The Roanoke Times (Virginia)

March 1, 2003 Saturday Metro Edition

PSYCHIATRIST COULD LOSE MEDICAL LICENSE;
HE’S ACCUSED OF IMPROPER RELATIONSHIP

BYLINE: JEFF STURGEON THE ROANOKE TIMES

SECTION: VIRGINIA; Pg. B4

LENGTH: 337 words

A veteran psychiatrist at Catawba Hospital who last year settled civil charges that he had an improper relationship with a patient now faces the possibility of discipline by the Virginia Board of Medicine.
In a Feb. 14 letter to Dr. John O. Hurt Jr., board executive director William Harp accuses Hurt of having an inappropriate sexual relationship during the mid-1990s with a patient he’d first treated in the 1970s. Hurt will have a chance to respond to a board committee during a public hearing in Roanoke.
Hurt “does not think he has done anything improper,” Richard Lawrence, his attorney, said Friday. Lawrence declined to comment further.
Hurt has practiced for at least 35 years and is on the staff at Catawba Hospital, a state-owned mental hospital in Roanoke County.
In March 2002, Hurt settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of a Salem woman who said Hurt diagnosed her in the 1970s with depressive neurosis and hysterical personality and began treatment. According to the suit, Hurt took advantage of her fragile mental state and manipulated her into having a sexual relationship that lasted from 1987 until 1999. The woman, who died after the suit was filed, is not being named by The Roanoke Times because of the nature of the case.
The amount of the settlement has not been made public.
State law prohibits doctors, including psychiatrists, from having sexual contact with patients. Sexual contact with former patients is prohibited if it is a result of the doctor’s exploitation of the prior professional relationship.
If convinced Hurt broke the law, the board committee could reprimand, censure or fine Hurt or recommend to the full medical board that it revoke or suspend his medical license.
The hearing, scheduled for March 19, will likely be postponed because Lawrence says he has a scheduling conflict.