5 women to testify in chiropractor’s sex trial

By Peter H. Milliken

One complaint against the former Boardman doctor is 18 years old.

YOUNGSTOWN — Dr. Gregory S. Dew is “a charismatic con artist” who sexually abused girls and women, according to Rhys Cartwright-Jones, assistant Mahoning County prosecutor.

Dr. Dew’s lawyer, however, said the chiropractor will swear to his innocence on the witness stand. “There’s a whole heck of a lot of smoke around, but there is no fire,” said Elizabeth Kelley, Dr. Dew’s Cleveland lawyer.

The jury trial of the former Boardman chiropractor on multiple rape and gross sexual imposition charges, which are contained in two indictments, began Monday before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

The first indictment alleges three counts of rape and one count of corruption of a minor between 1990 and 1992, with the alleged victim being a female, who was then between age 15 and 17. The fifth count in that indictment alleges gross sexual imposition against another girl in 1992, with that alleged victim then being 15 and 16.

The alleged victims in that case were girls Dr. Dew, 46, of Kelly Park Road, Columbiana, coached at the Youngstown Gymnastics Center in Boardman before he became a chiropractor. The statute of limitations for sex crimes involving juvenile victims extends 20 years after the accuser’s 18th birthday.

The second indictment pertains to sex crimes Dr. Dew is alleged to have committed against three adult women who were his chiropractic patients between 2005 and 2007. It alleges 15 counts of gross sexual imposition, 12 of them naming one woman as victim and three of them involving another woman, and three counts of rape with a third woman as victim.

All five women are scheduled to testify for the prosecution in the trial, which is before a seven-man, five-woman jury.

The recent Boardman police investigation stemmed from a complaint by a female patient that Dr. Dew inappropriately touched her. That complaint triggered a reopening of the investigation into an earlier complaint about Dr. Dew pertaining to the gymnastics center.

Dr. Dew “puts himself in a position of trust over women and girls” and gradually “exploits that trust,” Cartwright-Jones told the jury in his opening statement.

In the gymnastics school, girls spend several hours a day with their coach, who almost becomes “an auxiliary family member,” the prosecutor said. At the school, Dr. Dew was “the glowing and charismatic pied-piper” among teenage girls “with starry eyes vying for his approval,” Cartwright-Jones said.

“By the sneaky, subtle psychological means, Dr. Dew began to chip away at that barrier,’’ that separates coaches and athletes, the prosecutor said.

Later, in his chiropractic practice, Dr. Dew was also in a position of trust and authority, where he “chipped away” at that trust and sexually abused women, Cartwright-Jones added.

Defense attorney Kelley described one of the alleged victims in the gymnastics school as “a very troubled woman,” who had a crush on Dr. Dew and aggressively pursued him.

She didn’t come forward with her allegations for almost 18 years until she was “egged on” by another former gynmastics student and alleged sexual abuse victim, the defense lawyer said. That second woman kept in contact with Dr. Dew for 10 years by letters and e-mails, Kelley said.

All three of the alleged victims in the chiropractic practice had been regular patients of Dr. Dew’s for periods ranging from a few months to almost four years, Kelley said. “Their accusations just don’t make sense,” she added.

One of those alleged victims didn’t come forward with her accusations until after she read about the charges against Dr. Dew in a newspaper and saw the story on TV, Kelley said.

Conditions in the gymnastics center and chiropractic clinic were so busy and crowded that they weren’t conducive to the sexual activities Dr. Dew is accused of, she said. “It would have been virtually impossible for Dr. Dew to have molested any one and certainly all of these women,” the defense lawyer said.

The statement Dr. Dew made in a lengthy taped interview with Boardman police “was basically extracted from him,” Kelley said. “He didn’t confess to anything. He talked in very broad terms,” she said.

Sitting on the courtroom’s spectator benches behind the defense table were about 20 members of Dr. Dew’s family.

If convicted of all counts in both indictments, Dr. Dew faces three to 89 years in prison, depending on whether sentences are minimum or maximum, or in-between, or whether they are concurrent or consecutive.

One of the alleged victims has filed a separate civil lawsuit against Dr. Dew and Physicians Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Center, where Dr. Dew worked until he was fired when the allegations surfaced a year ago.