~ Friday, September 18, 1992

~ North Shore News

Patients face some scbering moral questions

MY WIFE had the look of
someone who had just read
something upsetting in the

paper. Which she had.

“Dr. Soandso has been charged
with sexual assault!"’ she said,
unbvelievingly.

For a moment I tried to place
the name.

““By two of his patients,’’ my
wife added,

By then I remembered who Dr.
Soandso was. At that moment my
wife, still incredulous, said: ‘‘Kate
goes to him!”’

Here, readers, I pause to make
certain very important points.

1. Dr. Soandso is not our fami-
ly doctor. In communities of our
size, or even much bigger ones,
there will always be friends or ac-
_quaintances who know the identity
of a family’s doctor.

l repeat: the man | write of is
not our doctor, an absolutely
first-rate practitioner and human
being who } could never imagine
having any such nasty inclination,
let alone yielding to them.

2, Dr. Soandso is obviously not
areal name. !f, anywhere in the
civilized or uncivilized world,
there really is a doctor named
Soandso, | state unreservedly here
both in the interests of protecting
hira from a stain on his reputation
‘and me from a rather unpleasant
libel action: it is not he.

3. 1 will not specify what field
of health care the man I’m calling
Dr. Soandso works in.

Nox will 1 specify where he
practises. There are enough such
charges coming to light these days
that no one could guess his identi-
ty, and at the same time there are
enough doctors hereabouts that
none will feel that by not
specifically identifying him, I'm
casting a cloud over a fairly small
group whose members might pro-
test that I’m encouraging damag-
ing speculation.

4. As if the foregoing weren’t
enough, the case is technically be-
fore the courts — as it is from the
moment a person is formally
charged — which can lead to

_ another unpleasant experience for.
a journalist: contempt of court.

No, my purpose is wider, and
narrower: to illustrate the mozal
question that such serious charges
pitch at the patients of a medical
practitioner who is so charged.

Because, as you will have
guessed, Kate is our daughter,

And at this moment she is still
the patient of a man facing the
most serious charges, only barely
less serious than murder, that can
confront a medical practitioner.

In this instance, as in many
.such instances coming to light
these days, the alleged assau!ts
took place many years ago.

But of course that doesn’t less-
en the seriousness.

Even less does it mean that
other patients might not come
forward now with similar allega-
tions.

. There is an added‘dimension for

our family.
: My wife was his patient too.
* More than 20, maybe 25 years
ago.

She stopped going to him only
because he turned to specializa-
tion: She no longer fitted in.

She thought he was terrific. She

left him with regret.

"And, needless to say, after she
‘read about the charges, she sear-

ched her memory exhaustively for |

any incident, any hint, any jot or
tittle of evidence of improper
behavior or suggestive word.

Nothing.

In several years as his patient,
not a thing.

He'd been very kind, serious,
apparently absorbed in his work.

And my wife, apart from never
experiencing any improper con- ~
duct, is mystified — probably like
most patients -— that it ever could
take place.

After all, there were — and are
— other people around. Nurse.
Receptionist. Patients like herself.

She doesn’t have any specific
recollection of the office’s physi-
cal Jayout in her days as his pa-
tient, but certainly nowadays the
doors are open, making any im-
propriety risky if not impossible.

We have two children younger
than Kate, and they too, in the
normal course of things, would
become Dr. Soandso’s patients.

Yet now he stands accused of
charges that, on conviction, would
carry serious penalties, destroy
him professionally, possibly ruin
his finances if not his entire life.

This is highly sobering stuff.
Especially in an age in which, so
recent studies in Ontario have in-
dicated, about 10% of doctors
have assaulted their patients.

And it is hardly necessary to say
thai this is against a backdrop of
claims by powerful women’s lobby
groups that about one out of
every 10 women is battered by her
spouse.

The National Action Committee

Vrevor
Lautens

GARDEN OF BIASES

of the Status of Women — which
is far more influential than
Parliament these days, and far less
critically scrutinized — claimed a

few years ago that a million Ca-
nadian women were beaten by
their husbands or live-in mates.

Challenged, the organization
then stated that the number in-
cluded verbally abused women.

By that definition, I'd have
thought the number should be
much larger —- to say nothing
(which of course was exactly what
NAC said) about the number of
husbands verbally abused by
wives.

Never mind. Like certain other
things that have never happened
or never were said, the one million
figure took on a life of its own.

If you detect a certain skep-
ticism on my part about accepting
things that ‘‘everyone”’ knows,
reader, you are correct.

I look with, at the very least,
extreme caution at the claims of
special-interest groups that are
pushing their claims and their
agendas with great success these
days.

J} seem to have wandered away
from the real-world question con-
cerning our Kate into abstractions.

Bui abstractions shouldn't be
underestimated.

Moral issues are such abstrac-

-tions, and invisible moral choices

influence and confront us every
day — and underlie our art, liter-.
ature, religions, self-perceptions
and of course our concepts of
justice.

And by now you will have
determined the question that con-
fronts my wife and me now.

Will we send our seven-year-
old daughter back to Dr. Soand-
so?

Yes. Until he has had his day i in
court, until justice has been done,
and of course thereafter if he is
judged innocent — yes.

if-he’s done nothing wrong, he
has enough anguish. if he has,
there’s plenty of time to suffer.
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