How Could You? Hall of Shame-Dr. Patrick Clyne UPDATED and Lawsuit

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From San Jose, California, foster father and chief pediatrician of foster and neglected children of Santa Clara County, was fired “following repeated allegations that he sexually molested children in his care.”

“Dr. Patrick Clyne has not been arrested, but San Jose police investigated him twice, in 2001 and again last year, and came to believe there was support for some of the accusations, according to sources close to the inquiries.” He has fostered 4 children.

Clyne “is a paraplegic who conquered his disability to become a doctor of uncommon dedication to an extraordinarily challenging group of patients.

But Clyne’s story raises other questions as well, including whether hospital officials took appropriate precautions before returning Clyne to work.”

“One of Clyne’s own foster children accused him of abuse, and a subsequent inquiry discovered other alleged victims.

The 2001 case was brought to a grand jury by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, according to Clyne and law enforcement sources, but did not result in an indictment. Officials would not say why the allegations did not lead to charges, and the grand jury’s proceedings are confidential.”

“But sources familiar with the inquiry confirmed that a second set of complaints surfaced in 2009, prompting an investigation that involved allegations from multiple patients of Clyne’s, of both genders. Altogether, sources said, five to 10 potential victims surfaced during the two inquiries.

Both sets of allegations resulted in temporary suspensions of Clyne’s duties — at the county hospital and at his office in the Children’s Intake and Receiving Center, the first stop for children removed from their homes by social workers who suspect abuse or neglect. [emphasis Rally] Clyne confirmed that both times he was placed on paid administrative leave after being informed that the police department’s sexual assault unit was investigating him: in 2001 for three months, and again from November 2009 to December 2010, until the second investigation was closed. ”

Favortism?
“After the initial investigation in 2001 and again in 2010, Clyne was returned to his job. No restrictions were placed on his ability to interact with his patients until days before he was let go, even though some experts recommend that doctors who have received complaints of improper behavior be provided with chaperones during sensitive exams for the protection of both doctor and patient. What’s more, in 2002, the county social services agency greenlighted his adoption of a foster youth, now 26 and still living with Clyne, who is unmarried.

And even after he was terminated, Clyne did not lose — and to this day retains — admitting and treating privileges at the county hospital, following a 2010 review and decision by 20 hospital department heads, Clyne said. Nor has he been reported to the Medical Board of California. ”

Santa Clara County fires doctor who worked with foster children after allegations of sexual molestation
[Mercury News 4/10/11 by Karen de Sa and Sean Webby]

Update/February 25, 2012

No arrest record or media article can be found. Medical Board of California indicates that his medical license is retired and leaves a New Mexico address. New Mexico Medical Board indicates that he has a license pending.

Update 2:August 12, 2013

A search of media revealed no new articles. A search of New Mexico Medical Board reveals that in November 2012, he withdrew his application for a license due to ongoing investigation. See the notice in this pdf

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update 3: a Rally mail commenter said that “He faced no consequences and is in private practice in CA. ”

I found this article:”When Santa Clara County’s longtime chief pediatrician for abused and neglected children was dismissed two years ago, officials offered little explanation — just an ominous letter from the district attorney warning there was “substantial evidence” that he “committed multiple crimes involving moral turpitude, specifically sexual assaults.”

Now, for the first time, lurid details of child molestation allegations against Dr. Patrick Clyne have emerged in court documents, and one of several foster children who lived with Clyne has come forward to describe to this newspaper abuse that he says has “taken my whole life” to overcome.

The new details deepen the mystery surrounding Clyne, 52, who had many defenders at the time of his dismissal, was never charged with a crime, and now works in private practice just 50 miles away in Watsonville. Serious questions are emerging about how authorities handled his case — and whether they have done enough, now and in the past, to protect the children he treats.

“I can’t believe the justice system is like this, that they let this go on,” said Kyle, who lived with Clyne from fourth through ninth grade. Now 27, Kyle said he testified before a grand jury in 2002 that Clyne molested him. The newspaper is using only Kyle’s first name to protect his privacy. “If I could prevent him from hurting one more kid,” Kyle said, “that’s my mission accomplished.”

The most extensive accounts of Clyne’s alleged misdeeds have shown up in an unexpected place — a habeas corpus petition filed in the 6th District Court of Appeal that challenges Clyne’s credibility as a key witness in helping convict child-killer Emmanuel Brew in 2008.

