A DOCTOR will serve only a month behind bars after it was revealed that he secretly filmed women inside a bathroom at a medical clinic.
Dr Vincent Tran, 52, pleaded guilty to five counts of filming women inside two unisex bathrooms at the Chula Vista Outpatient Center -Veterans Affairs Clinic - for months.
The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office confirmed that the doctor would only receive 30 days in jail and one year of probation for the crime.
He reportedly filmed several women, including two nurses, who used the bathrooms at the clinic in Southern California.
Tran, who has been a doctor since 2007, purchased multiple cameras that looked like pens in February 2020 and left them in the bathrooms for several months, authorities said.
“They were devastated. They both describe it as being violated. That it is tantamount to a sexual assault," said Paul Starita, who represented two of Tran’s victims.
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“It was something that really caused them great emotional distress.”
Starita claimed in June that VA officials were negligent in not taking action to protect the privacy of all employees, but especially female workers.
“The VA knew or should have known that they needed to protect their female employees,” he said.
“And by having a unisex restroom, at a minimum, they should have swept that restroom to make sure there were no recording devices in the restroom.”
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According to court filings from June, federal attorneys argued that the unisex bathrooms were used to protect people’s rights, not infringe on them.
“The VA is not alone in working through these sensitive issues,” read court documents.
“For instance, the State of California recently passed legislation requiring ‘all single-user toilet facilities in any business establishment, place of public accommodation, or state or local government agency’ to be ‘identified as all-gender toilet facilities’ through certain signage,” it continued.
“These are quintessential policy questions; ‘judicial second-guessing,’ as the Plaintiffs’ attempt, is prohibited.”
Tran was ordered to pay restitution to his victims by State Court Judge Gerry Haehnle earlier this month.
He is also required to avoid all VA hospitals and complete treatment.
His license to practice has been suspended for five years, meaning he may be able to return to doing family medicine once the suspension is lifted.
The cameras were discovered in the bathrooms in March 2021 and Tran was facing 14 misdemeanor counts of secretly filming a person and invading their privacy with a concealed camera.
An investigation found that Tran had recordings of multiple women on his personal electronic devices.
The pens would record approximately 25 minutes of footage at a time, according to the Medical Board.
Tran admitted that he would get the cameras from the bathrooms and view what they had filmed.
“[Tran] stated he would recharge the batteries and then replace the cameras in the restroom for further recording,” said the Medical Board.
He was initially charged in June, however, two nurses who were also filmed at the hospital filed a civil suit against Tran a few days later.
Starita stated that his clients were seriously “concerned” that Tran will be able to continue practicing despite the investigation.
“Our clients are nurses. And they're concerned about the fact that he's still out there in the community and still caring for patients,” he said at the time.
The other victims were notified in May 2021, according to Starita, more than two months after the cameras were discovered.
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Tran’s lawyer, Kristen Friedman, described the doctor as a “devoted family man” earlier this year.
“Dr Tran has an impeccable reputation and stellar twenty-year career as a medical professional,” Friedman told local reporters.
