Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️@sappholives83
You’re a woman who’s having migraines and blackouts. You’re afraid, worried, and it’s taken months to get an appointment with the neurologist in whose office you’re sitting, Dr. Jeffrey “Scott” Sloka.
When Dr. Sloka comes in, the nurse leaves, which is weird, but you’re here for a neurology appointment, so you shrug it off. The doctor asks you some questions, and then he tells you he needs to do a vaginal exam and a breast exam.
You don’t understand why, and he doesn’t explain. You want to refuse, but what if you make him angry? What if he refuses to continue the appointment? This is Canada; you waited for five months for this appointment, and your symptoms are getting worse — so you consent, even though you still don’t understand why he wants to examine you in this way.
Once you’re undressed, Dr. Sloka begins the exam by telling you to remove your gown and stand completely naked with arms and legs spread. The nurse still hasn’t come back, but the doctor proceeds anyway. He says something about checking for lumps, but that doesn’t make any sense; he’s a neurologist, not an ob/gyn.
Then you notice that he isn’t wearing gloves.
During the breast exam, he touches you in ways that make you uncomfortable, and that are not a part of an ordinary breast exam. The vaginal exam is worse: the exam lasts an exceptionally long time, and the doctor inserts his ungloved fingers. The nurse still hasn’t returned.
After the appointment, you feel dirty, soiled. You know deep down that you were assaulted, so eventually you work up the courage to file a report.
It opens a floodgate.
By the time the trial starts, Dr. Sloka has already lost his license, having pled guilty in front of the licensing board. He is facing 48 separate charges for the sexual abuse of his patients.
Woman after woman testifies to this man’s inappropriate behavior. Multiple women testify that Dr. Sloka touched them inappropriately and intimately while not wearing gloves; they describe vaginal exams, rectal exams, and breast exams involving contact that had nothing to do with checking for lumps. An underage girl cries as she describes being pressured into a vaginal exam while her mother was banned from the room.
48 counts. 48 victims. 41 women and girls who took the stand to testify about the abuse they endured.
And one more woman: the Crown’s key expert, Toronto neurologist Dr. Vera Bril. She testified that vaginal, rectal, and breast exams are “far outside our standard of practice,” and “far, far outside” of what neurologists typically do. She stated that these intimate exams were “not necessary” for treating or diagnosing the neurological issues presented by the victims. When the judge retires to deliberate, a conviction seems certain.
Except that’s not what happens.
The judge - Justice Craig Perry - discounts the testimony of all 42 women. He singles out Dr. Bril’s testimony in particular as suffering from “profound frailties,” and accused her of displaying “bias.” He dismisses the victims’ testimonies as well, citing “inconsistencies,” even though none of said “inconsistencies” touched in any way on ex-Dr. Sloka’s guilt.
He accepts ex-Dr. Sloka’s claim that the assaults were medically necessary exams, even though Sloka admits to having performed many of them ungloved, and cannot explain what these exams had to do with any of his victims’ symptoms.
In the end, Justice Craig Perry acquits ex-Dr. Jeffrey “Scott” Sloka on all 48 counts, choosing to believe a (male) defendant who had already admitted his guilt in front of the licensing board over 41 (female) victims and an expert (female) neurologist.
And they say the patriarchy is dead.