According to that filing, which is based on confidential law enforcement reports of two separate investigations of Clyne, three of the four foster boys placed in Clyne’s care told police he had abused them.

Years later, six patients, ages 5 through 10, reported the pediatrician “had shown inappropriately enthusiastic interest in their privates when he examined them and no one else was present,” according to records cited in the court petition.

Clyne denies the accusations. Reached at his Watsonville office, he described the allegations as “fantasy” and “fiction” depicting “someone I’m completely unfamiliar with.”

“I can say unequivocally I have never touched any child inappropriately in the office or ever,” Clyne said. If the allegations were true, he added, “I would have been arrested. And I wasn’t.”

But scrutiny may now grow for the wheelchair-bound physician who cared for thousands of Santa Clara County foster children, and took boys into his home as a single foster father.

One of the biggest questions about his case persists: Why did the district attorney, despite clear suspicions that Clyne had molested children, never prosecute him?

Assistant District Attorney David Angel said it came down to proving the case: “The reason he was never charged is that while we believe there is substantial evidence that he committed the crime, we do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” A grand jury heard the first round of allegations in 2002 but failed to return an indictment of Clyne because it “did not believe there was enough evidence.”

However, in 2011, the DA’s office announced that an internal committee of prosecutors had placed Clyne on a list of its potentially impeachable witnesses and, by law, informed defense attorneys why they believe he had a tainted past. Previously the office had used Clyne as an expert witness in at least 12 child abuse cases.

The November habeas petition by Brew’s attorney, David Martin, reveals for the first time some of the evidence behind the DA’s concerns about Clyne. In addition to the interviews with Clyne’s own foster children, it shows that in 2009, four children, ages 8 to 10, described inappropriate genital exams. Two similar reports surfaced in 2010, including one from a boy who was 5 at the time. The court records describe girls’ statements that they were required to squat in a “frog” position while the doctor touched their genitals.

Clyne said in an interview that examining girls this way is acceptable practice; he suggested that investigators might have asked “leading” questions. Clyne added that he is now more diligent about always having another adult in the room during sensitive exams and documenting that. But another physician consulted by investigators described his exams as “ridiculous,” “insensitive” and “bizarre,” court documents show.

By all accounts, Clyne is no ordinary physician. Plenty praise the affable doctor who was disabled in a rock-climbing accident as a medical resident. During his 14-year tenure in Santa Clara County, Clyne earned trust among foster parents who appreciated his expertise and 24/7 availability.

Longtime foster mother Dawn Haddaway, who reviewed the new court documents, called the allegations “unsubstantiated.”

“I have complete confidence in him as a person, as well as a pediatrician,” Haddaway said. “The county lost one of its best.”

Yet, County Executive Jeff Smith said the newly revealed descriptions of abuse are “extremely disturbing,” and he now has “considerable concerns” Clyne is still practicing.

Medical Board of California spokeswoman Cassandra Hockenson would not discuss whether Clyne’s license was under review, citing privacy laws. The board can suspend a physician’s license after an arrest through the criminal courts or if it believes there is an immediate threat to patient safety. Doctors have a right to an administrative hearing before their licenses can be revoked.

The earliest and most extensive allegations against Clyne focus not on patients, but on the young boys he lived with.

Those allegations first surfaced in 2001. In Kyle’s case, his juvenile probation officer reported the boy’s complaints after he had reunited with his mother out of state. According to the court reports, when Kyle first recounted being fondled in bed by Clyne, he burst into tears and vomited. Later interviewed by police, the teen cried and told his mother that “he was sorry for letting (Dr. Clyne) touch him.”

The sexual abuse began around age 9, Kyle said, after he got scared one night and went to Clyne’s room for comfort. After falling asleep, he told a reporter, “I woke up and felt him touching me — and I thought it was a nightmare.”

A second boy placed briefly with Clyne by the child welfare agency “reported seven to eight incidents where Dr. Clyne would try to touch his genital area,” the records state. The court reports describe the boy’s account that “Dr. Clyne would roll his wheelchair toward him and act as if his hand accidentally slipped off, successfully touching his crotch on two occasions.”

One of the four boys who lived with Clyne denied there had been abuse. At one point in the investigation when police arrived at Clyne’s home, the boy had apparently been drinking Scotch, and was “wearing a lot of silver jewelry that Dr. Clyne had bought him,” the records show. He told police Clyne was “the only one who had ever given him anything.”

