‘All-around traumatic’
ob-gyn allege misconduct
Nicki speaks at the Review-Journal offices in Las Vegas on Jan. 25, 2023, about her experience with Dr. George Chambers, an obstetrician-gynecologist who she claims sexually assaulted her during an appointment. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__rae
February 10, 2023 - 9:01 am
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Dr. George Chambers, a Las Vegas obstetrician-gynecologist accused by a state medical licensing board of sexual misconduct, now faces additional complaints filed by former patients.
An investigative committee of the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners has filed a complaint against the doctor that alleges misconduct with three patients. Several more women have come forward, including one who claims she was sexually assaulted.
The former patients said they filed complaints in the hopes that what happened to them would happen to no one else.
“He’s molesting women. It’s all-around traumatic,” said a 23-year-old who was Chambers’ patient in her late teens. She spoke to the Las Vegas Review-Journal on the condition that her name not be used because of the sensitive nature of the allegations.
“He needs to be stopped, period,” she said.
Chambers has marketed himself as a board-certified ob-gyn who also specializes in cosmetic gynecological surgery and sexual health, touting positive online reviews and a “top doctor” award from VegasInc in 2021 and 2022. Until recently, he used the Instagram handle @vaginawhispererlasvegas to promote his practice.
The board’s complaint states that Chambers “repeatedly exploited his relationships with patients and violated patients’ trust by engaging in sexual improprieties that constitute sexual misconduct.”
He is accused of disruptive behavior; engaging in conduct intended to deceive; failure to maintain accurate medical records; engaging in conduct that violates the trust of a patient and exploits the relationship with the patient for financial or other personal gain; continual failure to practice medicine properly; and disreputable conduct.
In a formal statement to the Review-Journal, Chambers denied allegations that he engaged in “disruptive, deceitful or self-serving behavior” with the three patients referenced in the complaint.
In an email, he said patient privacy laws prevent him from more fully responding to the allegations.
“Due to HIPAA laws and the ongoing investigation, I am limited in what I can say,” wrote Chambers, who is 52. “My constitutional rights have been violated in a well-orchestrated manner. My name and reputation have been besmirched, but I am not allowed to reveal anything because of HIPAA.”
A motion filed by his attorneys to dismiss the complaint states that it paints “a lurid picture of (Chambers) as a sex fiend of some sort, preying on his patients for some twisted purpose of his own.” Irresponsible publication by the board of “salacious content” in a pending matter has “decimated” the doctor’s practice, the motion states.
‘I still feel disgusting and broken’
Patient A in the board’s complaint, who was then 36 and a married mother of four, was referred to Chambers in late 2020 by her regular ob-gyn for a torn perineum, a consequence of childbirth.
Photos taken during the exam of conduct described by a board-certified ob-gyn as medically unjustifiable are part of the complaint before the medical board, which first licensed Chambers in 2003. The complaint hides the identities of the women by referring to them as Patients A, B and C.
Patient A spoke with the newspaper on the condition that her identity be withheld.
“I seem very meek and very small, and way too embarrassed to tell anybody about what happened,” said the petite woman in a quavering voice, as she spoke of why she believes she might have been a target.
But tell she did. First, she went to Las Vegas police. Seven months later, a detective delivered what he described as “good news.” Because she had consented to an exam, what she experienced was not sexual assault, he said.
An officer overseeing her case told her that no matter how many women came forward, her case would never be reopened, according to Patient A.
“This was hugely traumatic,” she said.
Three patients have brought complaints against Chambers to the Metropolitan Police Department, according to police.
The department “conducted thorough investigations, but there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges,” according to a statement from police.
“If new allegations are brought to LVMPD’s attention, LVMPD will investigate,” the statement said.
In August 2021, Patient A filed a complaint with the state medical board.
According to the board’s complaint against the doctor, following the exam, Chambers used a slang expression to inform her that he had tried to insert his entire hand into her vagina.
Chambers asked the patient to keep her cellphone nearby so that he could take photos that she could text to him. One of the photos shows him inserting four of his fingers, the complaint states. There was no nurse or other staff member present during the exam, and the doctor kept the door open, she said.
The standard of care requires that a chaperone be present during a gynecological exam, said Dr. Charles Stoopac, a board-certified ob-gyn, in an affidavit obtained by an attorney for Patient A, who was considering filing a lawsuit.
It also requires an ob-gyn to perform an examination with the minimal amount of physical contact required to obtain data for diagnosis and treatment.
Chambers breached the standard of care by “by attempting to see how far he could insert his hand into (the patient’s) vagina,” said Stoopac, an assistant professor/health sciences clinical instructor at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
“There is no medically justifiable reason for such conduct by a physician,” Stoopac said in the affidavit.
