Witnesses testify against Michigan Hockey Doc Zvi Levran in sexual misconduct case
Content Warning: This story contains details about alleged sexual assaults. This content may be difficult to read and upsetting.
Four former hockey players testified Tuesday against Zvi Levran, the Michigan-based urologist facing numerous allegations that he sexually assaulted athletes and other patients for years, describing in graphic detail visits with him at his home office that included unwanted sexual contact.
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That testimony was provided in the 47th district court in Farmington Hills, Mich., as part of a preliminary exam in one of three cases against Levran. In that district, there is an aggregate case of 31 total counts of criminal sexual conduct, which includes charges from 13 different victims.
Levran is facing four additional CSC charges stemming from two additional cases out of the 48th district court. Those cases have not been consolidated; preliminary exams are slated to take place for those later this month. He has pleaded not guilty on all 35 counts.
The players, all of whom knew Levran through his connections as a team doctor and yoga instructor to multiple local high school programs and select teams, described experiences in which Levran touched and massaged their genitals during physical exams and/or yoga sessions in the basement of his home. Three players said he digitally penetrated them in their anus as part of what Levran described to them as a prostate exam, despite the fact that they went to him for consultations unrelated to their prostate. The fourth player said Levran massaged the area around his anus but did not penetrate him. Two players described incidents in which Levran placed their penis in his mouth. All four said that he asked them questions pertaining to their sexual activity.
The first witness of the day said Levran suggested he smell and taste his own semen to ensure it was healthy and encouraged him to ejaculate on his girlfriend’s back during intercourse and send him the photograph so he could inspect the sample.
The third player who testified said Levran performed a prostate exam without gloves.
The Athletic is withholding names of the witnesses, per the order of presiding Judge James Brady. The Athletic does not typically reveal the identity of any alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent.
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Dr. Ganesh Palapattu, the urology department chair at the University of Michigan, testified as an expert witness in the case. When asked about what was described in the Farmington Hills Police Department reports from the charged cases, Palpattu said Levran’s conduct was “unethical and unacceptable.”
During cross-examination, Levran’s attorney, Jonathan Jones, asked the first three players who testified whether they were physically prevented from leaving. (The fourth player who testified is slated to be cross-examined on Wednesday, when the exam continues.) Each of the players said they were not. They expressed varying degrees of discomfort with what they experienced, but all cited having pre-existing relationships with Levran, a trusted team doctor in local hockey circles, and said they deferred to his medical expertise.
“I didn’t get confrontational with him. I trusted him. We had a relationship. I knew him before. I didn’t second-guess it,” said the witness, who was 25 at the time. “I was never going to send him a picture of my semen. … I know in the back of my mind I was never going to do that.”
The witness said he went to see Levran on an additional occasion in January 2021 to seek more clarity about his bloodwork, particularly his testosterone levels. Levran put the player through a rigorous yoga session after which he began massaging the player’s groin area, testicles and scrotum, and touched his penis. He said he felt “very uncomfortable” and “exposed.”
“When that started happening, I was kind of in shock. I couldn’t really believe that he was touching it like that, touching those areas on my body like that,” the witness said.
The witness said Levran was, during the massage, explaining the various chakras on the body, and identified the area near his rectum as the last chakra. Levran, the witness testified, applied more and more pressure to that area. The witness said he “could feel … his fingernail go in” his rectum. He said he was in shock and didn’t know what to do.
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“I felt so uncomfortable that I just wanted to get out of the house,” the witness said. “I wasn’t going to get up and run; I wasn’t going to try and make things confrontational. I knew once I got out of there, that was it.”
The second witness, who saw Levran for medical concerns on a number of different occasions beginning in the summer of 2018, said that the multiple hernia exams he underwent with Levran were more “involved” than previous hernia exams he had experienced with other doctors. He said Levran rolled his testicles in his hands and stretched his penis repeatedly.
The second witness also described feeling reticent and uncomfortable with a rectal prostate exam Levran performed in December 2021. The witness said he had two relatives — his grandfather and his uncle — who had prostate cancer, but did not want to undergo that exam. Levran, he said, told him about a young patient he knew who had suffered serious “implications” from early-onset prostate cancer.
The witness said he deferred to his medical expertise, figuring “doctor knows best” and best to just get it over with and move forward.
“He was my team doctor all through (high school) hockey,” the witness said. “I trusted him.”
Like the first witness, the third witness also said that he went to see Levran for yoga to help treat a medical issue. The witness, who knew Levran from his time playing at a local high school, initially went to him during the fall of 2021 for some residual issues he was experiencing from a previous kidney stone procedure. During the initial physical he underwent in Levran’s basement office, Levran watched him urinate to inspect his stream, performed a prostate exam without providing informed consent or without gloves, and asked him, while his finger was in his anus, whether he wanted to know where the male G-spot was.
The player found that bizarre, but said he understood Levran to be a bit eccentric. However, Levran’s conduct became more concerning in subsequent visits to his home for medical yoga sessions. In one, he said Levran manually masturbated him during a post-yoga massage, prompting him to tell Levran that that’s not what he was there for. Despite feeling like he set a clear boundary, the player said Levran put his mouth on his penis at the next session, prompting the player to halt the interaction.
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The fourth witness, the initial charge victim in the case, described a similar situation in which he went to see Levran for a lower-body injury in October 2022 after having seen him previously for an injury and for a physical.
That witness said Levran massaged the area around his anus, touched his penis and performed oral sex on him, which he did not want him to do. He said he was in shock during the incident and just wanted it to be over. He reported the incident to police later that day.
Oakland County assistant prosecuting attorney Rob VanWert, when questioning Palapattu, asked what American Medical Association’s medical ethics guidance says about sexual contact between a physician and patient:
“It’s unethical and unacceptable, particularly if a patient-physician relationship is ongoing,” Palapattu said.
The most contentious exchange of the day was between Jones, Levran’s attorney, and Palapattu. Jones questioned him about taking the information from the police reports at face value to draw his conclusions. Jones also asked Palapattu whether what he considered to be an “unacceptable” and “unethical” standard of care was something he could cite as explicitly prohibited under the guidelines of medical ethics.
Palapattu said that not every scenario is explicitly accounted for in the AMA ethics guidance.
The Athletic has reported extensively on this story since Levran’s initial arrest in October. In a January story, The Athletic identified a number of players who said they were inappropriately touched and groped by Levran while they were seeking medical treatment. Players also told The Athletic that Levran made inappropriate remarks and inquired about their sex lives.
In a November story detailing Levran’s time spent practicing in Minnesota, The Athletic identified two players who alleged that Levran, who was volunteering as a doctor and yoga instructor for the Fergus Falls (Minn.) High school team, sexually assaulted them. At least one of these incidents was reported to the school district and to Levran’s employer.
(Photo: Katie Strang / The Athletic)
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