Sex Abuse Scandals News Stories

Excerpts of Key Sex Abuse Scandals News Stories in Major Media

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Nearly two decades ago, [Andrew] Dekle was sentenced to four years in federal prison after a jury found him guilty of writing more than 120 illegal prescriptions for women who testified that the drugs were in exchange for sexual favors. “The pimp with a prescription pad” is what one prosecutor called him during a trial in which it was revealed that more than 400 sexually explicit photos of female patients and other women had been discovered in his office. In some states, where legislatures have enacted laws prohibiting doctors who commit certain crimes from practicing, Dekle’s career would be over. But in Georgia, where the law gives the medical board the discretion to license anyone it sees fit, he was back in practice two years after leaving prison. The [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] found more than 450 cases in which doctors had sexual contact with patients while also prescribing controlled and addictive substances for them. In more than half, the physicians were allowed to continue practicing. Although it’s rare for medical regulators to allow doctors convicted in drugs-for-sex cases to keep their licenses, the AJC found instances in Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky where physicians with convictions similar to Dekle’s were allowed to remain in practice.

Note: See a list of powerful articles revealing egregious and rampant sexual abuse by doctors around the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and health.

A dossier compiled by an MP detailing allegations of a 1980s Westminster paedophile ring is one of more than 100 potentially relevant Home Office files destroyed, lost or missing, it has emerged. The government faced fresh calls for an overarching inquiry into historical cases of paedophilia as it was revealed that a total of 114 Home Office files relevant to allegations of a child abuse network have disappeared from government records. David Cameron has already ordered the Home Office permanent secretary to look into what happened to a lost dossier given earlier in the 1980s to Leon Brittan, then home secretary, by the campaigning Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens. The revelation that further relevant documents have disappeared will raise fresh fears of an establishment cover-up. Dickens, who died in 1995, had told his family that the information he handed to the home secretary in 1983 and 1984 would "blow the lid off" the lives of powerful and famous child abusers, including eight well-known figures. In a letter to Dickens at the time, Brittan suggested his information would be passed to the police, but Scotland Yard says it has no record of any investigation into the allegations. On Saturday the Home Office made public a letter to Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee, in which the department confirmed that correspondence from Dickens had not been retained and it had found "no record of specific allegations by Mr Dickens of child sex abuse by prominent public figures".

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Leslie Moonves, the longtime chief executive of the CBS Corporation, stepped down on Sunday night from the company he led for 15 years. His fall from Hollywood’s highest echelon was all but sealed after the publication earlier in the day of new sexual harassment allegations against him. Mr. Moonves ... could still walk away with more than $120 million. However, [he] will not receive any severance payment until the completion of an independent investigation into the allegations. He has been under intense pressure since July, when The New Yorker published an article by the investigative journalist Ronan Farrow in which six women accused Mr. Moonves of sexual harassment. On Sunday, the magazine published another article by Mr. Farrow in which six more women detailed claims against Mr. Moonves. Mr. Moonves is the latest high-powered entertainment figure to be ousted from his perch in the #MeToo era. The movie producer Harvey Weinstein has been accused by scores of women of sexual assault and now faces felony charges. Matt Lauer stepped down as the anchor of NBC’s most valuable news program, “Today,” after several women alleged incidents of sexual harassment. Charlie Rose of CBS and PBS left the airwaves after he, too, was implicated by multiple women. And Fox News saw the departures of the founding executive Roger Ailes and its top-rated host, Bill O’Reilly. The allegations go back years — in some cases even decades.

