ATLANTA – Her doctor was making her uncomfortable. He wouldn’t explain why she needed a breast exam. He didn’t give her a gown. He just told her to lie back and lift up her blouse.
In minutes, her physician became her abuser. He felt her breasts under her bra repeatedly, making a sound of pleasure and saying they felt “excellent.” When he backed away, she could see a bulge in his pants. “It made me feel so dirty,” the woman recalled later.
Yet nothing in the Maryland medical board’s public records shows it did anything to stop Raafat Y. Girgis when it got the complaint. Nor did the agency inform law enforcement about a possible sexual offense.
Medical regulators say they have an ethical duty, and some have a legal requirement, to alert law enforcement when a doctor may have committed a sex crime against an adult patient.
But The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s examination of thousands of cases found that regulators failed to consistently live up to that responsibility.