Barrie doctor gets his medical licence back after court overturns professional misconduct decision
(The Star Toronto Raptors)

A Barrie dermatologist was given his medical licence back Tuesday, after a court overturned findings that he committed professional misconduct by rubbing his large belly against female patients without warning.Dr. Rodion Kunynetz had originally been found guilty in 2017 of professional misconduct by a panel of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s discipline committee for rubbing his “abdominal fat pad” against two patients without warning, apology or excuse. The panel also found he sexually abused a patient by touching her breasts without clinical justification. As a result, his licence was revoked. Those findings were overturned by a three-judge panel at Divisional Court in a ruling released Tuesday. The judges took issue with the fact that the original college allegation against Kunynetz was that he had rubbed his genitals against the two patients, but that it was not proven. This despite the fact Kunynetz underwent two examinations with urology experts — one hired by the defence, the other by the college — to chemically induce erections in Kunynetz and then simulate patient examinations to determine if indeed his penis could be felt against a patient’s leg.After conflicting results from the two experts and after consulting photographic evidence from one of the procedures, the discipline panel could only conclude “that the impossibility of contact between the doctor’s penis and a patient’s skin (through clothing) was not established,” according to its 2017 decision. The discipline panel instead found that there was evidence that there had been contact between the patients “and that part of Dr. Kunynetz’s lower abdomen at the level of his pelvis, and that the patients were distressed by this,” according to the 2017 discipline decision. But as the judges pointed out in their ruling Tuesday, rubbing his belly against patients had never been an allegation levelled at Kunyn ...