Doctor who made 'secret bathroom pornography' believed staff were easier prey than patients

A Toronto-area doctor who received a 14-month suspension in June for secretly video-recording female employees as they used the washroom targeted his staff because he knew he would face more serious consequences if he recorded patients. Dr. Fady Rizk Masoud Ghaly, a 45-year-old family physician who has been practising since 2015, also blamed his actions on his excessive use—to the point that it interfered with his work—of pornography, which he said he viewed four days a week for two to three hours per day, according to a June 23 decision document from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. In addition to the suspension, the college ordered Dr. Ghaly to pay costs of $15,555. One member of the discipline panel disagreed with the decision to suspend, stating in her dissenting opinion that Dr. Ghaly should not remain in the medical profession because his actions were repeated over several months, until he was arrested and forced to stop making his female employees the “unwitting stars of his secret bathroom pornography.” Read: Edmonton medical clinic employee fined after admitting to health data breaches In November 2017, a female employee in Dr. Ghaly’s clinic in Mississauga, Ont., discovered a cell phone hidden on a shelf beside the toilet and realized it was video recording. She showed the phone to another female employee, who identified it as belonging to Dr. Ghaly and who revealed he had recorded another female staffer six months earlier. The two women looked through the cellphone and found videos of both of them, recorded on separate occasions, in states of partial nudity using the toilet. When Dr. Ghaly learned that the employees had uncovered his actions, he asked for their forgiveness and told them “this is the first time, I won’t do it again.” But he subsequently admitted, after one of the women contradicted this claim, that he had recorded other female employees in the staff washroom on several occasions. Dr. Ghaly’s wife went to the clinic the next day and told the two women there were no copies of the video and that Dr. Ghaly would be seeking help. One of the employees called the police but on the day his actions were discovered, Dr. Ghaly had gone to an Apple store to have the video recordings erased. Read: Psychiatric hospital fined $650,000 for failing to protect its workers in B.C. Police arrested Dr. Ghaly, who pleaded guilty in a subsequent criminal trial to the offence of mischief. He was given a six-month sentence in 2019, followed by probation of 18 months. Dr. Ghaly has committed to ongoing psychotherapy, with his therapist submitting regular reports to the college.

Doctor who made 'secret bathroom pornography' believed staff were easier prey than patients

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