How Did Dr. Doodnaught Get Away with Forced Sex in His Operating Room?

Last Thursday, a Toronto woman testified in court against an anesthesiologist she claims sexually assaulted her during her 2010 hysterectomy. Though heavily sedated, she told the court she remembered opening her eyes mid-procedure, seeing a blue screen dividing her upper body from the rest of the operating room, and feeling her breast being fondled.

The 42-year-old woman, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban, referred to primarily as DD, asked the Crown if she could be explicit in detail, and then recalled that she felt “massaging, tweaking under the nipple, caressing.” Minutes later a penis forcefully entered her mouth, she told the court.

Her anesthesiologist, Dr. George Doodnaught, is a successful and respected doctor who also just happens to be a married father of five. The perfectly- named Doodnaught (“Dude… not!”) is accused of sexually assaulting 20 women at North York General hospital and one at an offsite location, while their bodies lay helpless, numb from epidurals.

This story was essentially ignored by most news outlets until Friday morning, when a column in the Toronto Star ignited a media shit storm with what Gawker has now crowned “the worst lede of all time.” Rosie DiManno, notorious loudmouth and literary equivalent of orange juice in your cereal, took a graphically disturbing story about sexual assault, and somehow made it even worse.

The piece begins with such eloquent wording as “she lost a womb but gained a penis.” Now surely I can’t be the only person who immediately imagines a poorly illustrated sexual reassignment surgery? What does that even mean? Is she contending that Doodnaught’s penis was a consolation prize for her hysterectomy?

Last week, the Toronto Star reported the testimony of a 48-year-old woman who complained to police after she claimed she was assaulted by Doodnaught in late 2008. They launched an investigation, but the hospital withheld the information that there had already been two previous complaints against the anesthesiologist, and no charges were laid. Even more ridiculous: the Star’s reporter Peter Small described Doodnaught shoving his dick in the patient’s mouth as if she had willingly “performed oral sex on the doctor and he fondled her breasts… saying he would later 'give her a good fuck.'" She performed oral sex? This woman, who was so doped-up on Ketamine that she could not feel or move her body fellated the doctor? Once again, the Toronto Star sets the bar astonishingly high for reporting on forced-sex in medical environments.

As the trial continued, a woman known only as BB wept as she told the court that she awoke during her knee-replacement surgery to find Doodnaught kissing her mouth and ear while fondling her breast. When the woman, then 62, complained to her surgeon Dr. Robert Brock about the alleged assault. He determined she had hallucinated as a side effect of the sedative. Brock confirmed with the court that he took no action against Doodnaught after the complaint.

As the alleged story becomes increasingly tangled and rapey, perhaps the most bizarre part is that Doodnaught supposedly committed these assaults in a busy operating room, with often only a 1-by-1.5-metre blue drape dividing the anesthesiologist and patient with the rest of the operating team.

A surgical assistant from St. Michael’s hospital in Toronto, who wished to not be named, explained that for procedures which required anesthetic, there is often a “circulating nurse that is able to see everything. I have never seen an anesthesiologist that is isolated.”

Additionally, the nurse explained that those performing anesthesia and medical procedures usually want another person present, to limit liability and provide an alibi if necessary: “they’re covering their own back, and it would be stupid not to. Doctors of that stature have far too much to lose to take such risks,” he said.

He also explained that the logistics of the environment were perplexing. How Doodnaught was able to repeatedly insert his penis into the paralyzed patient’s mouth while the operating team stood so closely was “surprising, but not impossible.”

When asked if he knew anyone who had ever fantasized about sexual interaction with sedated patients, he explained “I mean, some guys used to joke about it in medical school – some of them are pretty well known now- about copping a feel and stuff,” he reassuringly added “but I never took it seriously and I truly hope they didn’t either.”

Check out our old column "Bollocks to the Hippocratic Oath" for more on weird doctors:

Doctors Can't Help You

What Not to Do for an Erection

Don't Touch Me