A court has reinstated the licence of a Brampton dentist and part-time standup comedian who, according to the judge’s ruling, admitted to police and a psychiatrist that he masturbated in front of teenage girls in Florida this year.

In a decision that has left Ontario’s dental regulator “very disappointed,” Superior Court Justice Nancy Spies ordered last week that a suspension on the licence be lifted immediately and that the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario pay Dr. Ron Rohringer $20,000 in court costs.

Rohringer, who has practised dentistry for 32 years, was suspended last month by a panel of the college’s inquiries, complaints and reports committee (ICRC), after the college became aware through media reports that he was facing criminal charges in Florida.

The suspension was imposed pending the outcome of the college investigation, which is ongoing, and Rohringer is currently not facing any discipline charges.

Health care professionals can be charged and disciplined by their respective college for conduct that took place outside of patient encounters and the workplace.

Justice Spies noted in her ruling that there is no evidence of actual harm to patients, and that there has never been an allegation of sexual abuse from a patient.

She also said the complaints committee — which screens complaints behind closed doors — gave no reasons as to what weight, if any, it gave to a psychiatrist’s opinion that the dentist doesn’t pose a risk to patients and staff, or to Rohringer’s offer to have a chaperone monitor his patient encounters.

“Certainly there is nothing obvious to me why such a proposal would not be accepted particularly since Dr. Rohringer has practiced for 32 years without any disciplinary findings against him,” Spies wrote in her ruling. “For these reasons alone, in addition to the earlier conclusions I have already come to, the ICRC decisions cannot stand.”

Rohringer, who also once performed standup comedy at clubs in the GTA outside of work hours, intends to contest a Florida criminal charge of indecent exposure, that he allegedly masturbated in his car while asking teenage girls for directions, Spies said in her ruling.

According to the ruling, a Florida police report says Rohringer, whose dental practice includes children, confessed to a detective to three incidents of exposing himself and masturbating in front of teenage girls, and making videos of himself during the incidents.

Rohringer plans to contest the voluntariness of that statement to police, according to the ruling.

A report sent to the college from forensic psychiatrist Dr. Julian Gojer states that Rohringer also admitted to him that he intentionally exposed himself to underage girls in Florida on three separate occasions.

“Dr. Rohringer intentionally sought out victims under the age of 17 because he thought that they were less likely to report him,” according to Gojer’s report, summarized in Spies’ ruling.

“Dr. Rohringer has a diagnosed problem with exhibitionism; acts of exhibitionism cause harm to the victims; and Dr. Rohringer has ‘deviant urges’ to expose himself, which he is working to eliminate.”

But Gojer concluded he poses no risk to patients.

“In the presence of evidence where it says he is of zero risk to patients, the college of dental surgeons took his dental licence and treated him completely unfairly,” one of Rohringer’s lawyers, Neil Abramson, told the Star.

The college said it is continuing its investigation.

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“The (college) is very disappointed with this decision. Our panel suspended Dr. Rohringer’s licence. The court quashed the panel’s order and ordered him reinstated immediately,” said a statement from the college.

“The college will do everything it must to protect the public interest.”

A college investigator spoke to a number of dentists and current and former staff members as part of the probe into Rohringer. One long-term dental assistant said he makes “inappropriate sexual jokes” in front of patients, while several other staffers said he tells sexual jokes in the office, according to the judge’s ruling.

Rohringer’s lawyers submitted in court that some of the staff interviews suggest “he may have boundary issues with employees because of his provocative sense of humour,” the ruling said.

The dentist’s lawyer said Spies’ ruling clarifies a new power granted to health colleges by the provincial government this year in its amendments to the Regulated Health Professions Act.

The amendments followed a Toronto Star investigation into physicians still at work after having been found to have sexually abused their patients.

Previously, a complaints committee could only suspend a health professional once it had decided to send an allegation to a discipline committee for a public hearing, and if the allegation was deemed to be so serious that suspension was warranted to protect the public.

Now, complaints committees can suspend at any time after receiving a complaint or initiating an investigation, as the dentists’ college committee sought to do in the Rohringer case.

“The critical part of the (judge’s) decision is that it does impact upon and modify the new legislative power insofar as it says that because this is such an extraordinary power, the nuclear weapon available to regulators if you will, that the regulator must consider the least restrictive means for protecting the public before they determine to take a licence without a charge, hearing, conviction or sentence. And they didn’t do it” in the Rohringer case, Abramson told the Star.

He said Bill 87, the government’s attempt at strengthening the law around sexual abuse by health professionals, “is silent on that point.” Abramson said the judge agreed that “this must be a necessary component of this new legislative power.”