Taxpayers helped doctor get name off sex-offender registry

Jeff Rud ,  Canwest News Service
Published: Saturday, February 16, 2008

VICTORIA - Taxpayers helped a former B.C. doctor convicted of assaulting his patients get his name lifted from the national sex offender registry last year.

The Canadian Medical Protective Association, which is subsidized with public money, covered the legal costs for Mark Walter Stewart's bid to be removed from the registry.

The association describes itself as a "mutual defence" organization for 71,000 doctors - 95 per cent of all those licensed to practise in Canada.

It covers the costs of defending doctors in an array of cases and, in some instances, pays damages.

The doctors contribute annual fees to the association, which has reserves of nearly $3 billion. Provincial governments reimburse a portion of the doctors' fees as part of negotiated contracts with provincial medical associations.  

One of Stewart's victims expressed outrage that her tax dollars helped pay for his defence in both the criminal and civil trials and his bid to get off the registry.

"It makes my blood boil over,'' said Debbie Maki, a 44-year-old mother of one- and three-year-old children, from North Delta.

"The province turns its back on me to defend a sex offender. . . . That I don't understand."

Stewart was found guilty in 2001 on nine counts of sexually and indecently assaulting his patients during breast and vaginal examinations and received a four-year prison sentence.

He fought to be removed from the sex offender registry on grounds that it amounted to a "life sentence," because it required him to report where he is living at all times and notify police of any travel plans.

"The main thing is I can never put the convictions behind me," he told a forensic psychiatrist, according to a risk assessment dated March 1, 2007. "If I'm on the registry, every time I want to go somewhere, it's like a slap in the face."

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce ruled in Stewart's favour, concluding there was little risk he would assault anyone else.

The judge noted Stewart had used up all his savings on legal costs, outside of what the association covered.

Vancouver lawyer Terrence Robertson, who represented Stewart, said he was not privy to the association's decision to cover Stewart's legal costs.

"I just know that he asked for assistance with respect to it and the association agreed," said Robertson, who works for Harper Grey, the law firm that handles association business in B.C.

"So we brought the application to exempt him and were successful."

Association chief executive officer John Gray said he could not comment on a specific case, but speaking generally, he said requests for legal funding to help a doctor have his name removed from a sex offenders registry would have to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

"That's an unusual request and there's no general answer for that," Gray said. "We try to look at every member's request for assistance carefully and consider each one on its merits."

Stewart declined to comment.