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The powerful and now-departed men of CBS - [Les] Moonves, [Jeff] Fager and star interviewer Charlie Rose - helped shape how our society sees women. The network, after all, is the most-watched in the nation. “60 Minutes” for 50 years has been the very definition of quality broadcast journalism: the gold standard. It’s impossible to know how different America would be if power-happy and misogynistic men hadn’t been running the show in so many influential media organizations - certainly not just CBS. What if Mark Halperin, for instance, had not been a network commentator during the 2016 presidential campaign? (James Wolcott of Vanity Fair aptly described him as ... “the most influential” of the men who were felled by sexual-misconduct allegations last year.) What if Bill O’Reilly of Fox News hadn’t been the biggest cable TV star in the nation when a woman had a major-party presidential nomination for the first time? (O’Reilly was forced out after it emerged that he had made a $32 million settlement with an accuser.) What if Roger Ailes hadn’t presided for decades over Fox News, where his own well-documented abuses bled freely into his network’s commentary. A media figure doesn’t have to show up for a business meeting in an open bathrobe to do harm. He can help frame the coverage of a candidate’s supposedly disqualifying flaws. He can squelch a writer’s promising work. He can threaten an underling’s job if she doesn’t stay in line. All these little moments add up.

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Most everyone remembers Cyril Smith. The member of Parliament had a personal touch. He sang. He went on pal Jimmy Savile’s BBC show. He also, according to hundreds of allegations since his 2010 death, was a pedophile of historic proportions. That fact was one of many in a dossier prepared 30 years ago by a crusading member of Parliament who warned of a powerful pedophile ring of “big, big names.” The man told his family the allegations were “explosive.” It would, he told his son, “blow the lid off” of the pedophile ring and perhaps take down powerful, famous sex abusers who had infiltrated the highest reaches of British life. The allegations ... weren’t aggressively pursued and no arrests or prosecutions followed. “My father [Geoffrey Dickens] thought that the dossier at the time was the most powerful thing that had ever been produced,” son Barry told the BBC ... after it emerged that the document has since gone missing. As its disappearance ballooned into a national scandal, the Guardian reported [that] an additional 114 documents relevant to allegations involving the ring are also missing — a revelation sparking suspicion that Margaret Thatcher’s government orchestrated a cover-up. Norman Tebbit, a former cabinet minister who served under Thatcher, [said] the inclination at the time may have been to protect “the system” rather than delving “too far” into the claims. Asked if there had been a “big political cover-up,” Tebbit conceded “there may well have been.”

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A report released this weekend by a former Vatican ambassador to the United States charges that Pope Francis knew about sexual abuse by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, removed a suspension placed on him by Pope Benedict, and proceeded to make the known abuser one of his most trusted advisors. Pope Francis “knew from at least June 23, 2013 that McCarrick was a serial predator, [but] he covered for him to the bitter end,” wrote Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, nuncio to Washington from 2011-2016, before demanding the pontiff resign. That is a damning allegation coming from a very senior church leader. Even more profound is the charge by an Argentinian woman who says the sexual abuse of her son was covered up by this pope, who had her forcibly removed from his office when she tried to report the crime when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, and then known as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. The harsh reality that all Catholics need to realize is that ... there are few protections when the predators are the bishops who are empowered to police themselves and instead cover up for each other, from the pope on down. A trope of the last six papacies has been [known] to extol the advances of a supposed “Springtime of Vatican II,” the revolutionary church council from 1962-65 that was called to open the Church to the modern world. Far from a spring flowering, the festering sex-abuse scandal shows that the Church of Rome is actually going through a long, cold, very dark winter.

Note: For more, see this revealing BBC News article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

After seven days of listening to more than 160 girls, women and parents describe the impact of his sexual abuse, disgraced gymnastics physician Larry Nassar turned to the courtroom Wednesday and quietly attempted an apology, saying, "There are no words that can describe the depth and breadth for how sorry I am for what has occurred." Then Judge Rosemarie Aquilina read from a letter Nassar wrote last week in which he expressed very different sentiments. In the letter, Nassar complained about the length of his sentencing hearing, maintained that his touching of patients was legitimate medical therapy and termed some of the alleged victims' accounts "fabricated." As Aquilina read excerpts, some in the courtroom gasped. "My treatments worked, and those patients that are now speaking out were the same ones that praised me," Aquilina said as she read Nassar's words. "The media convinced them that everything I did was wrong and bad ... Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." The judge then addressed Nassar directly. "It was not treatment what you did; it was not medical," Aquilina replied. Finally, Aquilina delivered her sentence - a minimum of 40 years, a maximum of 175 years in Michigan state prison - effectively guaranteeing a life sentence for the 54-year-old former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics team physician, who also faces a 60-year sentence for federal child pornography crimes.

