The code of conduct is very clear when it comes to doctor-patient relations. But as 16×9 found out, one Canadian doctor who lost his licence in Ontario because of allegations of sexual abuse against patients has managed to keep practicing medicine in another country.
In 2006, Katherine Radcliffe made the life-changing decision to have bariatric surgery.
She weighed 400 pounds and knew she needed to make a change. So she did her research and went to see Dr. Jacob Joffe, a weight-loss surgeon. She believed he was a leader in his field.
“He was the pioneer of the lap band surgery and he had been doing it here in Canada for about 15 years or so,” Radcliffe says. “I felt my prayers had been answered.”
Her operation took place on November, 20, 2006, at The Scarborough Hospital. According to Joffe’s dictated notes, “The patient tolerated the procedure well and went back to the Recovery Room in good condition.”
Katherine was recovering well in the hospital, but says all of that changed on what she thought would be a routine visit by her doctor. While still recovering in the hospital from surgery, she says Joffe came into her room, lifted her hospital gown, and began to touch her inappropriately.
“He would touch my breasts and squeeze it and lift it and talked about how our health card would pay for breast augmentation once I lost the weight,” Katherine says.
But it didn’t end there according to Katherine. She then says that Joffe “grabbed my thigh and said like this thigh can be gone with some plastic surgery at our clinic. And he used that time, when he was talking about that, to let his fingers do a little walking…exploring my genital area, and he touch and caressed and he put his finger inside of me.”
Katherine says the experience left her speechless.
“I just was in shock. I just kind of froze, and I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t speak,” she says. “I feel I paid sixteen thousand dollars to be raped.”
Katherine never contacted the police after it happened, so criminal charges were never laid. She did, however, contact the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario three years later, in 2009, only to find out that Joffe had already plead “no contest” to allegations of sexual abuse by four female patients.
The allegations included a claim that in January 2004 Joffe engaged in “oral sex as well as intercourse” with a female patient. Two years earlier with another patient Joffe was alleged to have engaged in “sexual activities” which “occasionally occurred at the hospital for follow-up appointments”.
And with yet another patient Joffe was alleged to have told her “to keep their relationship a secret knowing the professional consequences to him if the relationship was discovered”.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario stripped Joffe of his licence to practice medicine in Ontario in 2008 but that hasn’t stopped Joffe from treating Canadians. 16×9 learned that Joffe is still treating patients from Canada at a weight-loss clinic in Guadalajara, Mexico.
When Katherine found out that Joffe was still practicing medicine she was in shock.
“I can’t believe that. That’s just really, really wrong. And I feel sorry for those people because they don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says. “And I wouldn’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else. It’s just shocking. It’s really shocking.”
After repeated requests for an interview about Katherine Radcliffe’s allegations and the ethics of his current practice – we received this statement from Joffe’s lawyer:
“the allegations…are unsubstantiated, the motivations behind them are obviously highly questionable, and Dr. Joffe denies them categorically.”
As for the allegations made by the four patients and Joffe’s plea of no contest his lawyer says it “does not constitute an admission by the member as to the facts or findings.”
In a 16×9 investigation, we talk with one woman who says she was sexually assaulted by Dr. Joffe. And we travel to Mexico to ask Dr. Joffe whether he abandoned the doctor’s code of conduct.
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