A fourth boy, who moved in with Clyne at age 9 and eventually ran away, also initially denied any abuse. But when investigators interviewed him in person days later he acknowledged that on multiple occasions “he would wake up at night to discover Clyne touching his penis,” the brief states. In one exchange quoted in the court files, the boy reacted angrily, and knocked Clyne’s hand away; Clyne then responded, “Oh it fell out I was just putting it away.”

The boy’s mother, Tonya Batorski, said she learned of the abuse allegations when her son testified before the grand jury. Before that, she said she was grateful to Clyne, who took her son in when she suffered from alcohol abuse and couldn’t care for him.

But after a few years, Batorski said, “everything just went haywire.” The boy became increasingly defiant, failing school. He was killed at 18 in a gang-related shooting. “I feel so bad for my son and for all those kids,” Batorski said.

Kyle’s relatives said he too changed dramatically. “He was a well-adjusted, happy, joyful young boy” when he went to Clyne’s, his grandfather Paul Fisher said. A year later, “All of a sudden that boyhood joy and charm was gone.”

Kyle, now living in the Bay Area, said the abuse has resulted in years of therapy for depression, post-traumatic stress and pent-up rage that’s led to trouble with the law. But as a boy, he said, “I didn’t know it was wrong — I was too young to even know what was going on. It’s taken my whole life until this point to overcome it.”

 

DOCTOR’s ROCKY TENURE

1996: Dr. Patrick Clyne begins working for county-run Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.
2001: Clyne is suspended while San Jose police investigate reports of sexual abuse by three boys placed by child welfare agency in Clyne’s home.
2002: A Santa Clara County grand jury hears two days of testimony but does not indict Clyne.
2009-2010: A second set of sexual abuse allegations emerges, this time from six of Clyne’s child patients.
2010: Clyne is suspended for a second time while police investigate the claims.
2011: Santa Clara County district attorney notifies county it has “substantial evidence that Dr. Clyne committed multiple crimes involving moral turpitude, specifically sexual assaults.” County dismisses Clyne, and a county hospital official alerts the California Medical Board.
2013: Clyne opens Pediatric Medical Group of Watsonville with another physician. One month later, first extensive details of abuse allegations against Clyne appear in habeas corpus petition from child killer appealing a murder conviction.

Source: 6th District Court of Appeal court files and Mercury News reports”

Details of abuse claims surface against former Santa Clara County pediatrician

[Mercury News 8/12/16 by Karen de Sa]

Update 4:“A Bay Area pediatrician and former foster parent who has been accused of sexual molestation by more than a dozen children and teens since 2001 is under investigation for a third time, after a new allegation of abuse in Santa Cruz County.

The investigation of Dr. Patrick Clyne, 57, who practices in the small community of Freedom, is a joint effort by the Medical Board of California and the Watsonville Police Department, police officials said. It involves a complaint from a child patient that was first reported to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office in May.

The new investigation comes eight years after a succession of complaints of sexual abuse made against Clyne, the former chief pediatrician for children in Santa Clara County’s foster care system. Hundreds of pages of filings in a U.S. District Court case show that between 2009 and 2011, 10 of Clyne’s former patients — foster children he treated at a county shelter — reported examinations so invasive other physicians described them as “extraordinarily uncommon,” “bizarre” and “suspicious.”

Years earlier, three boys placed in Clyne’s South Bay homes as foster children also reported being repeatedly molested by him, with one boy describing as many as 11 incidents of sexual abuse. Those allegations were presented to a criminal grand jury but did not lead to an indictment.

Watsonville police officials said they could not release additional information about the latest complaint “because of the sensitive nature of the case” and because it involves a juvenile. The Medical Board, which licenses and can suspend doctors, said its investigations are kept confidential by law and would not confirm anything related to the case.

The new case raises questions about how Clyne, who after the earlier allegations was suspended twice and ultimately fired from Santa Clara County’s public hospital and barred from parenting foster youth, has been allowed to continue to practice.

In an interview, Clyne said he did not know about the latest allegation so could not respond to it. He said the allegations made in 2001 by the foster boys who had lived with him were lies, and that the child patients who reported him must have misinterpreted his examinations because of their mistrust of adults or histories of abuse.