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In October, when Ronan Farrow published his first article in The New Yorker on the alleged transgressions of Harvey Weinstein, people in the media and entertainment industries wondered how NBC had missed the story. After all, Mr. Farrow had spent months gathering material on the mogul when he was with NBC News. Now a producer who worked closely with Mr. Farrow has accused the network of putting a stop to the reporting, saying the order came from “the very highest levels of NBC.” Rich McHugh, the producer, who recently left his job in the investigative unit of NBC News, is the first person affiliated with NBC to publicly charge that the network impeded his and Mr. Farrow’s efforts to nail down the story of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct. He called the network’s handling of the matter “a massive breach of journalistic integrity.” “Three days before Ronan and I were going to head to L.A. to interview a woman with a credible rape allegation against Harvey Weinstein, I was ordered to stop, not to interview this woman,” Mr. McHugh said. “And to stand down on the story altogether.” There was a point in our reporting where I felt there were obstacles to us reporting this externally, and there were obstacles to us reporting this internally,” the producer said. “Externally, I had Weinstein associates calling me repeatedly. I knew that Weinstein was calling NBC executives directly. One time it even happened when we were in the room.”

Note: NBC's chief executive stepped down amid sexual harassment claims 10 days after this article came out. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

Sexual abuse scandals at American institutions like the Boy Scouts and the military have made headlines, and forced reforms. Now, with the publication of a year-long investigation by reporters at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the medical community is facing similar scrutiny. But perhaps no such scandal has drawn as much attention as the one that rocked the Catholic Church, after the Boston Globe uncovered the true extent of the Church leadership's long cover-up of its problem. As AJC reporters looked into sexual abuse within the medical community, they saw parallels with the church scandal. More significantly, the two cultures have one chief issue in common: secrecy. Secrecy underlies almost all of the proceedings surrounding complaints of sexual misconduct by physicians. The justice system is geared to let the public know when a potentially dangerous problem arises in their community. If the accused is later cleared, then that gets reported, too. In contrast, the medical disciplinary system, like church procedure before it, is usually geared to protecting the identities of everyone concerned. In Colorado, for example, even a patient may not come back to the medical board after filing a complaint and request information about his or her own complaint. One reason the AJC undertook this project was to let all patients know that there are things they can do to protect themselves. The first is to know how an intimate medical exam is supposed to proceed: read about it here.

Note: See a list of powerful articles revealing egregious and rampant sexual abuse by doctors around the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and health.

Dawn Marie Basham answers the phone in tears. Less than a week earlier, prosecutors had dropped charges against the Delray Beach doctor she said sexually assaulted her during an office visit. Basham feels alone, but she is far from it. Other women say they are sexually victimized by their physician. And while some South Florida doctors eventually lose or give up their licenses, others continue to practice even after they admit to sexual misconduct on a patient, a Palm Beach Post investigation led by its sister newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, found. A convoluted complaint system in Florida can end up protecting these doctors, giving them every opportunity to mitigate discipline. “I feel I failed somehow. I didn’t get any justice,” Basham says of her criminal sexual battery case against Dr. Manuel Abreu. The case fell apart when Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Charles Burton barred other alleged victims from testifying. Now she waits ... to see whether the Florida Department of Health acts on her complaint against Abreu, hoping, she says, he loses his ability to practice. Potential patients researching Abreu on the state Board of Medicine’s website would see his license listed as clear and active. They would have no idea whether the state acted when Abreu was arrested on sexual battery charges in March 2015 after Basham and eight other women sued the doctor for sexual battery. It can be years before an administrative complaint shows up on an accused doctor’s disciplinary record.

