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Someone’s Son Is Dead (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

4 min read

I’m not a doctor or lawyer, but I am the only journalist who tried to warn the public about Dr. Richard Johns, so I’m hereby granting myself license to pour out my heart in a way that is — as I was reminded by the lawyer for the State Medical Board — “not objective.”

A week ago, Richard Johns was arrested by the Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office and charged with 187 counts of prescription drug fraud. It was the culmination of an investigation that started in November, when a young man from Cabot died from an overdose of prescription painkillers that were traced back to Johns.

The news disrupted my work and my sleep for days. Someone’s son is dead and, if the detectives are correct, it’s because Richard Johns has been licensed to commit his special brand of medicine for years after numerous agencies charged with protecting Arkansans knew or certainly should have known that he was a bad actor.

I didn’t have any idea until last week that Johns could be a Dr. Feelgood. What I knew — and what I reported in Arkansas Business in September 2012 — was that the Little Rock Police Department investigated him twice for a growing list of complaints by women who said he had molested them while in his care. At that time, there were two and probably three complaints, and I have since become aware of a fourth.

In two other cases, he allegedly abused nurses who worked for him — one by sexual harassment, one by giving her personal medical files to her ex-husband for use against her in a custody dispute. When they tried to fight back, he filed reports against them with the State Board of Nursing for — get this — writing unauthorized prescriptions in his name.

(One of those nurses spent five years trying to get redress in civil court, but finally had to abandon the case. This wasn’t mere petulance.)

The LRPD, to its credit, investigated and turned the files over to the office of Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley in hopes of seeing Johns prosecuted. Perhaps there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prove his guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Or perhaps it wasn’t a slam-dunk. For whatever reason, Jegley didn’t charge Johns in state court.

It was in the course of reporting on a criminal case in federal court that I learned about the complaints against Johns, so it seems likely that federal prosecutors also knew that he was trouble. If they didn’t, they certainly should have known when I put it on the front page of Arkansas Business.

It would take some creative prosecution — not for the first time — to make molesting patients and retaliating against employees into federal crimes, and the burden of proof in federal court is the same as in state court. So maybe it wasn’t U.S. Attorney Chris Thyer’s job to protect the people of Arkansas from Richard Johns — at least not in 2012.

After someone’s son died, the feds did get involved. “Pill mills” are a big deal to the feds right now — big roundup last week, lots of charges, full-on news conference — but Johns wasn’t indicted by the feds like the others. That task fell to Lonoke County, which managed to make its case in six months.

So whose job was it to protect Arkansans from Dr. Richard Johns? The Arkansas State Medical Board.

The board’s attorney, Kevin O’Dwyer, told me last week that I was clearly upset and not objective about this. Guilty as charged. Here’s why:

The board took no action when the two nurses who had worked for him filed their separate complaints, nor after the first complaint of molestation. The board can investigate even without a complaint from a member of the public, but apparently it takes more than a story in Arkansas Business connecting those dots and more to bring the board to that level of curiosity.

Later a patient complained to the board of being misdiagnosed by Johns. No action then either.

Do you suppose the Medical Board would have been more concerned if four or five men had accused the same doctor of sexual molestation, harassment, HIPAA violations and retaliation? Perhaps if more than one of the 14 members of the board was female, a doctor repeatedly accused of predatory behavior toward women would have inspired a closer look. We’ll never know.

We do know this: The Medical Board is supposed to protect Arkansans from bad doctors, and the burden of proof is “clear and convincing evidence,” a much lower standard than for a criminal conviction.

I was convinced two and a half years ago that Richard Johns was clearly a dangerous man, and I did what little I could to warn the public. The agencies that had the power to stop him failed to even try. And now someone’s son is dead.

Email Gwen Moritz, editor of Arkansas Business, at GMoritz@ABPG.com.

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