“My past has been investigated a lot, and there hasn’t been a time that a D.A. felt there was enough evidence to sustain a charge. Because of that, I’ve never been arrested for these allegations,” Clyne said. “It’s hard for me to know why people would say these things occurred.”

Yet previously confidential court documents show that police detectives repeatedly recommended that prosecutors file criminal charges against Clyne. The documents also show that Child Protective Services in Santa Clara County received numerous calls reporting allegations of sexual abuse. A wide range of professionals made the reports after hearing from children in their care, including social workers, parents and guardians, therapists, a juvenile probation officer and staff at two residential group homes in the South Bay.

The Medical Board of California has never placed restrictions on Clyne’s ability to practice medicine. But Clyne could not obtain a medical license in New Mexico in 2012 when that state’s medical board discovered he had not informed it about the numerous allegations of sexual abuse against him and the disciplinary actions that followed.

In an unrelated action two years later, the California Department of Social Services banned Clyne from ever parenting foster youth and from working with any children or adults in state-licensed care facilities.

Tonya Batorski, who said her son testified in 2002 before a Santa Clara County criminal grand jury that he was abused by Clyne, was angered when she learned that a new allegation has been made against the pediatrician.

“It’s hard to wrap my mind around somebody getting away with this for so long, and to continue to work with the most vulnerable of our society when they know he has had multiple allegations,” said Batorski. “Everybody’s involved for giving him his license knowing about his past — they’re at fault as well.”

Clyne’s connection to the foster care system dates to 1994, public records show, when he became a foster parent to the first of four young boys who would live with him over the next several years. In 1996, he became the chief pediatrician for children in foster care in Santa Clara County, seeing patients at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose and at the county children’s shelter.

In his capacity examining and treating abused and neglected children, Clyne also served as an expert witness for the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office for several years during his time at the public hospital.

Throughout his career, Clyne has earned professional respect. During a rock-climbing trip on the Appalachian Trail in his second year of medical residency, he fell 20 feet off a cliff and severed his spinal cord. After eight months in rehabilitation, Clyne nonetheless managed to complete his residency and a Stanford University fellowship, and now treats patients from a wheelchair.

Clyne has been praised in the past by colleagues and foster parents for his commitment to vulnerable children and round-the-clock availability, including two adoptive parents who Clyne said have continued to bring their children to see him since he moved his practice from Santa Clara to Santa Cruz County. Before the allegations against him became public, he was honored at a 2007 luncheon of the Legal Advocates for Children and Youth, the law firm representing children in the Santa Clara County foster care system.

But twice during his 16-year Santa Clara County tenure, Clyne was placed on administrative leave while under investigation by the police and sheriff’s departments.

The first investigation occurred in 2001, court records show, and involved three of the boys in foster care who were placed in Clyne’s home and reported to local law enforcement that he repeatedly molested them. In agonized disclosures, two of the boys said they were in third, fourth and fifth grades when they were awakened by Clyne’s groping, and described the confusion and torment that resulted. The third youth, who spent a shorter period of time with Clyne as an older foster teen, told police he was groped in a manner that Clyne would then pretend was a slip of his hand, and he was willing to testify in court about it.

The Chronicle is not identifying the former foster youth because it does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault.

One boy’s account describes his waking up to Clyne reaching inside his boxer shorts. After he knocked Clyne’s hand away, he said: “He’s like, it fell out of your boxers, I’m just putting it away,” the boy recalled.

One of the boys “couldn’t stop crying or throwing up” as he recounted the abuse to his mother, and “just kept saying, I’m sorry Mommy for letting him touch me,” the records show. Another boy said he’d felt so uncomfortable since his experiences with Clyne, “I can’t even hug my mom really long. It makes me sick just when people touch me.”

Clyne said in an interview that two of his foster boys would sleep in his bed at night, “but there would be no sexual contact.” In response to the third boy, Clyne said: “I can’t think of any interaction with him that would have been misinterpreted.”

After the 2001 police investigation, the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office brought a case before a grand jury. But in a development that continues to astound those familiar with the allegations against Clyne, no indictment was returned. Clyne returned to work at Valley Medical Center and continued treating children in the foster care system.

Eight years later, in November 2009, new allegations of abuse arose. Others followed in 2010 and 2011. San Jose police and the sheriff investigated again, and Clyne was again placed on administrative leave from his post at the public hospital.

