BY TOM O'NEILL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BATAVIA -- A Withamsville chiropractor accused of raping a patient questioned her for two hours on the witness stand Tuesday, a day after he failed to return from a lunch recess on the first day of his trial.
Nicholas Driever, 56, acting as his own attorney, was held on $500,000 bond by Clermont County Common Pleas Court Judge William Walker. Dr. Driever, who had been free without bond, said that instead of returning to court Monday, he ran an errand, took his wife to lunch, then waited for sheriff's deputies in Felicity when he learned they had a warrant out for him.
He called the incident a misunderstanding.
He initially declined to cross-examine the 22-year-old woman, then did so in an unusual exchange that included a demonstration of pelvic reflex and muscle manipulation on another woman.
The victim, whose name the Enquirer is not publishing because of the nature of the charges, went to Dr. Driever for treatment of back pain after a car crash.
She gave mostly even-toned answers to Dr. Driever's questions in court Tuesday, but at one point tersely asked him to "step back." She repeatedly said she did not recall his accounts of two July exams, reiterating her earlier testimony to prosecutor Greg Chapman that she was startled when Dr. Driever touched her genital area and buttocks.
Asked if she recalled the exams correctly, she responded, "What I'm saying is, you know what you did, and I know what you did."
Dr. Driever decided after a recess to cross-examine the woman, but Judge Walker tentatively rejected the request, saying: "This is . . . just one of the games you've been playing. . . . You had the opportunity and that passed."
The judge then reversed his ruling when he learned the woman was still available.
Prosecutors also showed the jury a videotaped deposition of John Heidrich, a chiropractic expert who testified that Dr. Driever's file was substandard and his treatment, as described by the victim, improper.
The trial will continue today.
