At a preliminary hearing yesterday, a judge ordered that Neurosurgery Professor Tracy McIntosh must face trial on charges that he raped a 23 year-old woman in his office in Hayden Hall last September while both he and the woman were under the influence of marijuana.
Allegations that McIntosh drugged the victim by slipping her anesthesia during an evening of drinking also surfaced at yesterday's pretrial hearing, when U.S. Drug and Enforcement Administration agent Brian Rucker testified to investigating record-keeping errors and drugs that could not be accounted for at McIntosh's lab.
The victim, now 24, testified that while out with McIntosh on the night of Sept. 6, she grew dizzy and detached in a way that she had never experienced from drinking alcohol before. The two then walked to his office where she testified that he raped her in her semi-conscious state.
McIntosh's attorney Tom Bergstrom denied the accusations, offering testimony that the drugs allegedly missing from McIntosh's office could be accounted for by a researcher who used the drugs to kill 10 guinea pigs.
McIntosh is scheduled to be arraigned on July 31.
McIntosh, who has been at the University since 1992 and is a married father of two, has been on leave from the University since April 23. A well-known expert on injuries to the central nervous system, he has served as director of the Head Injury Center and vice chair of research in the Neurosurgery Department in addition to working as a professor of neurosurgery, pharmacology and bioengineering.
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