The new allegations involved 10 boys and girls, some as young as age 8, whom Clyne had treated at the county children’s shelter. The children reported being molested by Clyne during routine wellness exams, according to police reports and Department of Family and Children’s Services internal documents.

The youngsters described being alone with the doctor when he touched their “private parts” and inserted his fingers inside the girls. One girl said “the doctor makes her ‘squat’ on the table like a ‘frog’ and touches her privates.” A boy demonstrated how “Dr. Clyne had rubbed him up and down,” a Child Protective Services report states.

In a recent interview, Clyne said he believes the children who accused him misinterpreted their exams, which he said were perfectly appropriate.

“I certainly didn’t sexually stimulate anybody” or “do anything where something is put inside the child,” he said. “I wish I had a chance to explain it to them, but I’ve never done anything in a medical examination that brought me sexual gratification or should be interpreted as a sexual assault.”

Clyne said that in his current practice, he sees children with another adult in the room, unless they are 14 or older and insist on being seen alone. Earlier in his career, he conceded, “I was making decisions that weren’t the best; I should have had adults in the room.” He also said that, in some instances, he may have had third parties present, but neglected to document that in the children’s files.

During the police investigation into the children’s allegations, six pediatric specialists who were consulted concerning proper medical procedure criticized the conduct the children described.

Pediatrician Martha Snider told police genital exams of young children involve a “quick visual inspection” and should take about “three seconds.” She called exams of young children naked and alone with a doctor “bizarre,” “suspicious” and “peculiar.”

Dr. James Crawford-Jakubiak, medical director of the Center for Child Protection at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, told investigators it would be “extraordinarily uncommon” for parents or caregivers not to be present during exams of children in third grade and younger, and that anything physically invasive would be rare.

Records note that in at least three incidents, the children’s allegations were “sent to the district attorney’s office for review” and “forwarded to the District Attorney for charging.” But the second investigation of Clyne also concluded without charges.

Asked recently why no charges were brought, Assistant District Attorney Terry Harman noted in an email reply that the grand jury did not indict Clyne in 2002 and said that his office’s follow-up review “led to a determination that we could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Clyne again returned to work, but weeks later, in February 2011, Santa Clara County prosecutors placed Clyne on a list of expert witnesses who could have their credibility challenged in court because of misconduct. In a letter to defense attorneys, the district attorney’s office wrote: “There is substantial evidence that Dr. Clyne committed multiple crimes involving moral turpitude, specifically sexual assault.”

The next month, Santa Clara County fired Clyne from his hospital job.

By June, Clyne had applied for a medical license to practice in New Mexico, but did not include information about having been suspended and fired from work after the sexual abuse allegations. After the board informed him that it had learned those facts, Clyne ended up withdrawing his application.

Clyne said the questions posed on the application for the New Mexico license were “a little vague” and he may have misinterpreted some of the language used to refer to his professional history.

Until 2014, Clyne was still able to be a licensed foster parent in California. But that year, the California Department of Social Services took action that led to his being barred from ever applying for a foster care license again. The 2014 action prohibited Clyne from serving on a board of directors, as an officer or executive director of any state-licensed facility. He was also prohibited from applying to register with “TrustLine,” a database of in-home caregivers, nannies and babysitters who have cleared criminal background checks in California.

The Medical Board of California has been formally notified of concerns about Clyne since at least 2011, when Santa Clara County officials sent the board a letter informing officials he had been dismissed. The board, which has the authority to suspend a doctor’s license after an arrest or if it determines there is an immediate threat to a patient’s safety, has taken no disciplinary action against Clyne.

In recent years, Clyne has quietly taken up a private practice in the tiny community of Freedom. Located in a humble strip-mall-style medical plaza on Green Valley Road, his Pediatric Medical Group of Watsonville serves mostly Spanish-speaking families who receive public health benefits. The complaint made against Clyne in May involved a patient of that clinic, police said.

“At this point I can tell you that there is an active investigation involving us and the state Medical Board, but I can’t tell you much further because it’s an ongoing investigation,” said Watsonville police Sgt. Radovan Radich.

Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith, who terminated Clyne’s contract with the county in 2011 and whose office contacted the state medical board, said he was disturbed to learn that there is a new allegation against him.

“All along I was expecting a vigorous discipline from the medical board,” Smith said. “Obviously, they do their own investigation, and it’s confidential. But it surprised me nothing more was done and that he was still practicing in the region.”

