A former Georgia ob-gyn was sentenced Friday to serve 20 to 30 years in prison for sexually assaulting patients in Wyoming, according to the Casper Star-Tribune.
Dr. Paul Harnetty, who had faced allegations of misconduct in Georgia, was convicted earlier this year of sexually assaulting two patients in Wyoming. A total of six patients testified at the trial, saying the doctor touched them inappropriately during exams.
He was acquitted on six charges.
During a sentencing hearing Friday in Wyoming, Harnetty was given two sentences of 10 to 15 years each, the Star-Tribune reported.
One of Harnetty's victims gave a statement during the sentencing hearing, saying the abuse had left her plagued with anxiety, according to the Star-Tribune's report.
“I trusted him with not only myself but my unborn children,” the woman said. “He abused that trust.”
Georgia's medical licensing board had received complaints about the doctor before he moved to Wyoming, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in a story published in February.
More than a dozen nurses who had worked with the doctor told the Georgia Composite Medical Board that he had routinely inserted his finger into the anuses of pregnant women while they were delivering babies — something that they did not see other doctors do. He also marked the charts of attractive patients with smiley faces and tried to make sure he was in line to deliver their babies, the nurses told an investigator.
Georgia’s medical board never publicly disciplined Harnetty and kept its investigation strictly confidential. The doctor’s history in Georgia became public through the criminal investigation conducted by law enforcement in Wyoming.
The doctor also faced allegations of malpractice in Georgia, the AJC reported.
After relocating to Wyoming, the doctor’s actions there led to complaints and by 2015, a criminal investigation. That criminal case prompted a Georgia woman to report that in 2011, the doctor had sexually assaulted her.
The AJC’s coverage of Harnetty’s case is part of the newspaper’s ongoing reporting on sexual misconduct by physicians.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published its awarding-winning Doctors & Sex Abuse series in 2016. On April 29, the AJC updated its findings with a new national investigation that uncovered 450 cases of doctors who were brought before medical regulators or courts for sexual misconduct or sex crimes in 2016 and 2017.
In nearly half of those cases, the AJC found, the doctors remain licensed to practice medicine. Even some doctors criminally convicted are back in practice, the AJC found.
Harnetty's sentence is a relatively tough one compared to other criminal cases involving doctors, according to the AJC's reporting. Another doctor to get hit with a tough sentence this year is Dr. Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State doctor who abused young gymnasts for years before he was finally stopped.
To read the AJC's award-winning Doctors & Sex Abuse series, go to doctors.ajc.com.
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