Read Mortal Danger for Free Online

charges against him—to the point that Kate wasn’t aware of any of the details—she saw that he was very worried about this lawsuit.
    A former woman patient and her husband were suing John for medical malpractice, sexual battery, failure to obtain informed consent, assault and battery, fraud, and misrepresentation.
    John didn’t tell Kate what the charges were, and hewaved off her worries, saying the woman was lying. He explained that Mary Ann Lakhvir * was married to a wealthy man from a Middle Eastern culture who didn’t understand that in America women could be alone with their doctors without being shamed or ostracized. John said her husband misunderstood the close ties he formed with his patients and was so jealous that the poor woman was forced to tell lies about John to her husband.
    The Lakhvirs alleged in their affidavits that they’d sought treatment for serious systemic infections but Dr. Branden hadn’t known how to treat them, leading them to endure great physical and emotional pain and suffering when he’d administered mostly ineffective massage treatments and vitamins at the Bayview Medical Group in 1990. They asserted that John Branden was not a medical doctor and was not licensed to draw blood from them or give Mary Ann Lakhvir a pelvic examination.
    (The suit was the first step in ending the silent partnership John had with the naturopath, and he later brought in an osteopathic physician to sign insurance claims.) Kate believed that John did have a phlebotomy license and that it was legal for him to draw blood. He’d been very skilled as he’d deftly and almost painlessly slipped a needle into her arm.
    But even more troubling were the Lakhvirs’ sexual accusations: They maintained that John Branden had made sexual contact with Mary Ann when he’d given her a full-body massage while she was disrobed, and that he’d kissedher while she’d been naked. They asserted that he had then removed his clothes so she could “practice massage” on his nude body and become skilled enough to give her husband home massage treatments.
    Sexual battery, as defined in California statutes, means that a person must intentionally cause harmful or offensive contact with an intimate part of another person. Those parts were listed as “…sexual organ, anus, groin, or buttocks of any person, or the breast of a female.”
    The Lakhvirs stated that Tamara Branden was at fault, too, as she knew—or should have known—that her father was not licensed to massage, draw blood, perform vaginal exams, or prescribe medicine.
    He had also given them nutritional counseling—which he was adequately trained to do.
    The case dragged on until 1993, but Kate knew none of the specifics. She felt sorry for John, because even though he tried to reassure her, she knew he was worried—perhaps even frightened. He went to great lengths to avoid being served papers on the lawsuit. He seemed to be extremely concerned over the suit, which, as he explained to Kate, was over things too minor to even consider. In the end, he gave up his practice, turning it over to his daughter Tamara for a few cents on the dollar. He no longer went into his office at all.
    “He changed his appearance,” Kate recalled. “He grew a beard, and he let his hair grow so long that he was able to wear it in a ponytail.”
    Although he didn’t live in Florida, John asked Kate’s sister and brother-in-law in Sarasota, Florida, to resend all the mail he sent to them, so that it appeared that he was aFlorida resident. With that ruse and his disguise, he felt safe. John was gleeful when people who knew him well walked right by him without recognizing him. He looked nothing like the clean-shaven, well-coiffed doctor he had been.
    Of course eventually he had to face up to the accusations of an enraged husband who thought he’d been cuckolded. The case ended in April 1993, almost two years after the Lakhvirs’ complaint was filed. It was dismissed with prejudice,