Clyne said he was not aware of the most recent complaint against him until contacted by The Chronicle, and could not respond to information he does not have.

“I believe you when you say this is going on, it just surprises me that no one has come to me or paid me a visit,” Clyne said. With regard to the medical board, he added: “My license is fine because I’m not guilty of anything, and if the medical board is investigating me, I expect I will hear from them.”

Learning of the new allegation against Clyne brings up bitter memories for those who accused him in the past but were left frustrated by the outcome.

Two of Clyne’s former foster children who testified before the criminal grand jury left his home angry and deeply wounded.

Clyne took Max in as a foster child in 1995 just before his 10th birthday. The boy lived with him at his San Jose home until he ran away at age 13. When he was 16, Max told investigators about five to 10 times that he could recall Clyne touching his penis during his elementary school years. According to police, Max said Clyne sometimes gave him sleeping pills, though he wasn’t sure whether he did so to take advantage of him. He also said the two played a game when he was 12 years old to see who could drink the most gin and tonic.

Max struggled through repeated interviews with police. “He couldn’t understand why Pat would do this,” one report states, and asked an officer if he thought “Pat needed help.”

Clyne denied all Max’s allegations in a recent interview. “Of course I would never use a medication to knock a kid out, and of course I’d never give a kid alcohol,” he said. “I didn’t touch his penis. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Records show that Clyne denied in interviews with police that he spoke with Max during their 2001-02 investigation. But phone logs and reports of recorded calls show him speaking with Max repeatedly during the investigation. In one conversation he warned Max “this whole thing could be devastating to his career,” police records show.

“They can’t make you say something that didn’t happen,” he told Max.

“I know, but it did, yeah, it did happen though, but I don’t know what for,” Max responded.

In his recent interview, Clyne also insisted that he never spoke to police at length about the 2001 or the 2011 allegations, despite a San Jose Police Department report and a 66-page transcript of an interview he did with a detective, dated Jan. 2, 2002. He suggested the reports could have been fabricated.

“This is really scaring me,” Clyne said. “If all this is going on with fake documents, then I’m being set up. My memory is not that bad.”

San Jose Police Department spokeswoman Gina Tepoorten confirmed the documents were authentic.

After he left Clyne’s house, Max eventually returned to the care of his mother. Batorski had recovered from a mental health crisis that earlier had separated the two and had regained custody of the boy.

She said she had appreciated Clyne’s generosity at first; he allowed her frequent visits with Max and she felt welcome in his home. “Pat befriended me, I trusted him, so I can see how he’s still using that,” she said. “When a doctor in a wheelchair approaches you, you don’t think those kinds of things. You think, what a heroic person, giving back and helping children.”

But when Max returned to her home as a young teen, Batorski said, she saw the impact of his time in Clyne’s home. He had struggled in school and had been arrested. By age 17, Batorski said, it seemed her son was starting to get his life together — he had a car, a job and an amateur boxing license he kept tucked into a Bible highlighted with favorite passages. But he had also gotten involved in crime, and was shot and killed at age 17.

Kyle was another foster child of Clyne’s and became his adoptive son. He lived with the physician during the same period as Max, from 1995 through 1998, beginning when he was in fourth-grade. Kyle was 15 and had moved across the country when he reported to his mother and a juvenile probation officer that Clyne had molested him.

According to a report by a San Jose police investigator who flew to Pennsylvania to interview Kyle in 2001, he described 11 incidents beginning at age 9 in which Clyne would wake him and up and grope him. One molestation occurred on a trip to Disneyland, said Kyle, who describes the incidents as “nightmares.”

In his interviews at the time, Clyne denied the incidents and anything that “could have been misconstrued.” He repeated those assertions recently, and said both Max and Kyle had made up stories about him.

Kyle, now 33, is a foreman at a Northern California construction company. He said his life is on a better track than it once was, but that he remains agonized over his repeated attempts at obtaining some form of justice. As a young teen, he flew across the country to testify before a grand jury. Six years ago, he spoke up again when the second set of allegations against Clyne were made public.

Even after years in therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress, each time he’s asked to relive the experiences, he said, there has been a lengthy recovery time. He said it feels inconceivable that children are still being ushered into Clyne’s office.

