Investigation: Patients were sexually abused by doctors while sedated

A prominent Manhattan doctor is arrested, charged with giving a patient a powerful anesthetic in the emergency room, then masturbating on her.

It was a story made for the tabloids, one of those incidents the medical establishment often brushes off as freakishly rare when they come to the public’s attention.

But The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found scores of cases across the United States of doctors accused of sexually violating patients who were at their most helpless — under anesthesia or sedated. The doctors’ downfall: The patients weren’t completely anesthetized, or DNA was found, or a witness spoke up and was believed.