Regulators approved the document of a child accused of serial sexual abuse
Regulators approved the document of a child accused of serial sexual abuse
This undated photo provided by Cambria County Prison shows Dr. Johnnie Barto. Barto, a pediatrician, faces sexual assault charges involving more than 30 children since the late 1980s, including a dozen after regulators cleared him in 2000 of irregularities. Barto was arrested in January 2018. He pleaded not guilty. (Cambria County Prison through AP)
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. - Nearly two decades ago, Pennsylvania regulators encountered evidence that a well-regarded pediatrician had caressed the genitals of two young children during office visits. Instead of holding him accountable, regulators allow the doctor to keep his medical license. He continued to sexually abuse at least a dozen other young patients, victimizing children until his arrest in January, prosecutors say.
Now, while Dr. Johnnie "Jack" Barto is in jail awaiting trial on sexual assault charges involving more than 30 children, his patients in the 1990s and his parents say that the State Board of Medicine does not He stopped him when he had the opportunity and the bears responsibility for what the researchers call a "widespread and prolonged pattern of abuse". Police, prosecutors and Barto's own colleagues also deserve to be blamed for looking the other way, they say.
"He could have stopped with me," said Lee Ann Berkebile, 28, of Johnstown, in an interview with The Associated Press. "Instead, they chose to cover him and defend him, and now see what happened, all he did was let a sick person touch other girls."
Barto, 71, was arrested in January and charged with trying a 12-year-old girl during a visit to the office several weeks earlier. Suspecting that she was not alone, the Pennsylvania attorney general's office called for other accusers to come forward, and they did so, by the dozen, with claims going back to the late 1980s.
Barto has pleaded not guilty. If the charges are sustained, the case will represent another black mark against a profession that for a long time had problems controlling sexual misconduct.
According to an investigation conducted in 2016 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, there were more than 1,000 cases across the country in which physicians were sanctioned for sexual misconduct, but they were kept on their medical licenses. A study conducted by the consumer group Public Citizen that same year found that state regulators often did not punish abusive doctors. According to the study, more than two-thirds of physicians with reports of sexual misconduct in the National Practitioner Data Bank, a federal government database, did not face any discipline from the medical boards of their states.
"Without consequences, we can not really solve the problem, there is not enough deterrence," said Public Citizen health researcher Azza Abu Dagga. Referring to Barto, he added, "this doctor was released and could hurt other people, the interest of the doctor exceeded the interest of the public and that is not acceptable."
The Pennsylvania Department of State, which provides legal and administrative support to the board and prosecutes administrative cases of physician misconduct, said in a statement that "the Board of Medicine takes allegations of sexual misconduct very seriously. the professional licensees. " But the board does not keep statistics on how often it punishes doctors accused of sexual misconduct, so it's difficult to judge how seriously it has dealt with sexual abuse, either before or now.
The current board members were not in office when Barto's case was considered.
Lee Ann Berkebile was only 4 years old when her mother took her to see the pediatrician in 1994 by drip and cough. At the end of the appointment, Barto offered to accompany Lee Ann down the hall to a first-aid kit. That was when Berkebile said that Barto put his hand in his pants and stuck a finger in her vagina.
The girl immediately told her mother, who went to the county child welfare agency. The case was referred to the Johnstown police. A sergeant interviewed Lee Ann and his parents, but did not press charges, citing his age, according to documents obtained by the AP from state archives.
Lee Ann's father, Sam McAdams, believes it was Barto's prominence, the strong support he had in Johnstown and the family's poverty that helped him avoid criminal prosecution.
"They treated us like we were trash for saying something or suggesting something," McAdams said.
Four years after Berkebile said she had been molested, another patient, 3-year-old Kelsey Bowman, had an appointment with Barto. In the end, Barto sat Kelsey, wearing a T-shirt, socks and nothing else, in her lap.
His mother, Kelli Bowman, who was also in the exam room, said Kelsey gave a sudden shake, and saw Barto's hand in her daughter's vagina for at least a minute. Bowman grabbed his daughter and left. Then, she said, Kelsey cried and said that the "bad doctor touched me in my overalls".
The Johnstown police and the Cambria County district attorney's office investigated. This time, the authorities took action. Barto faced administrative charges, not just for touching Kelsey, but for the previous incident involving Berkebile.
Testifying in the equivalent of a trial, young Lee Ann described what Barto said to her, and Bowman told a hearing examiner how Barto was caressing his daughter. Barto denied the allegations, but hearing examiner Suzanne Rauer found the accusers to be credible and consistent, calling Lee Ann's testimony "parador." Rauer concluded that Barto "sexually assaulted two of his very young patients" and committed a "serious abuse of position," according to his March 2000 ruling that stripped him of his medical license.
Faced with the imminent loss of his career, the pediatrician turned to the Board of Medicine, an independent body composed mainly of doctors and is in charge of licensing and discipline. The board dismissed the prosecutors' accounts in a 7-2 vote and said Barto could resume his career. The accusations, he said, were "incongruent with his reputation."
Vivian Lowenstein, one of two votes to strip Barto of his license, criticized the board's medical members for leaving him alone. "I'm sick of it," he told the AP recently.
Lowenstein, a nurse practitioner, said the case served as an example of how Pennsylvania's regulatory doctors used to take care of their own. "It was my perception that there was a pattern that doctors protected other doctors and that they did not always make the best decisions," he said.
Kishor Mehta, who worked on the board with Lowenstein, disputed that the members of the doctors were predisposed.
"They never favored doctors, they were very objective," said Mehta, who is not a doctor. He said he had no memory of the Barto case, but added that the accused doctors are entitled to due process like any other person: "Unless there is convincing evidence, he does not want to make a living with someone."
Meanwhile, the accusers of the 1990s and their parents are still bitter because the regulators took their word on theirs.
"I was furious, I was horrified that his license was returned," Kelli Bowman said. Of the later accusers, he added. "I'm sorry for those children, it's all the fault of the medical board."
The two practices Barto worked for could also have overlooked warning signs, or been voluntarily ignorant. Parents complained to office staff and other doctors over the years about Barto's inappropriate sexual behavior towards their children and, at one point, Barto promised that he would no longer examine adolescents, according to court documents . But he continued to see and abuse patients, prosecutors say.
Court documents do not indicate whether Barto's medical practices took any action to protect patients, but a doctor tried to explain his behavior by telling an upset father that Barto had a "strange shape in bed," according to an affidavit. . The doctor also speculated that Barto might have Asperger's syndrome, a milder form of autism.
No practice offered any comments when contacted by the AP.
Berkebile said the assault affected her deeply. She became self-destructive. He does not trust people, especially men, and remains in therapy.
"It ruined my life," Berkebile said. She said she feels sorry for the other girls whom prosecutors say Barto attacked, "because I know what he's going to do with their lives and how he's going to affect them."
Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan, who referred the ongoing criminal prosecution to the Pennsylvania attorney general's office because her office employees had Barto as her children's pediatrician, said the senior prosecutors are right be angry
"It seems like a missed opportunity here to bring charges, get a conviction and prevent this from happening to the many other victims who have now turned up," said Callihan, who joined the district attorney's office in 1996, but said he would not. I was involved in the Barto program. case. "The system failed them, either the criminal system or the administrative process they went through."
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