Each state has its own set of statutes and regulations on licensing doctors, accommodating patients who wish to file complaints, and releasing information about physicians who have been subject to discipline and legal action. On this page, we’re sharing the key findings regarding Massachusetts, which we will continue to update as the series progresses.
Key fact: Board orders often provide no details about allegations, even in cases where doctors’ licenses are revoked or surrendered. Massachusetts also purges from its website board orders for some egregious cases, Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, the Boston Globe has reported. Using reciprocal orders from other states and other documents, the AJC identified 54 cases of sexual misconduct but only 11 through public orders posted on the state website.
“[T]he respondent told Patient A that he hoped their sexual encounter had not harmed her… As a result of the Respondent’s actions, Patient A felt exploited and used.”
—Statements of allegations against a psychiatrist accused of having sex with a patient he had treated for an eating disorder. The only disciplinary information about him on the board’s website is his voluntary surrender of his license in 2012, which doesn’t list a reason.
The anesthesiologist was accused of molesting patients in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
In the Massachusetts case, in 2000, a patient testified that when Aubin gave her anesthesia during surgery on her wrist, he reached into the neck opening of her gown while a surgical drape concealed him, and massaged and squeezed her breasts, according to a Rhode Island court document. She testified, according to the court order, that Aubin leaned closer to her and whispered, “Don’t tell anybody because I can get in a lot of trouble.”
The patient said she didn’t immediately tell anyone because she felt afraid, but after her grandmother came to the hospital she told her what had happened, and also reported the incident to police and the hospital later the same day. But neither the hospital nor police took action, and no board order or other information became public.
Five years later, in Rhode Island, a 21-year-old patient accused Aubin of similar violations while she was undergoing knee surgery, saying he also told her not to say anything.
When that board suspended Aubin, the Massachusetts patient told that board of her allegations. Then board then revoked the doctor's license, but he fought the order and the case wound up in court. Nurses gave supporting testimony, although they didn’t witness violations themselves. Aubin told the hospital investigators that the drugs he gave her made her think strange thoughts, and another doctor said he neither saw nor heard anything unusual and found it “mind-boggling” to believe he could have assaulted her in a room full of people.
The court in 2007 upheld revocation, finding Aubin had molested the Rhode Island patient. The Massachusetts board then revoked his license, in its first public order. However, that order is no longer on the board’s website.
Rhode Island reinstated him in 2011, but his license is still revoked in Massachusetts, according to that state board’s website.
He was allowed to practice medicine in Guam as long as he was chaperoned when seeing female patients, according to news reports from 2008. He has not yet responded to a message the AJC left with the hospital in Guam seeking comment.
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