PBS Frontline pedophile at the IHS

PBS Frontline has an episode about a Pediatrician on an Indian reservation who got away with abusing young boys for years, and after he was under suspicion at one reservation hospital, merely transferred to another one without problem.

LINK



I bring this up for several reasons.

One is, of course, because of the headlines on clergy sexual abuse. Yes, it happens, but it also happens with physicians, social workers and (an unreported story) in public schools. And of course, most cases are by friends or family members.

Second: Like the scandal about pedophile priests, the accused physician was transferred after vague accusations that couldn't be proven. Later, please note that one other employee who accused him ended up transferred. This also is why many hesitate to report suspicions.

Third: the boys are at high risk: often they need personal attention which they don't get at home so are easy for predators to attract and groom children.

Most of the Indian children now attended local schools thanks to buses and roads, but Indian children in the past were forced to attend boarding schools, and there were major abuse scandals in such schools.

Author Michael O'Brien, who attended a residential school in Canada, describes how one predator groomed the young boys in his boarding school. LINK... (because he refused the invitations they harassed him.)

One reason adults get away with such things is that children don't report it, and often the predator presents the appearance of a "good guy" who nobody wants to suspect of doing such thing (and often normal people just can't imagine such evil things are going on). Without physical evidence, how does one prove it, when the boys or girls won't complain and the perpetrator claims innocence? And remember: False claims do exist, for revenge, or to get money.

so those who suspect but can't prove abuse often are helpless to stop a predator who claims innocence.

Again, a good film that shows the dilemma of someone who suspects a pedophile but the evidence is ambiguous and is met with the claims of innocence by the perpetrator is the film "Doubt".

Four: the IHS is often a hard place to work: land there is a chronic physician shortage. So some physicians who apply for work are substandard but hired anyway.

My favorite story is from the 1980s, when one older physician who had good credentials and came to work for one hospital in our area after his wife left him. He settled in and got engaged and decided to sell his house in New Jersey. Bad decision: before the new tenants moved in, the cops asked the new tenants if they could dig up the new deck he had installed, and sure enough they found his wife's body.

The locals commented (with wry humor): well, he was a good doctor.

 Overwork is common, not all treatments are available and transfer to a specialist takes time and paperwork,

In 2000, we had to shut our hospital down for a week when the heating system caught fire; at that hospital, we had no lab at night, and for three months in the middle of winter, we had to send people 30 miles to a civilian hospital for a routine x ray because it takes so long to do the paperwork to hire someone and there was no money in the budget to hire temporary help. X rays were sent out and took a day or more for official reports, and sometimes longer. We had no Ultrasounds and CT scans, so again there were delays in non emergency cases to get them scheduled at our referral hospital. Specialist care outside the IHS system is often turned down for lack of funding if it is not "urgent", and even when you get an appointment, the patients end up not going to the appointment.

Overturn of medical personnel at many of the hospitals is high: And one of the physicians who documented the problem was eased out of his job.

Not all doctors are good at understanding different cultures and don't adjust. It takes awhile for patients to trust you. If you have young children, there are no decent schools for your children, and if you are a female doctor, no one is there to date or socialize with. For gay personnel, things are worse: In many tribes there is homophobia.

In summary: the IHS has very real problems, but I think Frontline is overdoing it when they blame the IHS for overlooking a predator: because the real problem is that such sexual predators are hard to detect and prosecute.

update: the full video is now on Youtube: