Your worst nightmare may not be your diagnosis. It could be your doctor.
While sexual abuse has caused scandal for the priesthood, the military, the Boy Scouts, colleges and universities, it hasn't yet publicly plagued the medical profession — despite numerous incidents each year.
An exposé series in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution analyzed more than 100,000 records nationwide. More than 3,100 doctors were publicly disciplined since Jan. 1, 1999, for sexual misdeeds, with more than 2,400 sanctioned for violations that involved patients. And that's barely the tip of the iceberg.
Many, it said, "if not most, cases of physician sexual misconduct remain hidden. … While the vast majority of the nation's 900,000 doctors do not sexually abuse patients, the AJC found the phenomenon is akin to the priest scandal: It doesn't necessarily happen every day, but it happens far more often than anyone has acknowledged."
And no disciplinary system across the country is designed to stop them from practicing. Instead, researchers found many cases only brought private disciplinary letters or doctors quietly pushed out to practice elsewhere. License revocations were often rescinded. Very few were actually tried and punished, with most free to move elsewhere and resume not only medical but predatory practices.
The documents, according to AJC, "described disturbing acts of physician sexual abuse in every state," of "[r]apes by OB/GYNs, seductions by psychiatrists, fondling by anesthesiologists and ophthalmologists, and molestations by pediatricians and radiologists." What it did not find: bars to practice, or any uniform effort to protect patients.
Complaints usually brought only a slap on the wrist — sometimes despite histories replete with offenses handled "quietly," if they were handled at all. Frequently a complaint was just the latest in a long history — and the history was not considered.
'Second chances' given
There were a few exceptions. After three people who got his prescriptions died of overdoses, a Michigan osteopath was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to giving out bogus prescriptions in exchange for cash or sex. But licensing and review boards often bend over backwards to give doctors numerous "second chances."
In fact, authorities often try to preserve the doctor's practice because of time and resources devoted to his education, and because doctors are needed so badly in some areas.
Only 11 states even require medical authorities to report suspected sexual crimes against an adult to police or prosecutors.
Hospitals play their part. An anesthesiologist eventually sentenced to 23 years in prison had a history with a hospital of sexual assault, but the hospital failed to take sufficient action to protect either patients or staff. It was ordered by a jury to pay $2.4 million in damages to three of his victims after findings that it "knew, or should have known," that he was dangerous.
Some involved in the disciplining process are frustrated at the system's leniency — particularly when a doctor with a revoked license just hops over the state line for a new license and practice.
However, doctors are largely disciplined by peers. If proceedings and penalties went public, the fear is that peers would cease reporting misdeeds.
But, according to David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP, a support and advocacy organization for people sexually abused by priests, doctors and others, "Secrecy is the enemy."
Clohessy says in the report, "This tendency on the part of medical boards and medical officials to err on the side of a quiet suspension or a secret, out-of-court deal, that's a recipe for disaster. … They need to be reported to and investigated by and prosecuted by the independent professionals in law enforcement. Period. Not a panel of your peers, not by some committee of supervisors and not by other people who have earned the same titles you have earned."
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