Last year, 58-year-old gynecologist Barry King thought it might be “funny” to dye a patient’s vagina purple. Yes, you read that correctly. And thanks to his pleading guilty “to a misdemeanor count of harassment as part of a deferred judgment and sentence in connection with the incident…Under the deferred judgment and sentence negotiated by Mesa County prosecutor Sally Colloton and Denver-based defense attorney Kelly Page, King’s conviction will be dismissed if he doesn’t get into trouble in the next two years.”1
“The woman is a breast cancer survivor who had had a double mastectomy and had just found a vaginal lesion; worried that her cancer was back and then between doctors, she asked King if he would give her an exam.
King said yes, and at the end of the exam, told the victim to ask her husband to look at her vagina when she went home. Later that day, she noticed purple dye on her toilet paper after going to the bathroom. The next day, she went to work and describes King as acting “really giddy” and “odd.”2
The breast cancer survivor told Mesa County Judge Michael Grattan that King had told her it was “…a joke for (my husband).”2 And as if that wasn’t bad enough, King also told the woman’s co-workers about it. However, she now believes that King was really hoping she would “have sex with her husband while she still had purple dye in her genital areas. ‘I was sexually objectified as a prank on my husband in hopes that his penis would be stained purple,'”1 she told the judge.
While she was rightfully angry and embarrassed she didn’t report him because she didn’t want to ruin his life. She eventually confided in a friend who told her “he had a duty to report the incident.”1 Then the police got involved.
Although it was first investigated as a sexual assault, prosecutors told the woman that they “didn’t think they could prove sexual intent.”1
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This behavior by a physician is totally unacceptable and disgusting. And honestly, he should have gotten into much more trouble than he did. However, because he didn’t use his penis to harass her, his behavior was deemed a misdemeanor.
Besides doing 100 hours of public service, King is supposed to apologize to his victim, something he has yet to do. (For the little he’s been required to do, he should have at least apologized.)
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King is currently practicing on a military base in Louisiana. We will update you if any more information becomes available.
