(Toronto Star) Former North York General anesthesiologist Dr George Doodnaught was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years imprisonment for sexually assaulting 21 of his female patients.
As Doodnaught, 65, was handcuffed and arrested from court, a few of the women clapped.
His conduct was “reprehensible in the extreme,” Superior Court Justice David McCombs said in his decision. “It must be condemned in the strongest terms.”
In November, Doodnaught was found guilty of sexually assaulting 21 women between the ages of 25 and 75 while they were semi-conscious on the operating table.
All but one of the women were undergoing surgeries at North York General Hospital between 2006 and 2010. Doodnaught was a popular anesthesiologist at the hospital for 26 years.
The Crown had asked for 12 to 15 years imprisonment during the sentencing hearing earlier this month. The defence suggested eight to 10 years.
“I am very happy with the conviction, however I am very disappointed with the sentencing,” said the patient whose complaint launched the criminal investigation. She cannot be identified due to a publication ban. “Ten years, as far as I’m concerned, is insulting.”
The judge made his decision based on the law, and the laws need to change, she said.
During the trial, her testimony and the reading of her victim impact statement, she says, Doodnaught did not look at her once.
“He’s a coward,” she said.
In his lengthy judgment released in November following the 76-day trial, McCombs found that Doodnaught took advantage of his position in the operating room, concealed behind a sterile screen that separates patients’ upper and lower bodies.
Hidden from the doctors and nurses, Doodnaught fondled the breasts of sedated female patients, kissed their mouths and forced them to perform oral sex and masturbation, McCombs found.
In his sentencing decision, McCombs noted that in the months before Doodnaught was arrested the assaults escalated. Fifteen of the 21 assaults occurred in the past six months, four in the 10 days before his arrest.
Doodnaught’s lawyer, Brian Greenspan, said Doodnaught and his family are disappointed by the convictions. They are appealing the convictions but not the sentence.
The notice of appeal filed with the court argues that McCombs erred in finding the testimony of the complainants plausible and “rejected evidence inconsistent with guilt.”
That includes the defence submission that it was impossible for Doodnaught to have committed the assaults based on the proximity of operating room staff and the positioning of medical equipment.
A bail hearing for Doodnaught’s release pending appeal is scheduled for Wednesday morning at the Court of Appeal.
In his sentencing decision, McCombs noted the “great personal courage and dignity” of the victims and their families, and the “profound psychological impact” they suffered.
Patients had made three formal sexual assault complaints to North York General Hospital about Doodnaught before a complaint in 2010 sparked a criminal investigation.
The hospital’s chief of anesthesiology was aware of the complaints but the senior hospital administration only learned of them after the 2010 complaint was made, McCombs found in his ruling.
Serious complaints about staff, including allegations of sexual assault, are now being reported directly to the hospital’s CEO.
Doodnaught, whose medical licence is suspended, is set to face a disciplinary hearing with the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons. A date has not yet been set.
In the notice of hearing, the College notes that the mandatory penalty for sexually abusing a patient is a revoked licence and public reprimand.
While there were only 21 patients involved in the criminal case, the notice of hearing contains allegations that Doodnaught sexually abused 30 patients.
One of the alleged sexual assaults dates back to 1992.
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