The patient went into the optometrist’s examination room with concerns about red eyes and a “circle” in her left eye; she left shaken and on the verge of tears.“I’m not looking,” Dr. Peter Spear told the 25-year-old woman, when he asked her to uncross her legs to conduct an examination. “If only I was younger,” he told her at another point.To the patient’s boyfriend, who had arrived at the clinic, Spear said, in the woman’s presence: “She is a beautiful woman and not just from the neck up . . . . You should put a ring on it before somebody snatches her up.”And then came the statement about beards.According to a recent discipline decision from the College of Optometrists, Spear then broached another topic with the patient when she returned to the examination room after having introduced her boyfriend to the optometrist:“The member also made a comment to the patient regarding an article that he had recently read about men’s beards. The member told the patient that the article stated men’s beards are full of feces,” said the decision.“The member commented further that men touch their crotch area and then their beards and then said that the patient should think about this when she thinks about her boyfriend, who the member had just met, (who) had a beard at the time.”Spear, who opened the Toronto Eye Clinic at Yonge St. and Eglinton Ave. about 30 years ago, admitted before a discipline panel that his remarks about the beard constituted professional misconduct. He also admitted to making the comments about the patient’s looks, which the panel found to be sexual abuse.He was handed a five-week suspension, effective May 1, ordered to take training on ethics, and made to pay $16,000 for the patient’s counselling fees, should she require it, along with a further $68,000 in costs to the college.Prominent Toronto lawyer Brian Greenspan ...
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