Sex abuse complaints against MD upheld

Committee rules he can still work, with restrictions

A rheumatologist who sees patients in Manotick, Pembroke and Brockville and formerly worked at the Queensway Carleton Hospital sexually abused four female patients in 2011, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has ruled.

In a lengthy decision dated Sept. 24, the college’s discipline committee said Dr. Tariq Iqbal “manipulated and exploited his vulnerable patients in a demeaning manner.

“The sexualization of examinations suggests a pattern of behaviour, which the committee finds deeply disturbing and offensive.”

Iqbal, 49, immigrated to Canada with his family in 2003 after practising medicine in Pakistan for more than two decades.

He worked for a time as a security guard before being accepted into the internal medicine residency program at the University of Ottawa in 2005. He successfully completed a training program in rheumatology in 2010.

Iqbal’s main medical office is in Brockville, but he also works at the Kingsway Health Centre in Manotick and the Pembroke Regional Hospital. He worked at the Queensway Carleton Hospital from October 2010 until his resignation in April 2014.

Iqbal is still seeing patients in Manotick, Brockville and Pembroke, but has been subject to interim practice restrictions since March 2014. He is prohibited from seeing female patients unless a female health professional is present and from performing rectal, vaginal or perianal examinations of female patients.

According to testimony at the college’s disciplinary hearing in May and June, Iqbal is a respected member of the South Nepean Muslim community and attends prayers when he is in the Ottawa region.

The college began its investigation after four female patients independently complained about sexual misconduct by the doctor in May and June 2011. Their identities are protected by a publication ban, but their graphic evidence is reproduced at length in the discipline committee’s decision.

All four told similar stories of sexualized anal and vaginal examinations by Iqbal. There were no chaperones present and Iqbal did not leave the room after asking them to undress, they alleged.

One woman testified that she felt “ashamed, dirty, violated and stressed” after vaginal probing by Iqbal that she said lasted two or three minutes. Iqbal allegedly made “grunting and groaning sounds.”

Two of the patients were so traumatized that they sat in their cars and wept for several minutes following Iqbar’s examination.

One expert witness testified that in a rheumatology practice, digital rectal exams would be “exceedingly rare” and internal vaginal examinations would never be done.

Iqbal flatly denied the women’s allegations of misconduct. But the discipline committee found his evidence to be evasive, self-serving and embellished, and concluded he was not credible.

By contrast, the committee said the allegations of professional misconduct by the four patients were “supported by clear, cogent and convincing evidence.

“The similarities between the evidence of the complainants as to the touching that took place and the manner of the touching goes far beyond what could be coincidental with the four patients who did not know each other,” it said.

The discipline committee found that Iqbal sexually abused each of the four female patients, failed to maintain the standard of practice of the profession and engaged in “disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional conduct.”