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Agency: Geneva doctor's license suspended for having sex with patients

A Geneva doctor's medical license has been suspended because he was having sexual relations with patients and inappropriately prescribing controlled substances, according to the agency that oversees professional licenses in the state.

Mark G. Lewis M.D. of St. Charles had his license suspended by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, effective June 26, for “sexually inappropriate conduct with multiple patients of his practice as well as inappropriate prescribing of controlled substances to numerous individuals,” according to the agency's website.

Lewis, a physician at American Family Doctor, also was the subject of a lawsuit recently settled that accused him of sexually abusing and raping a woman he knew in November 2012 while she slept, according to the suit filed in Kane County.

Lewis has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

In the lawsuit, the woman says Lewis attacked her Nov. 16, 2012, when she was sleeping at the home of a person Lewis also knew.

The suit states the woman went to bed and was awakened at 4 a.m. by Lewis, who was lying shirtless in a bed next to her.

Lewis told the woman she had urinated on herself in her sleep, and he took off her clothes to wash them, according to the lawsuit.

But the woman, whom the Daily Herald is not identifying because she is the victim of an alleged sexual assault, had injuries indicating she was raped and reported the matter to St. Charles police, according to the lawsuit and her attorney, Jeffrey Deutchman, who spoke to the Daily Herald in August 2013 when the lawsuit was filed.

“She was bleeding, and she was out of sorts. She went immediately to the police and to the hospital,” Deutchman said, adding swabs taken from the woman tested positive for the presence of semen. “Grown adult women do not urinate on themselves. There's a lot of sick people out there. There's no excuse for this behavior. It's criminal. It caused emotional and psychological damage to a young girl.”

In the lawsuit, the woman argues Lewis violated the Gender Violence Act and “engaged in unwanted and inappropriate sexual contact with plaintiff as the result of the physical intrusion or invasion of a sexual nature amounting to assault and battery. The aforesaid sexual touching was not part of any standard physician evaluation, examination, diagnosis, or treatment and was while plaintiff was sleeping.”

That lawsuit was settled out of court on April 22 of this year.

According to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Lewis received his physician's license in January 1987 and has no reported malpractice judgments or settlements against him, along with no felony or misdemeanor convictions in the last five years, which is how far back the department records indicate on their website.

Lewis also has had no disciplinary action from the Department of Professional Responsibility since 1990, which is as far back as the department's website can search.

He has affiliations with Provena Mercy Center and Copley Memorial Hospital in Aurora and Delnor Community Hospital in Geneva, the site said.

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