Note: See a list of powerful articles revealing egregious and rampant sexual abuse by doctors around the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and health.

More than 300 Catholic priests across Pennsylvania sexually abused children over seven decades, protected by a hierarchy of church leaders who covered it up, according to a sweeping grand jury report released Tuesday. The investigation ... identified 1,000 children who were victims, but reported that there probably are thousands more. “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades,” the grand jury wrote in its report. The 18-month investigation covered six of the state’s dioceses ... and follows other state grand jury reports that revealed abuse and coverups in two other dioceses. The grand jury reviewed more than 2 million documents, including from the “secret archives” - what church leaders referred to the reports of abuse they hid from public for decades, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. Few criminal cases may result from the massive investigation. “As a consequence of the coverup, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted,” the report said. The grand jury’s report follows the resignation last month of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a towering figure in the U.S. church and a former archbishop of Washington who was accused of sexually abusing children and adults for decades.

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The Catholic Church’s decades-long practice of enabling and systematically covering up the rape and molestation of children by priests is by now sickeningly familiar. Yet the scale of abuse; the breadth and depth of trauma inflicted by predators wearing Roman collars; and the coldbloodedness of senior church figures zealous in their resolve to protect the church but indifferent to the suffering of minors, retain their power to shock the conscience. So it was Tuesday when Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court released a massive report on decades of alleged abuse in six of the state’s eight dioceses, where nearly 2 million Catholics live today. The report ... lays out what amounts to a criminal conspiracy, breathtaking in its scope, reaching from parishes and parochial schools to the Vatican. The report names some 300 accused predator priests, who allegedly abused at least 1,000 victims. Yet even as the findings were published, the coverup continues: The report is heavily redacted, owing to ongoing litigation by unidentified clergymen and others seeking to block publication of certain names. That, Attorney General Josh Shapiro noted, is a coverup of a decades-long coverup. The conspiracy — as in Boston and practically every major city in the United States and many overseas — involved bishops, archbishops and even cardinals. Even as apologists for the Vatican ... continue peddling the myth that the Catholic Church’s pedophile scandals simply reflect society’s problems, the weight of evidence is overwhelming proof to the contrary.

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The New Yorker has published a bombshell investigation of the head of CBS Corporation that includes allegations of sexual misconduct. The article by Ronan Farrow alleges that CBS chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior, including unwanted kissing and touching that occurred over 20 years ago. Farrow told ABC News that his latest piece is "about six women who did an incredibly brave thing: overcoming tremendous fear of retaliation to speak about their experiences with Moonves. But it’s also a story about dozens and dozens of sources who told us that a culture of harassment and retaliation had permeated various facets of his company," he said. The women recalled events when they were threatened with retaliation when rebuffing advances and detailed accounts of sexual assault. They "say that they are still afraid of Les Moonves," Farrow said. "They are speaking because they believe there is a broader culture around him in which he has protected other men who have engaged in similar misconduct," Farrow said. Moonves denied any allegations of sexual assault but acknowledged, "I recognize that there were times decades ago when I may have made some women uncomfortable by making advances. Those were mistakes, and I regret them immensely." A person "familiar with the situation" told The Wall Street Journal that CBS has no plans to sideline Moonves.

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The nation’s largest medical society says it has zero tolerance for doctors who sexually abuse patients. But ... the association does not favor the automatic revocation of the medical license of every doctor who commits sexual abuse of a patient. It does not expel every offender from its membership rolls. It has never independently researched the prevalence of sexual abuse in clinical settings. Twenty-six years ago it declared sexual misconduct a breach of medical ethics, but since then it has remained all but mute on the issue. It has, however, fought to keep confidential a federal database of physicians disciplined for sexual misconduct and other transgressions. When a proposal to open the database emerged in Congress, a former House staff member said, the AMA “crushed it like a bug.” Patient advocates say the AMA and other medical organizations have shown reluctance to confront the scope and impact of sexual misconduct, further exacerbating the problem. “At some point the profession has to take responsibility to accept that there are things that need to be done in regard to protecting patients,” said Lisa McGiffert, manager of the Safe Patient Project for the advocacy group Consumers Union. “It’s always been puzzling to me that doctors don’t collectively say, ‘We don’t want these bad apples in our profession. They give us a bad name.’”

