A Complaint Never Forwarded
Woman says report of abuse never referred to state
By Roni Rabin, Staff Writer
Originally published in Newsday, June 6, 2001
Almost nine years before the state yanked a Merrick pediatrician"s medical license, a former patient of his channeled her rage and despair into a concise letter of complaint addressed to the Nassau County Medical Society.
"After years of intensive therapy and living with shame, I have decided to come forward and submit a formal complaint against Stuart Copperman, MD, Merrick, Long Island," Debra Zuckerwise, now 43, wrote to the society on April 6, 1992. "Dr. Copperman committed sexual abuse against me when I was a child … beginning at the age of 10."
She urged the society to take action to "prevent any other children from being damaged psychologically with the fear, confusion, guilt and anger I have had to endure."
Within days, she received a letter from the chairman of the society's peer review committee, Dr. Sidney Mishkin, who promised to conduct an inquiry.
But even though key officials with the medical society at the time said the complaint should have been forwarded to the state Office of Professional Medical Conduct, which is authorized to discipline physicians, there is no evidence they made the referral. Citing confidentiality rules and a lack of written records, officials with the organization —a professional body that counted Copperman as a member —refused to provide an account of how they disposed of Zuckerwise's complaint.
Zuckerwise, who said she was never referred to the state and never contacted by investigators, recalled receiving a second letter from the society in 1992, which dismissed her charges as unsubstantiated. Mishkin denied sending such a letter, and Zuckerwise said she has misplaced her only copy.
The state was by then already investigating Copperman for the second time on charges of sex abuse of children, and was actively searching for additional complainants to build its case against the 65-year-old pediatrician, who practiced out of his home office at 3137 Hewlett Ave. An earlier state panel in 1988 dismissed similar accusations made by two other patients.
"We investigated every possible victim, everyone brought forward in a complaint, ever," said Kris Smith, a spokeswoman for the state Health Department, speaking of the lengthy investigation during the 1990s, which attempted to gather as many complainants as possible before holding its hearings last year. "If that person was never contacted by us, we didn't know about it. We contacted everyone whose name was brought to us, even if it was through someone else."
In December, the state revoked Copperman's license after concluding he sexually abused six girls in his care between 1978 and 1989. Copperman is still fighting to regain his right to practice medicine.
Officials with the Nassau medical society say their policy is to refer contentious complaints to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct, but said confidentiality rules prevent them from discussing the case.
"If that case came to me now, I'd say, 'Send her a letter, tell her it's not a matter within our jurisdiction, tell her she has a right to go to the OPMC,'" said Harold Mahoney, who was and still is the lawyer for the Nassau County Medical Society.
But, he added, "That was eight or nine years ago; we were probably trying to be more helpful. Maybe we were trying to point out to the patient what the difficulties were in her situation. I can see a case where maybe it would be very hard for a patient to establish her complaint."
Copperman referred all requests for an interview to his attorney, who declined to comment on Zuckerwise's allegations. In past interviews Copperman has said he did not act improperly.
The dispute about how Zuckerwise's complaint was handled by the medical society raises troubling questions about the role physicians' associations play in disciplining doctors. Though the societies are little more than professional organizations, which have neither the tools nor the expertise to conduct serious investigations, many of them have peer review committees that purport to investigate public complaints about physicians.
Critics such as Art Levin, director of the Center for Medical Consumers in Manhattan, say self-regulation of the profession has proven to be a failure. Even if the medical societies were able to properly investigate their members, they are not licensing bodies and have no enforcement capability, Levin said.
"If they find fault with a physician, what are they going to do — kick him out of the association?" Levin asked.
"They should not pretend to be in this business," Levin said. "Our fear is they exist as a way to defuse the situation. A person calls, makes a complaint, feels they've done what they can do, and they're told, 'No action can be taken,' and the person goes away."
A spokeswoman for the Medical Society of the State of New York, the umbrella organization for local medical societies, said the state body still refers patients with complaints to their local medical society, and sends them to the state authorities only if their county has no medical association.
Zuckerwise, who grew up in Merrick and now lives in Laguna Niguel, Calif., said she turned to the county medical society on the advice of a therapist, and was unaware of the state's Office of Professional Medical Conduct. For years, she said, she had chronic depression and feelings of self–loathing and guilt that she attributed to the alleged abuse. Her mother, now deceased, insisted on taking her to Copperman twice a year for checkups between 1967 and 1970, Zuckerwise said; On each occasion, she said, Copperman rubbed her genitals with his hands until 'it hurt.'
