As Dr. Brian Thicke prepares to face a public discipline hearing for allegedly sexually abusing a patient, three other women have come forward to the Star alleging they were also groped by the prominent Brampton physician during a period stretching back 40 years.

Critics have also questioned how the province’s medical regulator, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, dealt with Thicke’s case, given that it was aware as early as 1994 of an allegation that the doctor performed an inappropriate breast examination, after the patient in that case went to the police.

But the college today refuses to say what — if anything — was done, saying legislation prohibits it from doing so.

Thicke, father of the late actor Alan Thicke and grandfather of singer Robin Thicke, retains an active licence to practise and privileges at Brampton Civic Hospital, according to his profile on the CPSO website.

Once dubbed Brampton’s “most valuable physician” and fêted at a gala attended by former mayor Susan Fennell, Thicke has no history of being disciplined by the college, according to a spokesperson for the regulator.

The 88-year-old doctor was ordered in December to face a hearing before the college’s discipline committee for allegedly sexually abusing Lisa Fruitman by groping her breasts in 1993 and 1995 during a physical required for a private pilot’s licence. The hearing has not yet been scheduled.

The regulator also said Thicke is under investigation “in addition to the pending discipline hearing.”

As reported by the Star in November, the college’s complaints committee, made up of doctors and members of the public who screen complaints behind closed doors, had at first dismissed Fruitman’s allegations rather than send them to the discipline committee.

The complaints committee was ordered to review the case by a civilian appeal body, which criticized nearly every one of the committee’s findings.

“Given that Dr. Thicke is before the college, he has no comment on any of these allegations,” Thicke’s lawyer, Paul-Erik Veel, told the Star, referring to the Fruitman case and the allegations made by the other women in this story.

Two of the three women who spoke to the Star consented to their names being published. The two have also filed formal complaints with the college.

Cheryl Thorpe had been out of nursing school only a few years when, in the mid-1970s, she started working in obstetrics and gynecology at Peel Memorial Hospital in Brampton.

She can recall Thicke at the nursing station. “He’d be bragging about what his son was up to, yakking about his famous daughter-in-law, Gloria Loring, the famous country western singer. I wasn’t quite frankly interested in what his son or daughter-in-law were doing. It wasn’t something I was following. I was more into Led Zeppelin,” Thorpe said.

It was during the day in 1977 when she alleges Thicke groped her breast while she was sitting alone in the nursery feeding a baby with a bottle.

“All I remember is him walking in, he might have said, ‘Hi,’ then all of a sudden put his hand down my scrub dress,” she told the Star. “He just nonchalantly reached down and grabbed my breast. I was so taken aback. What the heck was that all about?

“I was rather vulnerable, because I had this baby in my arms. What I would have wanted to do is walk up and smack him across the face.”

Thorpe said “the thing that really stuck in my head” was that Thicke was wearing rimless glasses with the initials “BT” inscribed down the side of the frame. She said she can’t recall him saying anything to her before leaving.

She said she went almost immediately to the head nurse, and the two then complained to the director of nursing.

“And then I waited for action to happen, and absolutely nothing happened. No discipline, no conversation, no confronting him about it. I don’t think anything came of it because they told me they would get back to me, and I have a feeling it was just basically swept under the rug,” Thorpe said.

The thought may have crossed her mind to go to the police, Thorpe said, “but at 23 you have a very different mindset. As a newly graduated nurse, you feel it’s an imbalance of power, sort of your word against the doctor and there never will be any action.

“There was always this sort of subculture that the doctors were the highest ones on the ladder, and nurses were subservient. There was this pecking order. We were told to give up your chair to a doctor, if they entered the nursing station, we were told to do that in nursing school. That was the kind of mentality back then.”

Thorpe, who now works in a sexual medicine practice in Victoria, B.C., that includes victims of sexual abuse, married in 1978 and moved to Waterloo with her husband.

Peel Memorial Hospital became, in 1998, part of what would eventually be William Osler Health System. It was closed in the late 2000s and subsequently demolished. Osler refused to say whether anything was done with Thorpe’s complaint in the 1970s.

“William Osler Health System does not tolerate assault or harassment of any type within the workplace. We recognize the seriousness of these matters, and investigate all reported cases,” said an Osler spokesperson, Alineh Haidery.

“However, as this is an internal personnel matter, we are unable to offer any further public comment.”

Thorpe said she told her boyfriend (now her husband) at the time about the alleged assault, and discussed it again with friends last October when they were talking about the #MeToo movement to denounce sexual assault and harassment.

She decided to go public and complain to the college when she read about Fruitman’s case in the Star in November. She said she was “mortified” when she realized patients were also reporting assault allegations against Thicke.

“I felt I had to do something as a professional nurse,” she said.

Thicke is also a civil aviation medical examiner, a designation granted by Transport Canada, and has performed physicals on pilots over the decades. Flight attendants have reported seeing him for their physicals, though flight attendants are not certified by Transport Canada.

Miryana Golubovich, a former flight attendant for Zoom, a defunct discount airline, was 26 when she saw Thicke at his Brampton office in 2005.

“They said (Thicke) does all the physicals, go see him,” Golubovich said, referring to the airline. “There’s an expectation you’re not going to get molested.”

Golubovich said she unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt, as she normally did for her doctor, so Thicke could check her heartbeat.

But she alleges Thicke unbuttoned the last two buttons, “went up under my shirt with the stethoscope, slid under my bra, and then held it on my breast with his hand on my nipple. I was shocked and really creeped out.”

