Foot Doctor Gives Breast Exams

(Fresno, California) If a woman visits a podiatrist for a foot problem, it should be expected that the doctor will want to see and feel the woman's breasts. This is according to a court ruling this week in Fresno.

Foot doctor Matthew Sciaroni was acquitted by a jury of charges that he performed breast exams for no good reason when a woman complained about her feet. Sciaroni said it was a necessary exam. The jury agreed.

Therefore, ladies, before going to have your feet checked, realize that you're entering a no shoes, no shirt service zone.


[Update 05/30/08]

Here's more information from the Fresno Bee:

Asked what he's going to do next, Sciaroni turned to his defense attorney, Steven Smith and yelled: "We're going fishing in Cabo!"

The two men gave high-fives and embraced each other.

Florence Carroll, one of Sciaroni's former patients who testified that she was molested, said she was stunned that her former doctor was acquitted.

"I think that's wrong," said Carroll, a 47-year-old Clovis woman on Medicare. "I don't like that, because he'll keep on doing what he's doing and it's not going to stop."

The jurors took less than two days to deliberate before arriving at their verdict. None was willing to comment Wednesday.

Sciaroni was charged with nine crimes, including child molestation and sexual battery, and faced up to seven years in prison if convicted. Eight women testified in the trial that they were inappropriately touched by Sciaroni when they visited him at his office.

One of the women said she visited the podiatrist between the ages of 13 and 19 whenever she had a toenail infection. She said that on five or six occasions Sciaroni asked her to unzip her pants and would touch her groin area.

Twice, she said, he touched her breasts, telling her that the infection could spread to her chest.

Carroll, in an interview, said that when she visited Sciaroni in 2005, he came into his office, stuck his hand in her shirt to squeeze her breast and then tried to kiss her.

"You wouldn't think a doctor would do something like that," she said.

Carroll said that she tried going to other podiatrists afterward, but returned to Sciaroni a year later because she said he was the only foot doctor her Medicare plan would pay for.

Sciaroni testified that he never touched the breasts of his young patients, but did try to help some of his adult patients learn how to conduct self breast exams.

Obviously, not everyone was happy with the outcome of the trial.


[Update II]

Wow! Here's a breaking story out of Cook County, Illinois. A 63-year-old foot doctor, Anthony Overton, has been sentenced to six years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman during a foot examination.

Convicted last month on two separate counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, Overton has maintained that he was only giving the elderly patient a physical examination that included a vaginal and rectal exam, a contention both supported and rejected by expert testimony during the trial.

But the judge rejected that notion last month when he found Overton guilty and said that the podiatrist violated the usual standards for professionalism by giving the victim, then 75, a gynecological exam in 2006.

Interesting. Podiatrists examining female parts other than the feet is allowed in California but not so in Illinois. What we have here is a lack of consensus.