When she complained to her mother, her mother did not believe her, Zuckerwise said, a recollection supported by her aunt, Phyllis Zuckerwise of Jamesburg, N.J., who remembered the mother discrediting her daughter's story years ago.
Zuckerwise, who was interviewed several times for this story, acknowledged suffering lifelong mental health problems, which she blames on the alleged abuse. When she was in her 20s, she became a drug addict, which resulted in her contracting hepatitis C. She has been admitted to the hospital 35 times for depression, has undergone electric shock therapy, attempted suicide twice, and suffers from chronic fatigue, eating disorders and self–mutilation behaviors as well as numerous physical ailments.
"He took away my whole sense of being," Debra Zuckerwise said of her former pediatrician. Explaining her past drug use, she said, "I didn't do it to experiment. I did it to rid myself of thoughts — I didn't want to feel anything. I had the worst feelings of shame, you can't imagine."
In 1992, a therapist suggested Zuckerwise, who then lived in Garden Grove, Calif., file a formal complaint of misconduct against Copperman with the local medical society. Her then–fiance, Michael Walo, a Huntington Beach, Calif., engineering manager at Boeing, helped her draft a sober, three–paragraph letter.
The letter clearly indicated she was willing to testify. "Although the incidences occurred 20 to 25 years ago, I remember every incident as if it happened yesterday —; I will stand strong by my statements and pursue this extremely solemn matter."
Zuckerwise received an acknowledgment letter, written on medical society letterhead, dated April 13, 1992, and signed by Mishkin. She said a second letter she received later rejected her allegations as unsubstantiated, and noted that Copperman was a respected figure in the medical community. She has misplaced that letter, she said, but Walo told Newsday he had a similar recollection of the letter.
Mishkin, who signed the first letter to Zuckerwise, vehemently denied writing a second letter. He agreed her complaint should have been referred to the state &mdash but by someone else in the society.
"That's not my job," he said. "What can I tell you — it's not my problem."
In fact, state public health law requires physicians who are aware of misconduct by another doctor to report it to state health authorities, and the law specifically binds physician members of medical societies and peer review committees.
"The law says you must report it, or you yourself are committing misconduct," Smith said.
Mishkin and the doctors who were co–chairs of the committee at the time, Paul Hamlin, Daniel J. Nicoll and Richard P. Stechel, said in recent interviews they had no recollection of the old accusation against Copperman, even though he was a prominent member of the society. Copperman had chaired the mental health committee in the 1980s and was active in the society's academy and public health, library and pediatric committees in the 1990s; he was also prominent in the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Nassau Pediatric Society, which to this day lists him as an active physician on its Web site.
The executive director of the society, Mark Cappola, who still holds the position, declined to discuss the case, saying all peer review proceedings were confidential. Both he and Mahoney, the lawyer, said the society destroys all paperwork every two years and does not keep copies of the letters sent out to complainants, even though the Medical Society of the State of New York suggests they keep records of "the complaint received and information disseminated."
The state society's guidelines also state clearly that even if the county body concludes a complaint is unjustified, its officials should advise the complainant that "if he is dissatisfied with the findings, he may file a complaint with the OPMC against the physician."
None of the Nassau County Medical Society officials interviewed remembered referring Zuckerwise or her complaint to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct, and Cappola declined to provide Newsday a copy of the peer review committee's guidelines.
Mishkin, the committee chair, said it was Cappola's responsibility to forward the complaint to the state; later in the same interview, he said the matter should have been handled by a different committee in the medical society, the board of censors, which also plays a role in reviewing professional conduct.
Mahoney, the society's attorney, acknowledged the physician members of the medical society are ill–equipped to investigate serious charges like Zuckerwise's. They do not have subpoena power, and cannot compel witnesses to appear, he said.
"At that time, which is not what we're doing now, they usually wrote to the doctor and gave him a copy of the letter and asked him for his response," Mahoney said. "What's wrong with that? How can they get a response if they don't know what it is?"
But, he conceded, "What you end up with is getting a Mexican standoff, one says this, and one says that."
Like other society officials, he said he was "sure" Zuckerwise would have been referred to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct, but was unable to provide any record of the referral.
Zuckerwise was never called to testify about Copperman last year when the state held hearings. The transcripts do not reveal witnesses' names, but none of them match Zuckerwise's description.
She still wishes she had been given a chance to testify against her former pediatrician.
"I attribute my failure in life to his molestations," she said. "I was a really, really bright girl, but I've always been afraid. He ruined my life."
