By Editorial Staff - Times of Israel - 04/06/2024 - [Guy Rofe] - [ISRAEL]
The state has decided to move forward with charges against a gynecologist who is accused of sexually abusing multiple patients, days after one of the complainants expressed outrage on social media after hearing that the doctor was opening a new medical practice.
The State Attorney’s Office for the Haifa district on Tuesday released a short statement confirming that it had submitted a charge sheet for Guy Rofe, 45, a resident of the northern city, relating to a complaint of sexual abuse from a patient in his private clinic.
There was no confirmation on whether the charge sheet related to Ariel Naim, the young woman who posted the angry TikTok video last week, though the Ynet news site reported that she was the plaintiff. “Guy Rofe, the gynecologist who sexually abused me, whom I filed a complaint against with the police, whose case is still open. The same person whom the state has not yet decided whether to charge… He ruined my life, and he’s opening a new clinic,” Naim said in the video.
According to Ynet, Naim has also filed a civil lawsuit against Rofe, suing him for NIS 2.5 million ($678,000) in mental health damages stemming from the doctor’s actions.
The Kan public broadcaster reported that two of the complaints in the indictment relate to alleged sexual abuse cases in 2019, and another one is connected to a 2016 incident.
Rofe has been accused by several women of indecent acts, with Hebrew media sites reporting when the allegations came out in 2022 that at least two women had filed police complaints over alleged incidents in 2016. At least eight complaints of indecent acts by Rofe were also filed with the Health Ministry, according to the reports, though other complaints against him, including a rape accusation, were dropped.
Furthermore, at least 15 women testified on social media or in Hebrew media reports about a pattern in which Rofe would obsessively send them private messages with unwanted sexual content, while assaulting them during treatment sessions.
That included touching patients against their will; inserting fingers; pressuring them to hug him, kiss him, take off their clothes or take unnecessary mammography tests; making sexual advances on them; and in one case, offering a woman a job as a secretary that would require her to regularly have sex with him.
He was arrested and detained for 11 days in January 2020 and then released to house arrest, but no charges were filed against him at the time.
The doctor, who has tens of thousands of Instagram followers and has posted many viral posts about gynecology, informed all his patients after his 2022 arrest was reported in the media that he was stepping down from his medical work “due to personal circumstances.”
However, in recent months, Rofe has returned to posting on the Instagram, X and Threads social media platforms.
Rofe has previously denied all of the accusations against him.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm.
Dignity4Patients Commentary: Once again the slowness of state authorities and those in a position of oversight and power to stop doctors abusing patients often move too slow to take action. This results in more victims and further trauma to victims not being heard, believed or action being taken to give victims a sense of justice.