Dr. Paul Sclodnick claims on his website that it’s the “positive atmosphere he creates with his caring manner and extensive dental experience” that has brought so many patients into his Maple clinic, including actress Neve Campbell.

Ask some of Sclodnick’s former patients and employees about atmosphere and you might get an entirely different response.

Sclodnick, the former principal dentist at Maple Dental Health, admitted this week to having had sex with one patient, while acting in a “predatory and sexually abusive manner” toward another former patient/employee. (See update below)

The dentist, who was once voted “best in Vaughan” by readers of the Vaughan Citizen and is a past president of the York Region Dental Society, is now finished.

The discipline panel of the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario yanked his licence following a joint submission from lawyers for the college and Sclodnick.

Lawyer Matthew Wilton acknowledged that there was no other penalty available for his client. Sex with a patient is a cardinal sin in the health professions and the law calls for the mandatory revocation of the practitioner’s licence.

“Your professional misconduct is a matter of profound concern,” the panel’s chair, Dr. Richard Hunter, told Sclodnick in a public reprimand.

“It is completely unacceptable to your fellow dentists and to the public. You have brought discredit to the entire profession and to yourself. Public confidence in this profession has been put in jeopardy.”

Sclodnick, who received his licence in 1979, declined to address the panel.

One day while he was in the office with a now-former employee, whose identity is covered by a publication ban, he pulled back the woman’s scrub pants and then tugged at the waistband of her underwear, saying he wanted to see what colour they were, according to an agreed statement of facts.

In another instance, he was alone with the woman in an elevator when he said “we have eight seconds alone together,” and then kissed her without her consent.

And then there was the time she gave him a drive home and he “inappropriately put his hand on her leg,” according to the statement of facts. When he got out of the car, he told her “he did not know how he would be able to work because he had a boner.”

The woman recalled that Sclodnick made other sexually inappropriate comments and gestures in her presence at other times as well, according to the statement.

The panel noted that the woman was vulnerable after her husband died, leaving her the sole wage-earner and caregiver for her daughter.

“This episode had a negative impact on her life, and left her physically and emotionally drained and deeply traumatized,” said the college’s lawyer, Christine Mainville, reading from a victim impact statement.

The woman sought counselling as a result of Sclodnick’s actions, she said.

Regarding the patient Sclodnick had sex with, the statement of facts said he was involved in a sexual relationship with her over a number of years.

In relation to a third complainant, also a former patient and employee, Slodnick admitted to touching her hip while she was reaching for a binder, and that this constituted professional misconduct.

“This is deeply concerning behaviour that has spanned a number of years and targeted more than one patient and employee,” Mainville told the panel.

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Sclodnick was convicted in criminal court of simple assault on a former patient and given a conditional discharge and 12 months probation, according to the Ministry of the Attorney General.

He had been required to practise in the presence of a college-approved monitor pending the outcome at the discipline hearing.

Update: April 27, 2017: Following publication of this article, the Star was informed that Paul Sclodnick is no longer principal of the Maple Dental Health practice, as was stated in the agreed statement of facts published by the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario and stated in a previous version of this article. In fact he ceased to be principal of the practice as of December 2016.