Latest National Post Update On Disgraced Dr. Joffe

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Doctor who slept with ‘hot’ twin patients skips reprimand hearing Posted: May 12, 2009, 7:02 PM by Rob Roberts

By Joseph Brean, National Post

Ten years after Jacobo Joffe started sexually abusing women on whom he performed obesity surgery, including the “hot” twin sisters he described as “every man’s fantasy,” the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario today delivered a blistering reprimand to an empty desk.

The no-show of Mr. Joffe, once a respected bariatric surgeon at Toronto’s Scarborough Grace Hospital, was an awkward and perplexing first for the college, which regulates doctors in the province.

But Mr. Joffe, having already received the college’s stiffest punishment of license revocation, had little more to lose by skipping his public reprimand, other than any hope of future reinstatement.

Discipline panel chair Dr. Marc Gabel said he was “dismayed” and uncertain what to do, so he stuck to a script that denounced Mr. Joffe for his “shameful” behaviour and “obvious knowledge of the wrongness you were involved in.”

“You have not only damaged and brought into disrepute your own name and reputation, but cast a shadow upon the whole profession,” he said. “We can only hope that in future you can find a way to correct your moral compass.”

The panel last year stripped Mr. Joffe of his medical licence after he pleaded no contest to sexually abusing four women, including the sisters.

All were his patients for operations, such a gastric bypass or laparoscopic band surgery, designed to treat their obesity.

The abuse spanned 1999 to 2006, and included various sex acts performed in the hospital and his office.

In victim impact statements, one woman spoke of going to him at a time of “personal desperation.”

“When my life began to get better he took advantage of my feelings of thankfulness toward him,” she said.

In the case of the twins, the judgment says Mr. Joffe went to a 2003 Christmas party for lap-band support patients, where he told the twins they were “hot” and kissed them on the lips. From then until 2006, he “attended their home approximately every two weeks and almost every week during the summer months where he engaged in various sexual acts with them...”

He also engaged in illicit drug use with the twins, using street drugs he asked one of them to purchase.

Mr. Joffe was also ordered to pay college legal costs of $3,650, and $40,000 toward a fund for his victims’ therapy, but a college spokeswoman said she could not confirm whether these payments have been made.

Mr. Joffe is also facing a class action lawsuit, filed last month, which also targets the hospital, alleging it “knew or should have known about Joffe’s substance abuse and his predatory sexual behaviour.” The hospital denies the allegation, saying in a statement that it only learned about Mr. Joffe’s misconduct in 2007, and took appropriate steps.

Mr. Joffe has reportedly been living in Mexico, where he went to medical school, but keeps a Toronto apartment with a girlfriend who was once a patient.