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.
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.