19. Zero Tolerance Some of the Time? Doctors and Sexual Abuse in Ontario

Abstract

Sanda Rodgers considers another form of resistance and backlash to sexual assault reforms — the disciplinary response of the College of Physicians and Surgeons to women’s reports of sexual assault by doctors. While Susan Ehrlich discussed the subversion of sexual assault criminal law reforms through practices of trial discourse, Sanda’s research shows how the disciplinary process, which is another avenue through which women can seek redress for sexual assault and which offers the potential to avoid the many aspects of the criminal process that complainants experience as punitive, has been captured by criminal law principles and practices. She highlights reliance on psychiatric “expertise” to pathologize women and to excuse perpetrators, echoing a theme introduced by Jane Doe and further problematized by Sunny Marriner. Sanda’s analysis of “psychiatric therapy” imposed on doctors, usually as proposed by their own experts and supervised by their subordinates, illustrates the reification of psychiatric “expertise” over the safety of women patient