She alleges that Thicke also had her bend down to touch her toes, and that he touched her buttocks.

“With the whole #MeToo campaign going on, I had thought about all the times I was touched inappropriately, and what came to mind was Brian Thicke,” she said. “I really do regret not having said something to the Ontario College of Physicians.”

Golubovich did recently file a complaint with the college. She also said she told human resources at Zoom in 2005, and recalls a message being sent to staff saying they would no longer use Thicke for physicals.

An individual who worked in HR at the time, who asked to remain anonymous because the person had no knowledge of specific cases involving staff, told the Star that the airline stopped using Thicke around 2005 as their Toronto region doctor for physicals because flight attendants had reported feeling uncomfortable.

Another woman, who asked to remain anonymous because she still works as a pilot and fears reprisals in the aviation industry, said she saw Thicke for her aviation physical around 1994.

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“I knew he was on the board of the Brampton Flying Club,” at the time, the woman said as to why she went to see him.

“He reached in and groped both of my breasts with his hands, a squeeze for a few seconds on either side. I just sat there, and he said ‘OK, you can do up your shirt. We’re done.’ ”

The woman said she had been receiving breast exams since she was a teenager, as her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer as a young woman, but she said this exam felt different.

She was also instructing at the flying club at the time, and said she told her female students not to see Thicke for their physicals. The woman said she didn’t report to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at the time because she had no confidence in the regulator.

“On top of that, Dr. Thicke was at the time on the board” of the flying club, she said. “I’m a female in aviation, which is fairly male-dominated. I wasn’t about to rock any boats because, who knows, I could have possibly lost my job if I complained.”

The current president of the Brampton Flying Club told the Star that after it was made aware of Fruitman’s allegations about two years ago, the board instructed its general manager to check if there were any records of complaints about Thicke.

“We have no records of anything about Dr. Thicke, in terms of any alleged sexual misconduct or anything like that,” said Allan Paige. “The club has no knowledge of any alleged sexual misconduct of Dr. Thicke, so we have nothing further to say.”

While Paige said the general manager was asked to look through records regarding Thicke, he also confirmed that the review did not include reaching out to members.

He said Thicke, who was also a pilot, was on the board of the club in the 1990s, but would not say if Thicke is still a member because the membership list is “private.”

Transport Canada, which grants the designation of civil aviation medical examiners to doctors who conduct physicals on pilots and air traffic controllers, also said it had not received any complaints about Thicke.

Spokesperson Marie-Anyk Côté said Transport Canada provides specialized training for the aviation examiners. She said they are required to regularly attend seminars, and their performance is monitored by specialists in aerospace medicine.

“As there is no federal licensing body that exists, Transport Canada is wholly reliant on the provincial licensing bodies (in this case, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario) with respect to physician qualifications and fitness to practice,” Côté wrote in an email.

“The department has never had a policy or procedure with respect to breast examinations. There is no requirement for civil aviation medical examiners to conduct breast examinations during a medical exam.”

After Fruitman, the complainant in the case for which Thicke is facing a discipline hearing, appealed the initial dismissal of her complaint by the college, it became public that a different woman had complained to Peel police in 1994 of an inappropriate breast exam conducted by Thicke during an aviation physical.

Excerpts of the police report are contained in a decision of the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) ordering the college to review Fruitman’s complaint. (Following that review, the college decided to send the complaint to discipline.)

“During the examination, (Thicke) stated: ‘Now we are going to look at your boobies,’ ” the complainant alleged, according to the police report. “He then raised her shirt, undid her bra, raised her bra and then squeezed her breasts. (Thicke) then stated: ‘You have full healthy breasts and you should get them checked regularly.’

“The victim subsequently made inquiries and feels the examination of her breasts was inappropriate for an aviation medical examination and reported it to Peel police.”

According to the police report, Thicke was arrested on June 29, 1994, and admitted to police to doing breast exams as part of the aviation physical for the past 38 years, but denied using the word “boobies.” He was not charged as police concluded there was “no intent” to commit sexual assault.

A supplemental note from the investigating officer, also contained in the HPARB decision from the Fruitman case, indicates that officers contacted other doctors who do not routinely conduct breast exams as part of the aviation physical.

“(Thicke) was apprised of procedures for conducting breast examinations to assist in preventing any further uncomfortable feelings in his patients,” the investigating officer’s note said. “The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario . . . has been advised they will deal with any alleged inappropriate conduct by (Thicke). The victim was satisfied with the police investigation.”

According to the HPARB decision, the College of Physicians and Surgeons did receive information from Peel police, and the file on Thicke was closed in 1995 at the college “on manager’s approval.”

Today, the college will provide no further details.

“The CPSO is not able to provide information about or answer questions related to specific investigations, in accordance with the legislation,” said a college spokesperson, Kathryn Clarke.

Medical malpractice lawyer Paul Harte said if that is indeed the case, then the legislation should be changed.

“I think the minister of health should do an investigation. He’s got oversight responsibility, there’s enough information in the public record to justify an investigation of how the college handled the 1994 complaint,” Harte told the Star.

“The minister of health is ultimately responsible for oversight of the college, and this record calls out for an explanation.

“There has to be some level of accountability and ultimately, there has to be some information made available to the public so that the public can be reassured that the college works,” he said.

Jacques Gallant can be reached at jgallant@thestar.ca

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