Anesthesiologist sexually assaulted patients and no one saw? Impossible: lawyer

TORONTO – The lawyer for an anesthesiologist accused of molesting 21 women during surgeries says it’s “simply impossible” that sexual misconduct took place and none of the surgeons or other medical staff saw evidence of it.

Dr. George Doodnaught has pleaded not guilty to 21 counts of sexual assault.

The women reported that he kissed them, touched them inappropriately or put his genitals in their mouth while they were under conscious sedation, all but one during surgeries at North York General Hospital between 2006 and 2010.

But Doodnaught’s lawyer, Brian Greenspan, says in his closing arguments today that the women are mistaken and that what they thought happened was an effect of the sedation.

Greenspan says the 143 other people who were in the operating rooms for the 21 surgeries “saw no evil” and “heard no evil.”

He says the doctors who performed the surgeries didn’t report any movement by the patients or the drapes during the surgeries.

“All of that is simply unseen, unheard?” he said. “Impossible, simply impossible.”

Greenspan says no one else in the operating rooms saw any sexual misconduct and Doodnaught would not have had the ability to assault those women without detection.

“There’s scores of people who see nothing and hear nothing and we’re not talking about a hockey arena,” Greenspan said. “We’re talking about an operating room and some of which are terribly small.”