Thirty-five women are suing Beverly Hills Obstetrics-Gynecologists, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and other medical practices where the doctor worked, alleging decades of sexual and medical malpractice that the health facilities enabled and concealed. .
The lawsuit, filed late Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that Dr. Barry Brock had been making lewd and lascivious comments to patients for years; groping their breasts and genitals during medically unnecessary examinations, sometimes without gloves; and engaged in “female genital mutilation” by subjecting women to unnecessary stitches, in addition to other reported malpractices.
The lawsuit also alleges that the physician long refused to perform cesarean sections on patients who needed them.
badger has previously denied any wrongdoing Or sexual misconduct.
“I know that I did not touch or examine any patients in any way except for medical reasons. I know that my comments have never been sexually suggestive or sexually harassing, and any such allegations have taken a comment completely out of context and distorted it,” Brock said earlier this year. I told The Times.
Brock said, “Any claim that I performed a medical examination or procedure for anything other than a medical purpose or did it for my own personal gratification, to discourage C-sections, or to sexually harass a patient “This is a very false claim.” ,
Brock did not immediately comment Tuesday on the specific allegations in the lawsuit. Cedars-Sinai also did not immediately comment on the allegations.,
the doctor is also facing problems an allegation Before the Medical Board of California, where he has been accused of “repeated negligence”. According to the official complaint, Brock failed to give adequate pain medication while treating a patient for a miscarriage, and failed to properly clear material from her uterus, among other allegations.
In a statement, Brock said the incidents outlined in the allegations were not an accurate description of his treatment of the patient and that some of the allegations were “completely inconsistent with my practices.”
For example, Brock said he always wears gloves during pelvic exams and couldn’t imagine a patient refusing to address the severe pain they were experiencing. He said, “Based on what I know about the care and treatment of this patient, I will successfully defend my treatment within the standard of care.”
Brock, 74, said he had been an attending physician at Cedars-Sinai since the early 1980s, and had never previously faced any charges from the medical board.
She left its physician network in 2018, but retained hospital privileges at Cedars-Sinai while working in private practice at Rodeo Drive Women’s Health Center and a Beverly Hills OB/GYN, who are also named as defendants in the lawsuit Was. Both organizations have not yet responded to requests for comment Tuesday.
In July, Cedars-Sinai said it had suspended Brock’s hospital privileges after receiving “concerning complaints” from his former patients. A few months later, his hospital privileges revokedA spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai said that the conduct alleged about Brock was contrary to its “core values”.
At the time, a spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai said that privacy laws prevented the medical center from confirming any patient complaints or disciplinary actions taken against Brock before this year.
The lawsuit alleges that both patients and medical staff told Cedars-Sinai about concerns long before the complaints about Brock led to his hospital privileges being terminated.
The lawsuit alleged that Cedars-Sinai administrators received “substantial and repeated warnings” about their misconduct and mistreatment of patients through previous lawsuits, as well as complaints from the state medical board and health system. Yet the medical center and other defendants continued to “expose more and more female patients to a known serial sexual predator,” the lawsuit alleges.
The plaintiffs are represented by a legal team that includes Anthony T. DiPietro, an attorney who has also represented patients of convicted sex offender Robert Hayden, formerly a gynecologist at Columbia University, and attorneys who are former USC Women’s Pathologists who represented George Tyndall’s patients included:
The complaint details allegations from 35 former patients ranging in age from 20 to 60. Some saw Brock only once and refused to see him again, while others had to deal with him repeatedly over many years. According to the complaint, his care spanned from the mid-1980s to this year.
The lawsuit says about a dozen patients alleged unnecessary stitches or made lewd comments about it: Brock told several plaintiffs that he inserted stitches in their perineal areas to make them “tighter” after childbirth. Put extra stitches.
In one instance, according to the lawsuit, Brock said, “I’m going to sew her up virgin-tight in front of her husband and parents after the baby is born.” In another, Brock told a woman she didn’t have any dissection, but told her husband, “Don’t worry dad, I’ll put a stitch in there for you,” and proceeded to stitch her up without her consent. Proceeded to, the lawsuit alleged.
