Smith met Doan at a gas station. He said he'd just been paged and had to go to work, and asked Smith to follow him to the hospital. He went into the building, while Smith waited in her car.
When he came out, he said he found someone to cover for him. "Would you like to go to dinner?" he asked. "We take my car."
Smith got into Doan's blue Honda. In the back seat were medical books and a lab coat. He began talking about medicine, using terminology Smith had never heard. "I totally believed he was a doctor. I had no reason not to," she says. "He like studies this shit, just so he can go out and do this."
They didn't go to a restaurant. Instead, Doan drove them to the Office Motel in Springfield Township. Smith had no idea where she was."I don't make a habit out of going to hotels that charge by the hour," she says."And I never leave my side of town."
Doan told her he wanted to take a look at the scars from her hip replacement and caesarean section, which she'd mentioned on the phone. He could fix them with advanced laser surgery, he said.
Inside the room, Doan covered the bed with crisp white sheets and asked Smith to take off her pants so he could see her scars."He sensed I thought it was weird," Smith says. "He said he had to do it there, because if the hospital found out he was helping me for free, he'd get in trouble. He was so nice and soft-spoken. I wasn't worried. He looked like if you pushed him, you'd break him."
As he pretended to examine Smith, Doan asked her if she'd dance for him. Smith said no. "He started his smooth-talking shit again, claiming it was just a joke."
Then, Smith says, Doan went down on her. Smith said she tried to wriggle away, but she was afraid that if she didn't cooperate, he wouldn't pay her.
Doan slowly pulled a dildo from underneath his clothes and began inserting it into her. She kicked him away, but he slapped her in the face with the latex phallus, pinned her down, and raped her.
When it was over, he insisted that she shower.Then he drove her back to the hospital to get her car. On the way there, he suggested that they pick up her kids and get a bite to eat. Smith said no; she just wanted her money. He said he'd pay her later.
Smith never told her husband about the arrangement. In a panic, she called her ex-boyfriend, Maurice. Doan had promised him an extra two hundred dollars for setting them up. Maurice said he'd get her money.
Then Smith called a friend, who encouraged her to go to St. Thomas for a rape exam. She also contacted the police.
Doan was charged with rape. For the first time, he was placed in the Summit County Jail.
As the grand-jury hearing approached, Smith's story posed serious problems.
She admitted to sticking around after the rape, to allowing Doan to drive her back to her car. She confessed that Maurice had contacted Doan to seek payment.When the six thousand dollars never appeared, she went to police.
None of this would help prosecutors. But it left plenty of ammo for Doan's lawyer, Jonathan Sinn."All along, I said this wasn't a rape case; it was a theft of services," he says.
Doan claimed that he offered Smith money for sex and that she consented; it was only when he didn't pay that she cried rape. He denied pretending to be a doctor. "But even if he does lie, if we locked up everyone who claimed to be a doctor to get laid, the jails would be overcrowded," Sinn says.
The grand jury reduced the indictment from rape to gross sexual imposition. "A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich," says Sinn."They indict any case that shows probable cause. If they aren't buying that this is rape, you know the victim has serious credibility issues."
Throughout numerous hearings, Sinn attacked Smith's character, pointing out that she met Doan in a strip club rumored to house a prostitution ring. He even accused her of being a dancer, though she isn't.
"It was like, oh, look at this poor little Vietnamese guy, and then look at this slut who'll grind on anyone for a buck," Smith says.
Sinn also exposed problems with Smith's story. "A guy tricking women into having sex by promising them pie-in-the-sky money-it's a theft case, not a rape case," he says.
Knowing that they couldn't get a conviction on Smith's story alone, the prosecution asked to submit additional evidence, hoping to unfold Doan's twenty-five-year history.
As he sat in jail, prosecutors and detectives scoured Doan's favorite pickup joints and strip clubs. They called women from old cases. But each story turned out to be as wobbly as Smith's, and two victims were already dead. Strippers and drug addicts don't make good witnesses.
But detectives never contacted their sturdiest witness, Renee. "If they'd have called, I would have been more than happy to testify," she says.
Finally, in July, prosecutors agreed to a deal. Doan pleaded guilty to assault and soliciting, both misdemeanors. He earned credit for time served and was released in August.
Within a week, Doan was back in the clubs, approaching dancers with his doctor routine, say detectives. "I'd have thought he'd move-or at least start pretending to be a lawyer or something," Smith says.
Though Doan doesn't frequent downtown joints anymore, he hasn't been forgotten. Jim West, operations manager for Flashdance, remembers once kicking Doan out. "I never liked the look of him,"West says. "He looks like a squirrel, which is what I call the pervs that come in here and mess with the girls."
But West also says that men like Doan aren't uncommon.They hit the clubs, attempting to make dancers offers they can't refuse. West says that only the "stupid" dancers take the bait. "The dancers I've worked with in Akron are the most naive I've ever met," he says. "They don't want to acknowledge that this line of work can be dangerous."
Even Sinn doesn't believe that the women plan to have sex with Doan. "They probably really hope they're going to get thousands of dollars for talking," Sinn says."But then they end up in the hotel room, clothes come off, and then they just hope they're still going to get paid."
The consensus among lawyers and cops is that Doan has a talent for profiling victims whom juries won't believe. Moreover, his appearance-the meek mathematician with superb Asian etiquette-seems to pose no threat.
Even Renee had credibility problems. She was a poor girl who left home before graduating from high school, so she could get away from her abusive stepfather. Though she worked two jobs to support herself, her background fit the profile of a girl primed for trouble. "I thought they were supposed to protect the victim,"
Renee says. "Instead, they protected him. If my parents had been rich, I would have won my case." Police share her frustration.
"I think he's already proved that he's a predator," Detective Coghenour says."And he'll keep doing as he's been doing until we can find a way to put him away."
Denise Grollmus is a staff writer for Cleveland Scene. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and a former fellow of the Academy of Alternative Journalism, Medill. Her work has also appeared in Wax Poetics and the Akron Beacon Journal. She lives in Akron, Ohio.
My boyfriend, Patrick, and I were gorging ourselves on ten-pound burritos a few days after I picked up Hy Doan's mug shot from the Akron Police Department.
I'd been working on the story for two weeks already, and I still couldn't pronounce Doan's first name correctly, always saying "high," instead of "he."
Patrick asked to see the photo, already creased into the back pocket of my jeans. As he smoothed out the picture, he gagged on his carnitas."Mr. He!" he screamed.