Doctors Who Sexually Abuse Patients: Michigan Licensing Board Ignores Complaints
I started this post after talking to friend who said she reported an ER doctor for sexual injury during a pelvic exam, and she was completely ignored by the Michigan Licensing Board, who failed to even speak with her, because “pelvic exams can be uncomfortable.” And since the woman had already been physically injured by the physician but ignored by the State of Michigan’s Licensing Board and the State of Michigan Governor’s Office, she was not sure where to turn.
This situation reminds me of the Dr. Early Bradley situation in Deleware, a doctor who was finally found to have sexually assaulted hundreds of patients, but was never investigated fully when reports first surfaced. The Michigan Licensing Board for physicians seems to be woefully unprepared for any type of investigation at the rate it is going, and I wonder at what point the Michigan Licensing Board Members can be held criminally accountable for covering up or failing to investigate cases of sexual abuse much like the Boy Scouts of America or international discussions of arresting the Pope for the organizations’ parts in covering up sexual abuse or assault. How would one complain about the Michigan Licensing Board anyway?
Just to see how prevalent this problem might be for women, who are already nervous about encounters where they are told to implicitly trust someone just because of the costume change (white coat from dinner jacket), I began to do some research of on-line news stories over the past year and came up with truly disturbing results.
There are physicians who are guilty of sexually abusing or assaulting patients, many with a storied history of complaints against them but a failure of an official action that would prevent more people from being injured. Michigan, look out, because once this opens up, the Licensing Board members will be under intense scrutiny.
Part of what makes me think long and hard about this situation is a conversation I had with a physician recently who was just asked to change her charts to refrain from implicating the head of a local ER, a the ER Supervisor’s request. When my friend, Doc 1, refused to change her charts, the ER Supervisor told her he would force her to “talk with risk management, because lawyers love to get their hands on these types of documents, and peer reviews can’t be subpoenaed. Apparently this ER Supervisor hasn’t read about the Catholic Church’s problems with keeping documentation of crimes away from investigators, and maybe he has missed the whole scandal involving the Boy Scouts, all organizations who were found to have knowingly interfered with investigations.
I am in no position to take action at the moment, but I definitely predict that the practice of medicine will come under similar scrutiny in the US when the public realizes that doctors get away with assault all the time, and that the organization of medicine actively tries to cover up investigations, as certainly the Michigan Licensing Board has, while dumping the blame at the victim’s feet by saying she was upset about her miscarriage. Nice.
In Michigan, if one member of the Licensing Board refuses to investigate, a woman is left with no other options. There is no stated appeals process. There is method for reporting or investigating sexually abusive physicians, and for women, this has tragic results. For the kids in Deleware, their government and licensing board failed to protect them too.
Check out the links below. At some point in time, I will be able to sort all these, but sexual assault by physicians is by no means rare, just covered up–tally ho Boy Scouts and priests!
Dr. Earl Bradley- Deleware–http://spotlight.vitals.com/2009/12/dr-earl-bradley-videotaped-himself-sexually-assaulting-children/
http://spotlight.vitals.com/2010/03/dr-joshua-kotouc-expat-found-guilty-of-sex-abuse-in-guatemala/
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/03/24/Doctor_jailed_for_sexually_assaulting_female_patients/
http://cbs2.com/local/Doctor.Sexual.Assault.2.766614.html
http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/6593127.html
http://cbs5.com/local/doctor.sex.assaults.2.1016711.html
http://www.globalwinnipeg.com/money/Doctor+Accused+Sexually+Assaulting+Patient/2460976/story.html
You have just barely scratched the surface when it comes to sexual misconduct by physicians. Various reliable studies show that around 1 in 10 doctors will ADMIT to sexual misconduct. The rate naturally tends to be higher among physicians, such as ob/gyns, who have regular access to females. And since doctors are not likely to admit sexual misconduct, even in anonymous surveys, the actual rate of sexual misconduct is undoubtedly much higher. When doctors are disciplined for sexual misconduct, they often receive only a token punishment, such as a reprimand, which in reality amounts to telling the doctor not to get caught doing it anymore. Nearly half of all doctors sanctioned for sexual misconduct still practice. Even doctors who lose their licenses for sexual misconduct can often get them reinstated after a year or two. And don’t be fooled into thinking the presence of a chaperone offers any protection–the chaperone is the doctor’s employee and she looks out for their mutual interest. Even in cases where a state medical board mandates a chaperone as a result of a doctor’s sexual misconduct, the chaperone is not directed to intervene if misconduct occurs, but only to observe and report to the medical board.