“I just want him to stop hurting children — that’s it,” Kyle said. “I just don’t want him to have the chance to do that again. It just blows my mind how anybody can let this happen, and continue to let this happen.”

South Bay pediatrician faces new complaint of sex abuse from juvenile patient

[San Francisco Chronicle 4/17/19 by Karen de Sa]

Update 5:“The former chief pediatrician for Santa Clara County’s foster care system – a one-time foster and adoptive parent who has been accused of sexual abuse by more than a dozen children and teens since 2001 – is now facing his first civil lawsuit.

The suit filed in Santa Cruz County Superior Court against Dr. Patrick Clyne, 58, alleges the physician commited “multiple acts of ongoing child sexual abuse” against a boy named Kyle beginning when he was 8 years old. Kyle, who is not fully named due to his allegations of sexual assault, claims unspecified damages as a result of abuse in Clyne’s South Bay home.

The suit is being brought after a recent legal reform upended statute-of-limitation issues that have protected Clyne from many of his accusers. It is a significant turn in a two-decade legal saga that has seen multiple failed criminal investigations of Clyne.

“The one thing I know about truth is it always comes to the surface, it’s just a matter of time,” East Bay resident Tonya Batorski said Friday, after being informed of the lawsuit. Batorski’s son Max lived with Clyne and Kyle as a young foster child, later telling police he too had been abused. “We’ve waited an awful long time for justice,” his mother said.

Neither Clyne nor his attorney, Robert Zimmerman, responded to requests for comment on the suit.

Now 34, Kyle was placed with Clyne, a single foster father, when he was in fourth grade. At the time, Clyne worked at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, treating abused and neglected children in the local county shelter and taking a succession of young boys into his home.

From 1995 to 1998, Kyle lived with Clyne, who eventually adopted him. But as a young teen, Kyle fled back to his mother, telling her and a juvenile probation officer that Clyne had repeatedly sexually abused him at the doctor’s South Bay home.

Kyle testified about the abuse before a criminal grand jury in 2002, but Santa Clara County grand jurors did not return an indictment, despite recommendations by local police that charges be filed.

The March 27 civil filing is the latest in decades of accusations against Clyne, following two criminal investigations by the San Jose Police Department and Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, in 2001 and 2011, and a third joint investigation last year by the Watsonville Police Department and the Medical Board of California. None of the investigations have led to an arrest, but Santa Clara County fired Clyne in 2011.

In repeated interviews since 2011, Clyne has said that the allegations made against him in 2001 by the foster children in his home were lies. The multiple patients who have reported him, he has said, must have misinterpreted his examinations because of their distrust of ad

ults, and histories of abuse.

In recent years, Clyne has been working in the small immigrant community of Freedom, south of Santa Cruz. His pediatric office, located in a nondescript medical plaza on Green Valley Road, serves mostly Spanish-speaking families who receive public health benefits.

Last year, a new allegation arose from that clinic, a case cited in the March lawsuit. “Dr. Clyne was accused by a child patient of sexually inappropriate conduct once again,” the court filing states.

The case was being investigated last year by local police, but did not result in arrest, and Clyne continued to practice. He said in an interview last year that he was unaware of the allegation.

Kyle first told his story to The Mercury News in 2013, two years after the newspaper began exposing the accusations against Clyne. Under California law, adults with years-old childhood sexual abuse claims were unable to file in civil courts due to the statute of limitations. But that changed last year, when the state broadened the timeline, following the prosecution of USC campus gynecologist George Tyndall, who was found to have abused hundreds of former patients.

On at least 10 occasions, Kyle’s suit alleges, Clyne “sexually fondled” and “orally copulated” the boy in his care. And because Kyle was adopted, the suit also alleges incest.

The suit against Clyne gives few details about specific damages being sought. But it says Kyle has suffered from “post-traumatic stress disorder, significant shame and guilt, low self-esteem, lack of self-worth, lack of trust, anxiety, depression, lack of intimacy in close relationships, nightmares, and hyper-vigilance.”

The lawsuit also describes Clyne’s statements to The Mercury News in its Dec. 14, 2013, article as “false and defamatory.” In that article, Clyne is quoted saying: “I never have touched any child inappropriately in the office or ever.””

He Beat Criminal Child Abuse Probes But Former San Jose Foster Care Doc Faces New Legal Jeopardy

[Mercury News 6/7/2020 by Karen de Sá ]