In his response to the board’s complaint, Chambers denied the allegation.
The photo at issue was not among those he requested Patient A text to him and was not included in his medical records, according to the complaint.
Taking photos that were not for purposes of medical examination or treatment, as well as using a non-medical term, were humiliating and demeaning, according to the complaint. The exam also caused the patient physical pain, the complaint notes.
Patient A described the pain as excruciating.
“I still feel disgusting and broken,” she said.
‘Like a robot, I stood up’
It would be a year after Patient A filed a complaint with the medical board, and almost two years after the exam, before the board would file a complaint against the doctor. In the meantime, she took to writing online reviews of the doctor to warn other women, she said.
In a review on Yelp, she wrote, “To say Dr. Chambers was inappropriate with me would be a gross understatement.”
The review was seen by another former patient who then messaged her.
“I just wanted her to know that I believed her,” said the former patient, Angela. She spoke with the newspaper on the condition that only her first name be used. She is Patient B in the complaint filed by the board.
In an interview, Angela said an appointment with Chambers in October 2018, when she was 35, so troubled her that she dropped her doctor of seven years.
Up until then, she had what she considered a trusting professional relationship with him.
“He has a charming, friendly personality,” she said.
Angela said she was not put off when he asked detailed questions about her sex life or talked about his own.
She figured, “OK, he’s just an extra-friendly, chatty doctor,” she said.
She felt he cared about her as a patient, squeezing her into his schedule when a problem arose during the pregnancy of her younger son.
“I did feel heard,” said the married mother of three. “He really does make you feel like there’s genuine care and concern and he wants what’s best for you. That’s where the manipulation comes in.”
The rapport ended after she went to see Chambers for a second opinion on a breast lump. She was taken aback when he announced to medical students present that she had been gang raped as a teen — information she had shared with him in confidence.
After asking the students to leave the room, she said, Chambers asked her if she would consider posing nude for photos to promote his labiaplasty website, though she had not had cosmetic gynecological surgery or discussed it with him. He offered to pay her $1,000.
Chambers told her he could order stock photos “but that he wants women who have been through difficult things, he wants real women,” she recalled.
The doctor said that in light of her past trauma, the experience would be empowering for her. He showed her on his phone images of other women he had photographed.
Angela, who was naked under a paper gown, said, “I knew I had to leave, but I didn’t know how to leave.”
She tried to shut down the conversation by saying she had had laser hair removal.
Chambers asked her to stand up so he could take a look.
“Like a robot, I stood up,” she recalled.
Chambers said with a smile, “Perfect, even more perfect,” she said.
But as she walked to her car, she thought, “This is wrong, wrong, wrong in every sense of the word wrong.”
Chambers asked her to text him a response to his proposal. She texted him that his proposal was “highly unethical” and that she would be changing doctors.
According to text messages shown to the Review-Journal, he replied, “i respect ur decision. Sorry the request offended u but it is the only way I recruit models for my ads. … I hope and wish for u continued good health and best wishes.”
In his response to the medical board’s complaint, Chambers said the patient had asked about a flyer in the patient lavatory seeking models for a print advertisement that would run in a program from the 2019 Adult Video News awards.
Angela said the doctor’s apology in his text message supports her contention that this is untrue.
According to Chambers’ response to the complaint, the patient “was not required, expected, or coerced to model for the advertisement.”
Patient C, the third patient referenced in the medical board’s complaint, had told board investigators that Chambers said he would pay her $1,000 to serve as a nude model for inclusion in the doctor’s portfolio of work or for advertising purposes.
The patient, who was 27 at the time, thought it was odd that Chambers was “soliciting photographs of her vaginal area as representative of his work because he had never performed any cosmetic procedures on her genitals,” according to the complaint.
Chambers’ response states that the patient asked the doctor about a flyer in the lavatory. The Review-Journal has not interviewed Patient C and does not know her identity.
The formal statement from Chambers to the Review-Journal said he is certified in sexual health and is “uniquely qualified to attend to both the biological and psychological causes of sexual dysfunction in women. … Given the focus of Dr. Chambers’s practice, it is not unusual for intimate personal details to be requested or shared during a visit. Patients seek out or are referred to Dr. Chambers for issues which are usually uncomfortable, and often considered ‘taboo,’ to address.
“Dr. Chambers recognizes the emotional and physical pain many of his patients have endured and respects their sensitivities surrounding such personal concerns.”
‘I just buried it’
Angela filed a complaint with the medical board early last year. She also posted a review on Yelp that caught the eye of Nicki, another former patient.
