Portland doctor makes sex abuse charges go away with $500,000. That’s legal under Oregon law

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Melvin Oden-Orr sighed deeply, and considered the papers before him.

On one side stood the state, demanding he proceed with the felony sex crime case filed against an alternative medicine physician.

On the other, both the alleged perpetrator and the woman who accused him stood united. Outside the confines of the courtroom, they had signed a deal — perfectly legal — to make the criminal charges go away.

Portland-area naturopath Lam Le would pay his accuser $500,000 under a little-known aspect of the judicial system called the civil compromise. The case would be dismissed forever, but only if Oden-Orr approved.

Hence the sigh.

In a last-ditch argument to kill the deal, prosecutor Samuel Wilton asked the judge to consider the unfairness of it all.

“Most defendants who stand before your honor don’t have half a million dollars lying around,” he said to Oden-Orr. “They’re not going to have the same sort of advantage.”

The woman’s privately retained attorney, meanwhile, urged the judge not to reject the woman’s wishes, saying she feared the exposure of a public trial and that the deal would leave her “monumentally relieved.”

At first, Oden-Orr was skeptical of the civil compromise, saying the provision proposing a two-year suspension of Le’s naturopathy license was too light.

But once the doctor agreed to a 10-year suspension alongside the lump sum, he approved it.

“I have to say this is a difficult decision,” Oden-Orr said. “It is really with an eye toward sparing the victim more pain and helping her move forward.”

COMPROMISE LAW CONTROVERSIAL

While it may seem complicated, the civil compromise is simply an exchange between the defendant and the accuser in a criminal case — usually cash, or sometimes just an apology — that dismisses all charges without any sort of conviction, as long as a judge approves.

Statewide, Oregon circuit court judges sign off on just 100 to 200 such “satisfaction of an injured person” agreements each year, according to Oregon Judicial Department records.

A civil compromise can efficiently wrap up a property damage or personal injury case, where the injured party cares more about getting enough money to cover repairs than seeing jail time imposed.

State law forbids the use of civil compromises for most felonies, as well as crimes involving domestic violence, committed by or against a police officer or during a riot.

But what makes Oregon an outlier is that the law allows civil compromise agreements to apply to low-level felonies, including second-degree sex abuse, the most serious charge filed against Le.

That controversial aspect of the compromise has its defenders — who say it puts survivors back in the driver’s seat — and opponents, who argue it allows offenders to buy their way out of real trouble.

Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton says the loophole needs to be closed.

“(Civil compromises) make sense in a fender-bender scenario, but when you get to the other end of the spectrum, it sounds like bribery,” he said. “The role of the DA is to think about not just the victim in front of us, but other potential victims in the community.”

Barton instructs his deputies to object in all cases where a civil compromise involves suspected child abuse, breach of fiduciary trust (like a bookkeeper’s theft), or where the defendant has a history of convictions or prior civil compromise agreements.

The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office has a similar policy, according to a copy provided by a spokesperson.

Mark Cogan, an experienced criminal defense attorney who has negotiated many compromises over the years, says prosecutors may not like these deals because they don’t have the final say. That’s a reversal from the typical criminal case, where victims have a right to speak at key junctures but no ability to overrule a plea deal or mandatory sentence.

“Frequently, the victims are on the sidelines when it comes to the criminal justice system,” Cogan said. “The civil compromise law actually empowers an alleged victim to have a very important role in how a criminal case is resolved.”

Most compromises happen in misdemeanor court and avoid the headlines, but a few high-profile cases have been big news.

A Portland defense attorney accepted an apology from a man who’d swiped her coat from a courtroom in 2019, while a Portland police officer charged with drunken driving paid $117,000 in a compromise in 2011. Former Houston Rockets player Terrence Jones donated $10,000 to a charity in 2014 as part of a resolution with the Portland homeless man he was accused of stomping.

Most famously, Democratic donor Terry Bean proposed a $200,000 civil compromise to the 15-year-old boy he was accused of sexually abusing. A judge rejected the deal, but Bean’s accuser refused to participate in the trial anyway.

Tung Yin, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, says civil compromises show how a victim’s wishes can diverge from the results society as a whole may want in order to deter crime or incapacitate offenders.

“The victim may think, ‘OK, I’m satisfied. I’m never going to see this person again,’” he said. “But do we think that this defendant might commit a crime of this type again and victimize somebody else?”