Note: See a list of powerful articles revealing egregious and rampant sexual abuse by doctors around the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and health.

When UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited the Central African Republic (CAR) in October of 2017, his words echoed a theme that he’d been sounding since taking office in January: Stemming the problem of sexual abuse and exploitation by UN peacekeepers was among his top priorities. The same month of Guterres’ visit to CAR, the UN had received a report of a new rape case there. A young woman named Mauricette, who was 17 at the time, said she was raped by peacekeepers on her way home from a funeral. Mauricette went months without hearing from the UN after her initial interview with them. The details of what allegedly happened to Mauricette are grim. “She was vomiting,” says Jean-Gaston Endjileteko, who works at Samaritans’ Medical Center, where Mauricette had been treated. “She told me she had drunk some drugged tea spiked with a powder at the Mauritanian checkpoint. The hospital reported Mauricette’s rape, and she was interviewed by a local UN representative. But then, the UN went silent. “I’ve heard nothing,” Mauricette says. “No news.” That was approximately two months after Mauricette’s initial interview with the UN — so [PBS correspondent Ramita] Navai brought the delay to the attention of Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, Head of UN Mission, Central African Republic. Mauricette still hadn’t heard anything further from the UN — four months after FRONTLINE brought the delay in communication with her about her case to the UN’s attention.

Note: An hour-long episode of PBS FRONTLINE details the sad case introduced by the article above. In 2015, more than a year after allegations of UN peacekeepers sexual abusing children came to light, it was reported that the UN had taken disciplinary action against the whistleblower who exposed wrongdoing, but not against the soldiers accused of abuses. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

Mipham Rinpoche ... is the head of one of the largest Buddhist organizations in the West, Shambhala International, a network of more than 200 outposts in over 30 countries where thousands come for training in meditation. He is known as the Sakyong, a Tibetan word that translates roughly as king, and his students take vows to follow him that are binding across lifetimes. Late last month, a former Shambhala teacher released a report alleging that the Sakyong had sexually abused and exploited some of his most devoted female followers for years. Women quoted in the report wrote of drunken groping and forcefully extracted sexual favors. The report said that senior leaders at Shambhala — an organization whose motto is “Making Enlightened Society Possible” — knew of the Sakyong’s misconduct and covered it up. On Friday ... the governing council of Shambhala International, which is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, resigned en masse, “in the interest of beginning a healing process for our community.” The Sakyong ... took leave from running Shambhala as an outside firm investigates abuse allegations against him and other Shambhala teachers. He would, the announcement stated, “enter a period of self-reflection.” The Sakyong is not only another executive or religious leader dethroned by #MeToo, but the sole holder of the most sacred teachings in a custody chain that goes back centuries, the only one who can transmit them, according to the traditions of his lineage.

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No red flags were apparent when the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine checked Dr. Jaroslav “Jerry” Stulc’s background in 2007. But within months of joining a hospital staff, the surgeon was accused of sexual misconduct. The hospital ... suspended him with pay. Then, while he was out, the hospital and medical board learned that Stulc previously had been suspended by a Kentucky hospital following allegations of sexual misconduct. Skirting federal rules, the Kentucky hospital hadn’t reported his suspension or subsequent resignation to the nationwide database established for hospitals and medical boards to share information on physician misconduct. Instead, just before Stulc applied for his Maine license, he and the hospital had agreed that he would voluntarily resign. The hospital wouldn’t mention the suspension ... to anyone who inquired. Such private agreements, along with legal loopholes and outright flouting of the law, are among the reasons the nationwide repository - the National Practitioner Data Bank - can leave patients and medical staff vulnerable, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found. Even when hospitals and medical boards file reports, they may classify violations in a way that conceals the scope of physician sexual misconduct. Because of such gaps, the AJC - in reviewing board orders, court records and news reports - found about 70 percent more physicians accused of sexual misconduct than the 466 classified as such in the public version of the data bank from 2010 to 2014.

