“Wow! Are you ever nice and tight!”
It sounded like dialogue from some porn video, but the speaker was Dr. Bassam El-Tatari, a physician in Windsor, Ontario. The doctor was addressing one of his Canadian patients during a vaginal exam.
“I was shocked,” the woman told reporters. “I immediately started looking for another doctor.” So did six other patients, who say that the doctor, whose full name is Bassam Mohamed Khalil Darwish El-Tatari, kissed female patients on the lips, squeezed their breasts, played with nipples, and showed excessive interest in women’s vaginal areas.
This activity recalls Dr. Syed K. Zaidi, 41, of Granite Bay, California, a wealthy community near Sacramento. As several of his patients noted, the eager Dr. Zaidi liked to cup their naked buttocks, squeeze their breasts, and show a surge of attention during vaginal examinations. Even so, the California Medical Board did not lift Zaidi’s license and settled instead for five years probation. So far, Canadian authorities are taking sterner measures with Dr. Bassam El-Tatari.
Allegations dating back to 2009 have landed him in court on charges of sexual assault. One woman told the court “I never let him do another female exam again,” and three other victims have testified. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has allowed El-Tatari to retain his medical license but barred him from being alone with patients. The doctor, who trained in the Czech Republic, will face disciplinary hearings that could result in the loss of his license to practice medicine. As this plays out, a much more serious case has yet to reach the courtroom.
In October of 2017, Habibullah Ahmad, 21, attacked Anne Widholm as she strolled on the Ganatchio trail in Windsor, Ontario. The 75-year-old grandmother suffered “the worst skull fractures I’ve seen in my 12 years here in Windsor,” as neurosurgeon Dr. Balraj Jhawar told reporters. The victim’s lacerated scalp, bruised face and fractured neck vertebrae were “among the most brutal things I’ve seen in my career.” The attack, Dr. Jr. Jhawar said, “is not just another assault,” but represents “a new, dark side of Windsor that we can’t let propagate.”