Back to PSURG Home Page
| Virgin-making doctor heads for Virgin Islands | |
By GLORIA GALLOWAY Tuesday, March 16, 2004 - Page A2 |
|
TORONTO -- Canada's most prominent genital enhancement doctor plans to create virgins in the Virgins.
Robert Stubbs says he has been forced to travel to the British Virgin Islands to restore the hymens of patients who are non-residents of Canada because the Canadian Medical Protective Association no longer insures malpractice claims for problems with surgery performed in Canada.
The association, which defends 95 per cent of the country's medical practitioners against such lawsuits and pays any compensation awarded, introduced the new policy on Jan. 1 as a way of avoiding the kind of multimillion-dollar malpractice awards that have become common in the United States. But the change also made it impossible for Dr. Stubbs to treat women from places such as South Asia and the Middle East who went to him for the operation, which is generally performed to convince grooms and their families that the women are still virgins.
"I have had e-mails from girls around the world from Christmas on and I knew I couldn't do anything for them until I got this insurance problem sorted out," Dr. Stubbs said of the new insurance policy that has created "absolute chaos" in his office. "I never thought my own country would exclude me from being an internationally acclaimed doctor."
Dr. Stubbs is recognized around the world as the foremost expert in hymen restoration, which involves cutting away the scarred edge of the membrane broken during intercourse and narrowing the entrance of the vagina, then putting the pieces back together.
Fortunately for Dr. Stubbs -- and his foreign patients -- he trained in Britain and previously obtained registration to practise in the British Virgin Islands, where he can get private insurance. He also has a willing partner in Dr. Robin Tattersall, an Olympic yachtsman who operated on the Caribbean island for nearly 40 years and performs plastic and reconstructive surgery at a small private hospital called the Bougainvillea Clinic.
The fact that he will be restoring virginities in a place called the Virgins is just a happy coincidence, said Dr. Stubbs. "Sometimes in life that happens."
He plans to travel to the islands during the first week of April to perform two test operations, forgoing his own fees, to determine how smoothly the out-of-country operation works. The one-hour procedure is eventually expected to cost about $2,500 plus the price of the trip, and Dr. Stubbs plans next winter to perform several hymen restorations in the same week "and have sort of a working holiday."
He hopes one of the first patients will be a 25-year-old woman who e-mailed him from England to say she was raped three years ago.
"I really wanted to wait for the right time, to be married. This is very important to me," she wrote. "I now feel like it will not be special and I want it to be as if my first time, so I can put the past behind me. This is very important as I feel very depressed by it."
Most of the women who want to have a hymen repaired are in their mid-20s, with university degrees whose "families are expecting certain things from them that society has told them are not necessary. These are young girls caught in a culture clash," Dr. Stubbs said. "They have no option; they are caught."
Some become victims of honour killings when their husbands discover they're not virgins.
One past patient from Syria believed she had married a man in the United States but it turned out that the religious ceremony was not legally recognized.
"He had his way with her for two weeks, then he said get lost," Dr. Stubbs said. "She came back here and was going to commit suicide. She has lost her virginity; her family would kill her. She was basically on her way to the Bloor Street viaduct."
She appealed to Dr. Stubbs who, after consulting her psychiatrist, restored her virginity. Had that happened this year, he might have had to turn her away. Instead he'll be taking patients to the Virgin Islands.
"It may cost me something to go down there, but at least I can offer my foreign patients something," Dr. Stubbs said. "At least the door hasn't been closed on me."