B.C. Supreme Court has rescinded the sex offender registration of a psychiatrist convicted of sexually assaulting male patients referred to him by Alberta courts.
Dr. Aubrey Levin, 84, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013 after a Calgary Court of Queen’s Bench jury found him guilty of three counts of sexual assault. He was found not guilty on two other counts. The jury was deadlocked on four further counts.
However, Levin was notorious long before he arrived in Canada, having been nicknamed ‘Dr. Shock’ from his time in the South African Defence Force (SADF). During the apartheid era, he allegedly used electro-shock aversion therapy on soldiers with sexuality or addiction concerns. He had the rank of colonel.
Levin appealed the Calgary convictions to the Alberta Court of Appeal, which dismissed the case in April 2014. The Supreme Court of Canada denied his request for leave to appeal that October.
The Alberta appeal court said Levin worked as the forensic psychiatrist in the Forensic Assessment Outpatient Service of Calgary’s Peter Lougheed Hospital.
He was charged with 10 counts of sexually assaulting 10 former patients who had been referred to him by the courts for counselling, treatment or assessment. The referral was for either sentencing or probation order, or they were referred by a physician or self-referred in order to receive psychiatric services.
All of the complainants’ names were anonymized through the use of initials.
RB was Levin’s patient from 2001 to 2010, initially due to a court order and thereafter voluntarily.
“RB obtained notes from Levin on an ongoing basis for social welfare benefits, prescriptions and subsidized housing. Levin also supplied free drug samples to RB who had a history of sexual and physical abuse as a child, along with significant psychiatric problems, and a history of drug and alcohol abuse,” the court said.
“RB described numerous incidents of sexual assault by Levin, the numbers ranging from 18 to 100 incidents,” the court said.
In another case, WG had gone to Levin to ask for Viagra but was sexually assaulted while on the examination table.
“He reported the incident to his mother, grandmother, the police and his family physician,” the court said.
As a result of the conviction, Levin was ordered Jan. 31, 2013 to comply with the Sex Offender Information Registration Act (SOIRA) for 20 years.
However, Levin applied to B.C. Supreme Court to have that registration order lifted. The Crown did not oppose the application, said documents obtained by Glacier Media on application to the court.
“(Levin) has established that the impact on him of his continued registration under SOIRA would be grossly disproportionate to the public interest as defined in s. 490.016 (1) of the Criminal Code,” Justice Michael Tammen ruled.
Levin’s application said the termination was sought in B.C. because he now lives in Vancouver.
The Feb. 1 application said the registration’s ongoing obligations were “onerous and severely interfere with his liberty and privacy.”
“The applicant is elderly, physically infirm and cognitively impaired,” the documents said. “He poses no discernable risk of re-offending.”
It said his physical condition made it difficult for him to comply with the annual in-person registration requirement. He had asked if RCMP could attend his home to do that but was refused.
The case led to questions as to how Levin could have been licensed to practice in Canada, and why his background had not been examined thoroughly.
The B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons told Glacier Media Levin was not registered with it.
Nelson Mandela and human rights abuses
An article in the South African Medical Journal in March 2001 said it believed Levin was among 24 doctors warned by that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that they could be named as perpetrators of human rights abuses.
The commission was appointed by then South African president Nelson Mandela and chaired by Bishop Desmond Tutu.
“Dr. Levin, now based in Calgary, Canada, has strenuously denied that any abuse occurred with conscripts under his care in the military and threatened to sue for defamation. Dr. Levin said the Health and Human Rights Project's submission was 'based on distortions of the fads, and raises doubts about not only my credibility but also about several other doctors who worked with me.'' He claims he only used drugs and a 'battery-operated device' on patients, and denied that electric shock treatment or gender reassignment surgery was conducted by the military,” Robert Kaplan wrote in the article.
“The approach followed by the SADF to homosexuals has shocking overtones of coercive and punitive treatment. Homosexuality was officially regarded as subversive and unacceptable by the SADF but, in practice, attitudes were ambiguous and inconsistent. Some homosexuals in the SADF established relationships and were accepted by their heterosexual counterparts,” Kaplan wrote.
In a subsequent British Medical Journal December 2004 article on the SADF, Kaplan said, “in the 20th century, doctors were repeatedly accomplices in state repression, brutality, and genocide. The most notorious examples of medical complicity in state abuse are the Nazi doctors who participated in genocide and the Japanese doctors who practised biological warfare.”
Struck from college rolls
Levin was struck from the rolls of the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons in April 2015 after the convictions.
That decision said it began investigating after receiving a March 2010 complaint from a patient alleging improper sexual touching by Levin.
“Dr. Levin sexually assaulted vulnerable patients, breaching the inherent trust of the physician-patient relationship. The college responded with the strictest penalty it could enforce in this case,” the college said.
“Dr. Levin remained a regulated member but had not practised medicine since March 19, 2010,” the decision said. “After Dr. Levin’s practice permit was suspended, the college received further complaints similar to the first one.”
