The passenger in seat 42D on a flight from Vienna to Chicago shared some initial chitchat with a self-proclaimed professor seated next to him, then put on his headphones and started watching a movie as he settled in for the 10-hour trip.
But his seatmate had other plans. According to the passenger’s testimony in a Chicago federal courtroom this week, the so-called professor kept interrupting his movie. He offered to find him a scholarship, called him “beautiful” and asked if he could touch his muscles. Then he started repeatedly groping his thigh.
“I told him people can go to jail for that kind of stuff; you should cut it out,” the passenger, a 35-year-old heating and cooling specialist from St. Louis, told a federal judge. “He kind of chuckled and said his group doesn’t go to jail.”
It turns out the man doing the alleged groping was no professor. According to federal prosecutors, he was Josip Pasic, a former Chicago doctor whose medical license was revoked a decade earlier amid allegations of coercing vulnerable psychiatric patients into sexual acts as well as mis-prescribing psychotropic medication.
On Thursday, after a three-day bench trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, Pasic, now 85, was convicted of charges of sexually abusing the victim on that Austrian Airlines flight to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Aug. 17, 2024.
He faces up to two years in prison. U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood did not immediately set a sentencing date.
Pasic’s attorney, Barry Spevack, could not be reached for comment.
During testimony Monday, Wood not only heard from the alleged victim, but also watched a series of video snippets that he’d surreptitiously taken with his cellphone while the alleged sexual misconduct was in progress.
The videos showed Pasic’s hand repeatedly moving to the victim’s leg and sliding up toward the groin area as the movie “Dune 2” played on his seatback screen. Several of the videos also captured Pasic putting his hand under a dark blanket to conceal what he was doing. At one point, the hand in the video — in which Pasic’s black-and-gold pinky ring was clearly visible — appeared to make a more furtive grabbing move. The passenger testified he actually felt his genitals pinched.
The passenger, who is Black, testified he tried to diffuse the situation and was wary of making a scene. “If I fight this dude on a plane, then I will look like the bad guy beating up this old dude,” he said. “I didn’t really want that.”
Still, after Pasic ignored multiple attempts at diplomacy, the passenger said he realized “this dude is some level of creep that can’t really be negotiated with” and started looking for help from a flight attendant. But he said he was met with indifference.
“I flagged down the flight attendant to let him know what was going on so they could possibly get me away from this dude,” the victim testified. “I said ‘this guy is sexually harassing me, he’s grabbing on me, and I need to get away from him. (The flight attendant) kind of smiled and winked and just started walking on.”
With no empty seats to be found, the man testified he decided he’d document what was happening as best he could. So he returned to his seat next to Pasic. When the groping soon commenced, the victim started recording with his phone.
Asked why he wanted to gather the evidence instead of insisting on changing seats, the victim said he thought about Pasic’s claim that he was a professor, and how he’d told him during their initial chit-chat that he could get him a scholarship at a university in Chicago. Was this his method to get sexual favors from students?
“I was thinking, how many students has he done this to?” the man testified. “Obviously this wasn’t his first rodeo, if you ask me.”
Armed with the video evidence, the victim again asked a flight attendant to change seats. This time they obliged. The victim testified he went to a doctor after arriving back home in St. Louis and was given pain medication for tenderness from the groping, but was otherwise OK.
Court records show Pasic was not arrested after the flight landed. In fact, he initially was issued just a misdemeanor ticket. The felony indictment was filed more than a year later in October 2025, records show.
Pasic’s attorney told the judge in his opening statement Monday that Pasic was born in the former Yugoslavia and had been visiting family overseas at the time of his return trip to Chicago. With him was his sister, who was seated in the window seat of their row.
Spevack noted the abuse reported by the alleged victim happened on a plane “crowded with passengers and crew,” yet no one else saw it — including Pasic’s sister. He said the video excerpts do not prove sexual abuse.
“That allegation does not even get to first base,” Spevack said. “None of that happened. It is all made up.”
But in his opening remarks, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cornelius “Kees” Vandenberg said Pasic’s behavior could be summed up in four disturbing words: “Seduction. Rejection. Assault. Repeat.”
Records show that Pasic was first licensed to practice medicine in Illinois in 1975. In December 2014, his license was suspended by the Illinois Department of Professional and Financial Regulation for “sexual misconduct and boundary violations with psychiatric patients,” as well as a second count of writing “inappropriate” prescriptions and falsification of documents, state records show.
Meanwhile, Pasic has been sued in Cook County Circuit Court by several patients alleging misconduct. One suit, filed by relatives of a former psychiatric patient, alleged Pasic made sexual advances during an appointment in 2011 at Hamlin Health Center on Chicago’s West Side, including offering money for oral sex.
The patient refused and told his father about the encounter, but soon sank further into depression and anxiety and turned to street drugs and alcohol to self-medicate, the suit alleged. The patient overdosed in February 2012, according to the suit.
Before the trial began, Wood ruled that Pasic’s history of sexual misconduct allegations would not be considered unless the defense opened the door by talking about his history as a doctor.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