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After medical regulators said he fondled patients, exposed himself and traded drugs for sex, Dr. David Pavlakovic easily could have lost his license. Law enforcement thought his acts were criminal. Instead of losing his job, Pavlakovic was placed in therapy. He was allowed to return to practice. And he didn’t even have to tell his patients. Society has become intolerant of most sex offenders, placing some on lifelong public registries and banishing others from their professions or volunteer activities. But medical regulators have embraced the idea of rehabilitation for physicians accused of sexual misconduct. It is left to private therapists ... to unearth the extent of a doctor’s transgressions. There is little pretense of the check and balance of public scrutiny. Even doctors with egregious violations are allowed to redeem themselves through education and treatment centers, which have quietly proliferated over the past two decades. These education and treatment programs are being used by regulators in virtually every state. The Catholic Church once secretly sent sex offender priests for psychiatric treatment, then returned them to service. The abuse, the church reasoned, was a spiritual failing requiring repentance and forgiveness. Most medical authorities have embraced a similar approach, but through the lens of sexual abuse as the sign of a mental disorder. Public board orders on regulators’ websites reveal dozens of physicians who were found to have re-offended after taking part in education or treatment programs.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and health.

Georgia has concluded a year-long review of physician sexual misconduct cases brought to light by an Atlanta newspaper with a plan to educate doctors. The state's plan focuses on educating doctors, rather than seeking new patient protections as some states have done. Two-thirds of Georgia physicians disciplined for sexually violating patients were permitted to practice again by the Georgia Composite Medical Board. The board announced last year that it would review its handling of those cases. But instead of producing a comprehensive report, the board recently released a one-page statement. The board vowed that it will protect patients from Georgia doctors who "use coercion or power for sex" by educating doctors about the importance of reporting colleagues. It also said it would investigate all allegations and involve law enforcement when appropriate; and that it will discipline doctors with public consent orders and license revocations when allegations are proven. The board did not call for any changes in its rules or in state law even though the state lacks key patient protection measures. Among the gaps: Georgia has no law requiring doctors to report possible violations by their fellow doctors, nor is the medical board legally required to notify law enforcement of potential criminal acts.

Note: See a list of powerful articles revealing egregious and rampant sexual abuse by doctors around the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and health.

During a career spanning nearly 30 years in Georgia, Dr. William Almon has reinvented himself in numerous ways in numerous places. What hasn’t changed is his ability to practice medicine. In three different settings, Almon faced allegations that he sexually violated extremely vulnerable female patients — a suicidal soldier, jail inmates, a mentally ill woman and a child of 14 — and every time was effectively given a pass. Of the thousands of cases reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in its investigation of physician sexual misconduct, few show the forces that protect offending doctors more dramatically. At Fort Gordon outside Augusta ... he admitted that he had sex with a hospitalized patient. The patient, a private, was found immediately afterward on the floor of her hospital room, curled up and crying. The Army ... allowed him to resign in lieu of facing a court-martial. At the Augusta jail ... he was charged with sexually abusing three inmates. prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges. And at WellStar’s East Paulding Primary Care Center, where Almon was hired even though corporate officials knew of his background, he was accused of molesting two patients. One was a woman who is schizophrenic. The other was a 14-year-old girl. The charges could have brought a prison sentence, but prosecutors allowed the doctor to plead no contest to misdemeanor counts of battery and sexual battery and receive probation. Then the Georgia Composite Medical Board negotiated an agreement that let him continue practicing.

Note: Watch a video produced by AJC for more details on this egregious case. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and health.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.