Some people suffered persistent pain or urinary complications after “this barbaric and completely unnecessary form of female genital mutilation,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit says one patient’s doctors described the stitching as “equivalent to female circumcision.”
The lawsuit also included allegations of violent and threatening behavior. A former patient alleged that Brock “violently inserted a speculum into her vagina”, opened it up and “continued to pump the instrument in and out of her, simulating intercourse.”
The woman said she told an executive at Rodeo Drive Women’s Health Center, where Brock worked at the time, about the experience and other related encounters with Brock. According to the lawsuit, no action was taken against him.
In the lawsuit, two women alleged that he forced them to feel his erections. One said he “began rubbing his erect penis on her hand” while she was alone with him in the exam room, the lawsuit says.
Another alleged that while she was in labor, Brock came in and placed her foot on his erection, then grabbed her foot again when she tried to remove it.
The lawsuit also alleges that Brock forced patients to undergo sensitive physical examinations even after they refused. The lawsuit states that the decision to perform a pelvic or breast exam should be shared between a physician and a patient, and “such invasive procedures should never be performed without the patient’s knowledge, understanding, and consent.”
In one case, the lawsuit said, Brock pulled down the pants of a woman who had refused a vaginal examination in front of her daughter and was “so aggressive that (the woman) immediately ran out of the room in tears.”
Another patient alleged that Brock ignored her when she said a breast exam was unnecessary. Instead, he unhooked her bra, pressed her breasts and told her, “Your breasts are perfect,” the complaint alleges. “Does your husband tell you this?”
According to the complaint, she was one of five women who said he removed their bras without their consent before touching their breasts.
Other patients alleged that Brock refused to leave the room as they undressed or refused their requests for a hospital gown, causing them to be examined in the nude. (In response to questions about the medical board’s allegation, Brock said that when a patient changes clothes behind a protective curtain he either leaves the room or turns or looks away, and that he never told any patient Has not been asked to take off her clothes in front of me.)
Several people described sexual comments: According to the lawsuit, one said Brock told her that her vagina looked “mature” and peppered her with invasive questions, such as asking if her partner could feel her body during sex. Will ejaculate on. The suit states that several patients noted that while examining women’s genitals or breasts, Brock would comment on how “lucky” or “happy” their partners must be.
The lawsuit alleges that Cedars-Sinai was repeatedly informed about the concerns with Brock. According to the lawsuit, a patient who saw him between 2011 and 2013 told office staff about his behavior and asked to see a different doctor. The lawsuit says another person who saw him in 2018 and 2019 informed his regular physician, also affiliated with Cedars-Sinai, about his actions.
Another former patient, herself a Cedars-Sinai employee at the time, filed a formal complaint at the medical center after a 2017 prenatal appointment in which Brock allegedly touched her breasts “under the guise of medical care.” And made inappropriate comments on him. According to the lawsuit, her husband.
Although she was told there would be consequences for Brock — who was in Cedars-Sinai’s physician network at the time — she heard nothing else from the medical center, the complaint says.
The lawsuit says another patient tried to report abuse at Cedars-Sinai earlier this year, but was initially told the medical center would not take action because the doctor was in private practice.
She then contacted a Beverly Hills OB-GYN, who referred her to Brock after her general practitioner was unavailable. According to the lawsuit, when she received no response after sharing her experience, the woman filed a formal, written complaint with Cedars-Sinai by email. Only then was her complaint taken seriously and Brock had her hospital privileges suspended, the lawsuit says.
A spokesman for Cedars-Sinai told The Times in September that the hospital system had terminated clinical privileges for Brock after an investigation and reported the case to the state medical board.
However, Brock said he had waived his privileges without a “fact finding” or “hearing on the merits” of the allegations under investigation. In August, he informed patients that he would retire at the end of the month due to “uncertainty about how long this process will take.”