If you’re seriously interested in studying the problem of sexual abuse by physicians, contact me by email and I’ll arrange to send you a DVD with nearly 4000 reports of physician sexual misconduct.
I am seriously interested in following up on this, and I thank you for your reply. My e-mail is:
wise.ass@live.com (no joke, just what a title given to me by a conservative). I have noticed that the doctors don’t receive the same sentence as is given in other criminal cases, and it seems that having a white coat means these sexual predators are given more lenient sentences.
Please contact me with info. I am a survivor of a MI hospital doctor assault and I am looking for ohter survivors. I beleive that my doctor has assaulted other women. I reported him to the Licensing Board and they ignored the obvious evidence that I had. They sided with the doctor by making totally implausable excuses for him. Thanks,
survivor2survivor@gmail.com
Please contact this e-mail for more statistics on doctors sexually assaulting patients: doctor.watchdog@yahoo.com
C’mon people out there, especially females, let’s keep it real. Remember the Catholic church sexual abuse scandal…..men[ Priests] put in a position of trust, sexually abusing thousands of children and yet it wasn’t reported and covered up for years. Well, if you think that was bad, the sexual abuses of the medical profession today would make that small potatoes. All men [ and women ] have 3 basic primordial chemical uncontrollable drives. They are food [ hungry enough you'll eat anything to survive....insects, even dead bodies, water....thirsty enough, you'll drink salt water, piss, anything to survive. The sex drive is in this category and just as powerful. The only profession that allows men to legally have access to attractive [ notice I said attractive ] unclothed females of any age are doctors, male nurses, and non doctor emergency medical people like paramedics. These medical people who are moral and ethical, are truly a blessing to the human race, and you know who you are. However, as you read these words right now, thousands of women are being given over zealous unnecessary examinations for sexual arousal and curiosity of the medical profession by intimidation in the examining room when a nurse isn’t present. Women don’t press charges because of reliving the experience again in the court room. Male nurses, the ones who are sexual predators, stay away from our teenage girls who are scared and terrified in a medical setting for the first time. If it’s not an emergency how dare you think she should spread her legs for a catherization when there are female nurses around. It’s not about you it’s about the patient. If I came into a hospital to visit my daughter and found a male nurse bathing her with the curtains closed around them, I’m going to jail for a while but that nurse will never recover from his injuries, nor will the paramedic that takes pictures while alone in the back of an ambulance of unconscious females, or morticians who have sex with dead bodies before they are injected with formaldahide. Before you tell me I’m an alarmist check all these abuses on the internet.All men including medical people, have sex quirks, sex fetishes and sex fantasies and use their position of trust to explore them on females because there is no watch dog. Simply put, ladies,there are plenty of excellent female doctors out there for females.
You are not the first man who has mentioned these things, and it’s actually been men speaking up much more frequently than women. Women tend to be embarrassed and ashamed when they feel there has be a sexual arousal, abuse, commentary, action, etc. during a medical appointment. Men are much more up front about these sorts of things, and it’s refreshing to hear so many men speaking out. We appreciate it.
The problem here in Michigan is that the Michigan Licensing Board refuses to investigate women’s complaints of sexual misconduct by physicians, without talking with the women involved. THE MICHIGAN LICENSING BOARD READS A DOCTOR’S NOTES TO DETERMINE IF SEXUAL ABUSE OCCURRED; in other words, never lets the women/children speak, never interviews the alleged victims, and just goes by the doctors’ commentary. I don’t know of any other professional organization that is allowed to simply ask the abuser if he abused someone and then drop the investigation based on that testimony, but that’s what has happened in Michigan.
Wow, that’s bad. Reminds me somewhat of the movie which started off with a female patient being molested by her doctor – The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
How this can happen I just don’t understand, “The problem here in Michigan is that the Michigan Licensing Board refuses to investigate women’s complaints of sexual misconduct by physicians, without talking with the women involved.” That’s just crazy, both sides have to be listened too.
The Board had stated that talking with the patients was “not part of the investigation”… Nothing like institutionalizing abuse here in MI…
Some hospitals are worse than others.