Nicki, who was Chambers’ patient for more than 11 years, considered the doctor who delivered her son to be knowledgeable if not always appropriate in conversations.
“I thought his personality was kind of eccentric,” the 35-year-old said, speaking on the condition that only her nickname be used. “He was inappropriate in the way that you’d talk to your friends.”
During an appointment in August 2021, she disclosed to Chambers that she had been having difficulty achieving orgasm after childbirth, according to a report filed with Las Vegas police. They were the only two people in the office.
Chambers then said he would make her have an orgasm and inserted his fingers. He asked her if it felt good and similar questions, to which she responded “no,” according to the report.
After about a minute, he stopped, she said.
“I thought about running out of the office naked. I thought, is this some kind of medical procedure? You’re just trying to justify in your head what’s going on,” she said in an interview.
She didn’t tell her husband or her friends what she had experienced.
“I just buried it,” she said.
But she read online reviews, looking for clues that something like this might have happened to someone else.
After seeing Angela’s review and messaging her, Nicki told her husband and filed a complaint with the medical board last August. She said she has been told by a representative of the board, which does not comment on pending complaints, that her complaint remains under investigation.
In September, Angela accompanied Nicki to a police station to file a complaint. Nicki’s complaint was assigned to a detective, both women said.
Angela also attempted to file a report with police. A female officer, while sympathetic, said the conduct she described, though unethical, did not constitute a crime.
In an email, Chambers responded to a question about Nicki’s complaint by saying, “The question you asked, while salacious is not factual.
“An evaluation of a patient with anorgasmia includes the taking of a thorough medical/sexual/psychological/drug history, conducting a chaperoned pelvic examination, a discussion of the findings and plan of care, ordering of hormone panel and imaging studies if needed, followed by a follow-up appointment to review and discuss results and initiation of treatment if desired by the patient,” he wrote.
‘I’d punch him in the face’
During the time frame of the complaints, Chambers was facing problems of a personal and financial nature, documents show.
In November 2020, the doctor claimed he was a victim of domestic violence by his wife, according to a Las Vegas police report.
He told police the couple were going through a divorce. Divorce court records show an order for joint custody of their two children was filed in December 2021.
The domestic violence case against his wife was dismissed by prosecutors in May 2021, records show.
In 2021, Chambers filed for bankruptcy, saying he had between $501,000 and $1 million in assets, but owed between $1 million and $10 million in debts, court records show.
The filing said he made about $6,000 a month from his practice and another $1,000 a month from the Safe and Sound for Women clinic. It also asked that his 2016 Mercedes S550, which he bought for about $165,000, be protected from creditors. The case was dismissed in April 2022 after he failed to meet court deadlines.
The doctor’s professional problems are compounding. A motion filed by Chambers’ attorneys claiming he has been denied due process states that he has “had to defend his hospital medical staff membership and clinical privileges, has lost patient referrals and payor contracts, and had to give up his office space and close his outpatient practice.”
More former patients are filing complaints.
One woman, now 40, filed a report with the medical board in August about what she describes as the questionable manner in which Chambers conducted an exam during a visit more than 10 years ago.
Embarrassed at the time, she said she now feels guilty for not having filed a complaint immediately, speculating that the doctor’s conduct got worse over the years. If she had complained, she wonders, “Maybe it wouldn’t have gone this far.”
The 23-year-old former patient, who said Chambers needed to be stopped, filed a complaint with the medical board and tried to file a report with Las Vegas police, who she said did not take her complaint seriously because she had chosen to have surgery.
Other former patients she has connected with through online reviews have expressed to her mostly sadness about their experiences. But she now feels only rage.
The young woman told the Review-Journal she saw Chambers in late 2018 for a surgical procedure on her labia. She said he told her he would need to take photos of her genitals to prepare for making the incision. He took her to a back room and photographed her with what appeared to be a professional camera, she said.
“The positions he was asking me to get into didn’t seem normal,” she said.
She said he showed her photos of other women and also made comments about their personal lives that seemed inappropriate. After the surgery, he asked the receptionist if she would like to see his “masterpiece,” the former patient said. The receptionist declined.
The young woman said she remains concerned about where the photos of her, which she believes include her face, might end up.
If she were to see Chambers again, she said she would have no words: “I’d punch him in the face.”
A hearing before the medical board scheduled for this Wednesday and Thursday was postponed after Chambers’ attorneys withdrew from the case.
The former patients interviewed all said they want to see the medical board revoke Chambers’ license to practice medicine in the state.
Patient A said that anything less, such as requiring training in ethics or a license suspension, would not be enough.
“None of those other outcomes are going to be OK,” she said. “None of those other outcomes are going to protect women.”
Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Arthur Kane contributed to this report.
