her mother’s number instead. When he texted the number, the woman looked up his phone number and found news reports about the instant case and contacted police.
The woman in New York reported a similar encounter. She told police that Davoodian approached her in a store and asked if she modeled and if he could take “face pictures” of her and that he asked for her number. She stated that she gave him her number because he was “persistent.” When he texted her to ask again about modeling, the woman blocked his number, according to Chernick.
Davoodian’s lawyer said the case marks Davoodian’s first criminal conviction and he’s not likely to commit a future offense. He called his client’s actions “aberrant behavior.”
“Mr. Davoodian’s contact with the victim began out of concern for the victim’s medical well-being and devolved from there,” Turney wrote.
He argued that Davoodian, now living in California, has stable housing, support from his family and a long-term girlfriend and has been a caregiver to his ailing grandmother.
Turney also noted that the concerns raised by the women in New York and New Mexico didn’t result in any criminal charges.
The victim in the airplane case attended Thursday’s hearing with her mother but declined to address the court.
Davoodian will not be seeking to reinstate his medical license in Oregon, his lawyer said. His last day at OHSU was July 31, 2021, according to an OHSU spokesperson. His medical license expired that same day, according to Oregon Medical Board records.
Davoodian also faced a civil suit in 2021 filed by a woman who alleged he sexually assaulted her in October 2018 after they had met through an online dating app Bumble. The woman said he forced her into his Portland apartment, kissed and fondled her while she repeatedly told him to stop. When she told him she was scared, he “then looked around the room, pointed to an object and said, ‘I wonder if I grabbed that and hit you with it, if that would kill you,’" according to the woman’s lawsuit. The suit was settled last December, according to court records. The woman’s lawyer declined to comment on the settlement that was reached.