SECRET CAMERAS, LOCKED DOORS

The case against Le began in early October 2022, when a woman called Gresham police and said she had been sexually abused by the naturopath the previous month while seeking treatment for a pain in her ribcage, court records show.

The woman said Le’s “body energy balance” treatments seemed to help at first when she visited his Fairview office in July, according to a probable cause affidavit written by Wilton, the prosecutor.

Over time, she said, the naturopath’s behavior became strange. Le stopped charging for visits, saying her insurance was covering it; he initiated lingering hugs and pecks on the cheek that the woman wrote off as cultural differences; and he began locking the clinic door once she was inside, citing concerns about the homeless, Wilton wrote.

On Sept. 29 of that year, the woman said Le rubbed her skin while comparing her to a model, unhooked some of her clothing and then sexually assaulted her under the guise of treatment, the affidavit said.

“I would never hurt you… How could I hurt a beautiful flower,” Le said, according to the affidavit.

The woman went through denial before reporting to police a few days later. (She declined to speak with The Oregonian/OregonLive through her attorney; the newspaper doesn’t identity people listed as victims in sexual assault cases. Judge Oden-Orr similarly declined further comment.)

Police arrested Le in November 2022 and found a secret camera disguised as a charging port inside the exam room, records allege; he also admitted to filming the woman with his cellphone without her knowledge.

Shortly after his arrest, Le agreed to an interim stipulated order to pause his license to practice while the investigation was pending, according Oregon Board of Naturopathic Medicine records.

Prosecutors secured an eight-count indictment charging him with second- and third-degree sex abuse and first-degree invasion of personal privacy.

The case ran into trouble in the months to come. Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht ruled that Le had invoked his right to an attorney on the day of his arrest, yet two Gresham detectives ignored the request and spoke with him for four hours, a Miranda violation.

Albrecht suppressed the interview and any videos found on Le’s cellphone based on his reported admission, deeming it tainted evidence.

Wilton, the prosecutor, says authorities applied for new warrants for Le’s computer and likely would have recovered copies of the videos there, allowing them to be admitted in court lawfully, but the forensic analysis wasn’t completed by the time the case was dismissed.

DOCTOR SURRENDERS LICENSE

Defense attorney Ryan Anfuso says Le was punished enough, even if he wasn’t locked behind bars.

Le, 65, has $750,000 in student loans for his medical degrees, and is currently caring for a wife undergoing chemotherapy for progressive breast cancer, according to the attorney.

His one-person clinic is shuttered for good, he said.

“In reality, this was a medical malpractice claim that was brought in a criminal forum,” Anfuso said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “As is often the case in litigation, the parties were able to agree on a solution short of trial that was best for everyone involved.”

Le sold his home in a Camas cul-de-sac for $1.4 million while trying to come up with the cash, property tax records show.

He was required to write letters of apology to the woman and her husband, complete 52 hours of counseling under the deal, and he agreed to a permanent restraining order barring him from approaching her home, church or workplace.

In court, Anfuso assured Oden-Orr that the Oregon Board of Naturopathic Medicine would never let Le practice again, regardless of how long he agreed to surrender his license in the civil compromise.

Naturopathic Medicine Board Executive Director Mary-Beth Baptista declined to comment on the agreement made in court, but said state licensors “acted swiftly… to protect the health and safety of his patients.”

Baptista said the board will likely decide whether to further discipline Le at its February meeting. Possible sanctions range from a $5,000 fine to revoking his license permanently.

The woman’s attorney, Kirk Mylander, said his client had suffered from panic attacks and PTSD in the wake of the attack, and was desperate to avoid a trial, where Le could have emerged not guilty.

“She’s a forgiving person, and feels like everyone can improve and change,” Mylander said in court, adding that his client planned to use the money to step back from work and focus on her children.

“These events damaged her family life and her professional life,” Mylander later told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “A public trial of this case would have been a second round of abuse for her.”

Wilton, however, says Le betrayed the doctor-patient relationship and shouldn’t have walked away with a clean criminal record: “There needs to be some sort of deterrent,” the prosecutor said.

That may be so. But in the eyes of the law, Le is guilty of nothing.

—Zane Sparling covers breaking news and courts for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at 503-319-7083, [email protected] or @pdxzane.

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