Horrifying occurrences, infuriating acts
Did you and I pay for Dr. George Doodnaught’s legal defence?
This question echoed through my head as I sat this week in the nearempty hotel room that holds the sad public hearings on sexual assault and patients.
They are sad both in content and attendance, but I’ll get to that thought later.
Doodnaught was convicted of sexually assaulting 21 female patients and sentenced to 10 years in prison last year. He was an anesthesiologist at North York General Hospital who, once he’d put female patients into a semi-conscious state, stuck his penis or tongue in their slack mouths and reached under their hospital gowns to grope their breasts.
Two of Doodnaught’s victims spoke before the health minister’s task force this week.
They are appalled he’s appealed the decision. The court case dragged on for 76 days, with top criminal defence lawyer Brian Greenspan cross-examining the victims and bringing in an expert witness from Britain to testify that false erotic fantasies are common under sedation.
Would they have to go through all that again? A few hours after the women had left, Michael Decter took to the lonely lectern.
Decter was Ontario’s deputy health minister back in the early ’90s. He now chairs the board of Patients Canada, among other things.
He raised a little known fact: the Ontario government pays about 80 per cent of our doctors’ insurance fees. That insurance, delivered largely by the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA), is what pays their legal costs — not just in malpractice cases but in criminal and civil cases involving “sexual impropriety matters” related to their professional work, according to the CMPA website.
Last year alone, we taxpayers spent $165 million on refunding doctors for the bulk of their medical liability fees.
Neither the CMPA nor Greenspan would confirm that the insurer — therefore, you and I — paid for Doodnaught’s criminal defence in this case. It is possible he dismissed the CMPA-appointed lawyer and hired Greenspan himself. But, in principal, his legal costs should have been covered.
What makes this even worse, Decter pointed out, is that we Ontario taxpayers do not pay for legal representation of victims. Not one of the 21 women Doodnaught sexually assaulted was provided a lawyer for counsel or to cross-examine Doodnaught. They were all considered witnesses, called into the courtroom only to give testimony.
Of course, there was the Crown attorney, but his job was to represent the state and not each individual victim.
That’s not just the case in criminal court.
It’s also how it works in College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario disciplinary hearings, where most complaints of sexual assault by doctors are heard.
The college does not provide victims their own lawyer. The last Ministry of Health-appointed task force on the sexual abuse of patients recommended this change and that victims be granted “full party” status at disciplinary hearings. Fifteen years later, neither recommendation has been implemented.
“It’s further victimization,” Decter said. “This creates a spectacularly unlevel playing field. The government has to be held accountable for funding one side of the process and not funding the other. Why is there no support for patients?”
We should be outraged by this! And I was. But there was no one else in the room for me to commiserate with besides one victim who had already testified and a handful of ministry staff.
The fact is: few people know about the hearings.
Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins named the task force back in December. But the ministry didn’t bother to put out advertisements until last week. By then, two hearings had already happened.
The Ministry of Health named three people to the task force’s panel. But one, former Court of Appeal chief justice Roy McMurtry, stepped down for health reasons before the first hearing took place in February and the ministry still hasn’t replaced him.
All this makes a person sitting in an empty room listening to horrifying occurrences and infuriating facts ask some cynical questions.
Like, why would the government want the task force to fail? Catherine Porter can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca.