Doctor formally reprimanded
College hearing expresses ‘disappointment’ MD sexually abused patients
A Toronto doctor was formally reprimanded Wednesday for sexually abusing four female patients, marking the end of one of the longest-running cases of sexual abuse ever handled by Ontario’s medical regulator.
Dr. Javad Peirovy stood in the middle of the hearing room at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario as discipline committee member Dr. Marc Gabel castigated him for his misconduct.
“Your patients expressed that they felt sexually violated, and we agreed, and found that you did violate their physical and emotional space by the way you examined them,” Gabel said.
“Your actions were totally unacceptable and we condemn them without reservation. This was a gross failure on your part and we express our and the public’s disappointment in your behaviour.”
“Disappointment” is also the word that the college itself used in a rare public rebuke in 2016 for the four-member discipline panel chaired by Gabel, which had imposed a six-month suspension on Peirovy rather than revoke his licence.
In finding him guilty of sexual abuse, the discipline panel said that in 2009 and 2010, Peirovy placed his stethoscope on the nipples of two patients and cupped their breasts. Regarding two others, it concluded that he touched their nipples when “there was no clinical reason” to examine the women in that way.
Instead of siding with the college prosecutor at the time, who was pushing for Peirovy’s licence to be revoked, the panel imposed a suspension, finding there was evidence he could improve through counselling.
That led to a lengthy legal battle, in which the college challenged its own discipline committee in court. The regulator was initially successful in Divisional Court, where a threejudge panel ordered a new penalty hearing for Peirovy and criticized the discipline committee for imposing what it called a “litany of clearly unfit penalties” in a number of sexual abuse cases.
“The facts of these cases are base. It is depressing to review them,” the court said. “They do little to encourage confidence in the committee’s approach to eradicating sexual abuse in the profession.”
But Peirovy appealed to the Court of Appeal, which found in his favour last May in a 2-1 decision.
That meant the suspension, which Peirovy had already served, was upheld and the case against him was over, clearing the way for Wednesday’s reprimand to be delivered.
In 2017, after Peirovy had already been suspended, the provincial government passed Bill 87, which now makes revocation of a health care professional’s licence mandatory for groping.
Peirovy still has one outstanding case at the college. A different discipline panel found him guilty in February of professional misconduct for “using his medical office to initiate a social relationship with a young female patient by giving her his personal cellphone number at her medical appointment with him.”
The college is pushing for a five-month suspension and another reprimand, among other things.
The penalty hearing for that case continues Tuesday.