• After he was fired from Mackenzie Health, Zadeh was able to seek new employment in the industry and was accused of additional assaults.

The investigation prompted Police Chief Eric Jolliffe to stress to residents that they can’t rely on others, including public organizations, to share information with police.

“Citizens … cannot always rely on others to report criminal offences,” he wrote in an email to yorkregion.com about the case.

PLEA DEAL

On May 31, Zadeh walked away from Newmarket courthouse with a three-year probation order after he pleaded guilty to slapping a patient on the rear end.

Justice Joseph Kenkel granted Zadeh, 53, of Newmarket, a conditional discharge, finding that he had already served more days in jail – four in all – then he would have received for that offence.

The Crown said despite going through lengthy pre-trial motions and scheduling five weeks’ worth of trial, it had reviewed the 13 charges and found there was little chance for conviction.

Crown lawyer Erin Thomas said they agreed to the guilty plea in part because some of those expected to testify had “frailties”.

Zadeh worked at the Richmond Hill hospital from May 12, 2014 until he was fired Oct. 19, 2015.

Between March and October 2015, his co-workers told police they witnessed or were told by patients that Zadeh engaged in several troubling incidents, including inserting his thumb in an elderly lady's anus, rubbing another patient's vagina in the shower and according to at least one unconfirmed account, rubbing and sucking on a woman’s breasts.

According to the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, there is no legal obligation for PSWs to report incidents of sex assault or other forms of patient abuse to police unless working in a “long-term care facility.”

Zadeh was also accused of assaulting two more patients – one at Hadley Grange, an assisted living facility in Aurora, and another in the patient’s home.

FAMILY CONTACTED POLICE

Police were contacted by a victim’s daughter on Dec. 19, 2015, hours after she was told by Mackenzie Health executives that her mother had been “touched inappropriately” by a PSW.

“When I first heard that, I thought someone had hit her” the daughter told yorkregion.com.

When she asked if police had been contacted, director of quality and risk management Wendy Hooper told her “We're not mandated to do that unless it's a gunshot wound.”

“I said I can't fathom this,” she said. “You have an obligation, at least a moral obligation to tell the police.”

In January 2016 police filed the first of a series of ITOs. It states there were four suspected victims, but the patients were not identified by name.

According to court documents, although Hooper instructed staff not to share victims’ names with police, the hospital's patient care manager Charmaine Ambrose gave the names to police.

During her interview with police, Ambrose refused to say that Zadeh's patient care was “sexual in nature,” instead choosing to call it “inappropriate and rough” — even though she signed a letter to Zadeh months earlier that stated patient care was “sexual and inappropriate in nature.”

Const. Stephanie Couture noted in her sworn statement that she thought Ambrose was afraid of “civil liability.”

Hooper told police that Ambrose gave police the victims' names contrary to her instructions.

When Hooper was advised police would contact patients, she “attempted to persuade the detective to not contact them, as it would jeopardize the reputation of the hospital,” the documents state.

Hooper then told police she would be calling patients or their families to advise them police would be contacting them. The investigator asked her not to do so as it would compromise an ongoing criminal investigation.

“(Hooper) did not acknowledge she would comply with the request,” the document states.

NON-DISCLOSURE ORDER

As a result investigators sought and were granted a legally binding non-disclosure order from the courts to prevent her from giving information to the victims.

Hooper also told police “she could not remember” if there was a requirement for hospitals to report allegations of a criminal offence.

“If given the chance to do things over in this incident, Wendy Hooper would not do anything differently and would still not contact police in regards to the sexual assault allegations,” Couture concluded in her statement.

Interviews by police with patients and staff indicate key members of the hospital’s leadership team were made aware of the allegations after staff spoke to a complainant, who asked that police not be notified. This included president and CEO Altaf Stationwala, executive vice-president Susan Kowlek, operations director for emergency, medicine and critical care Heather Riddell, manager of employee relations and diversity Julie Cook and human resources director Ashton White, according to the court document.

For one patient’s daughter, the ordeal has been a harrowing one, which has left her mother weaker and her questioning not only the Canadian medical but legal system.

“It’s really too hard to say what the effects have been,” she said. “My family is going through feelings of guilt, they have to look at her daily knowing this. I feel like I’ve been victimized twice, I first had to hear someone violated my mother then I had to hear that he was convicted of nothing.”

She said she is now taking legal action against the hospital.

Mackenzie Health issued a written statement June 15, 2016 and would not provide further comment after repeated requests.

The statement says if Zadeh was a member of a professional college, like a doctor or nurse, the process would have been to report to the college.

REVISED PLAN

“As PSWs are not a legislated health profession, we were unable to follow this process,” the statement reads. “In light of these events, Mackenzie Health has taken the important step of revising the hospital’s police investigation policy to strengthen our ability to share information and report incidents to police.”

The hospital refused to provide specific details of that revised plan.

Hooper did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term care said it does expect hospitals to “notify police of any potential criminal matters involving patients that take place within their facilities.”

However, it stops short of mandating it, explaining that reporting takes “control away from the victim on how they wish to be treated.”

“The ministry is considering its options with respect to the development of a mandatory registry for PSWs,” the ministry said in a written statement. “A mandatory registry will ensure oversight and accountability of this professions and will ensure that patients, their families and employers can be confident that their PSW is qualified and provides safe care.”

Mackenzie Health operates the Richmond Hill hospital, the under-construction Vaughan hospital, long-term and interim long-term care facilities in partnership with UniversalCare, as well as a regional stroke centre and kidney disease program.