Gynecologist faces penalty hearing over sexual remarks
FALL COMMUTE Bikers ride down Queen Elizabeth Drive in Ottawa during a crisp, beautiful autumn afternoon on Friday. Doctor, 72, denies allegations, gave up privileges at local hospitals in June
An Ottawa gynecologist faces a penalty hearing later this year before the province’s medical watchdog after it found that he made shockingly inappropriate remarks to two female patients.
The discipline committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario found that Dr. Roman Feigel repeatedly called one patient sexy and told another that her vagina was lovely and smelled sweet during a speculum examination.
Feigel flatly denied the allegations, but the discipline panel said it believed the women.
The panel found that Feigel, 72, engaged in the sexual abuse of patients through his inappropriate remarks and conducted himself in a manner that was “disgraceful, dishonourable and unprofessional.”
The penalty hearing has been scheduled for December.
In June, he voluntarily resigned his privileges at The Ottawa Hospital and Almonte General Hospital.
For the past two years, during the college’s investigation, he has been working under the terms of an undertaking that required him not to be alone with female patients for any length of time.
The incidents — both in early 2014 — were investigated by police; charges were not laid.
In his testimony before the professional discipline panel, Feigel insisted nothing unusual happened during the two medical appointments, details of which he recalled mostly by examining patient notes made at the time.
The women, however, said their visits were anything but routine.
A complainant identified as Patient A told the panel she had seen Dr. Feigel once or twice a year since her first appointment two decades ago.
In January 2014, she testified that, at the end of an appointment, Dr. Feigel held her hand and wished her a “Happy New Year.” She told the panel she was “pretty sure that he told her she was sexy three times” during the exchange.
Patient A also testified that Dr. Feigel, as he held her hand, asked if she was entertaining herself while making an “up and down gesture” on his own body close to his hips. She told the panel that she believed it was the doctor’s way of asking whether she masturbated.
In the past, she said, Dr. Feigel made comments about her having “a nice tummy” or being “sexy” — behaviour she ascribed to his “weird sense of humour.” Patient A said she decided to complain about his behaviour in January 2014 because she felt he had crossed a line by asking about masturbation.
Patient A attempted to withdraw her complaint in March 2017 to avoid testifying in the case, but the college subpoenaed her evidence.
She told the panel that Feigel was a good gynecologist who did not deserve legal trouble while also expressing hope that he “would not make inappropriate comments to other females.”
Patient B was referred to Dr. Feigel by her family physician and saw him for the first time in February 2014.
During a physical exam, Patient B said Dr. Feigel told her she had “lovely breasts,” asked if she had sensitive nipples and whether she liked it when her husband sucked on them.
She said Dr. Feigel told her that her navel ring was “sexy.” According to Patient B, during a speculum examination of her cervix, Dr. Feigel said she had “plenty of her own lubrication just like he thought,” and that she had a “lovely vagina” with a “sweet smell.”
Patient B complained to the college about Feigel’s behaviour one day after her visit.
In his testimony, Feigel denied complimenting Patient B’s breasts or vagina and said he would never make such comments to a patient.
Feigel’s lawyer, Wayne Brynaert, suggested that Patient B invented the comments because she was wrongly convinced he had conducted an inappropriate and unnecessary breast exam.
“In my respectful submission, she just made it up,” Brynaert told the panel. “There’s nothing more complicated than that. She was so angry, she was so convinced that she was sexually abused that, you know, the details don’t matter. You know, ‘I’ve been wronged here and this person is going to pay.’ ”
In its decision, the discipline panel said Patient B misperceived elements of the breast exam as sexual in nature, but it rejected the notion that her evidence was fabricated or designed to punish Feigel.
It concluded that Patient B was a credible witness who gave reliable evidence on what was said to her by the gynecologist.
The panel also said it found Feigel’s evidence evasive, inconsistent, and at times, dishonest. He did not give straightforward answers to a question about whether he complimented patients, the panel said, and remembered that Patient B had no discomfort during her pelvic exam — an uncharted observation — even though he insisted that he couldn’t remember anything else from the visit.
The committee concluded that Feigel sexually abused the two women by his sexualized remarks and by his masturbation gesture to Patient A.
“Such behaviour is inappropriate and offensive,” the panel said, “and does not accord with appropriate doctor-patient interactions during medical appointments.”
Feigel did not respond to this newspaper’s request for comment. He has been practising in Ottawa as an obstetrician and gynecologist since 1980 and has more than 30,000 active patients.
You know how police get on a trail and the trail goes cold? There never was a trail. They had nothing. HUGH ADAMI, retired Citizen reporter, on the disappearance of Lonnie Boudreau in 1981. STORY, A3