State Revokes Cleveland Clinic Doctor's Medical License After Decade of 'Inappropriate Touching'

Cleveland Clinic’s Fairview Hospital, where Joseph Abdelmalak was accused of groping a patient in 2012. Credit: Cleveland Clinic

After a nearly two year investigation, the Ohio State Medical Board in August revoked the license of a Cleveland Clinic doctor who the board found inappropriately touched at least seven female patients dating back to 2012.

Joseph Abdelmalak, a specialist in pain medicine and anesthesiology who’s been practicing in the U.S. for the past two decades, had his license revoked by the Board after years of testimony, hearings and police involvement.

“The safety of our patients is our top priority. We take these matters seriously, and when we became aware of these complaints, we immediately referred them to law enforcement to investigate,” the Clinic said in a statement provided to Scene. “The physician has been retired since early 2023. “

A 127-page report released on August 14 details Abdelmalak’s alleged behavior with seven patients, those who shared a variety of complaints to the Board: that Abdelmalak touched their vaingal areas, groped their breasts, or made off-hand remarks before they nearly ran out of the examining room.

Throughout hours of testimony by each of the seven patients, Abdelmalak’s expertise in pelvic pain was juxtaposed against the insistence from women that the doctor manipulated such expertise to touch their private parts, even without gloves. Abdelmalak, in turn, argued that each step was either routine or that the allegations were materially false, made by patients who were retaliating against him in some shape or form.

Born and raised in Egypt, Abdelmalak began his career practicing as a urologist specializing in female pelvic pain, which he framed as a sort of empathetic gesture in a country lacking good care. He even treated his own mother, who died of kidney failure at 47.

“I see a lot of females coming to my practice complaining of incontinence, burning syndrome,” Abdelmalak wrote during that time. “We don’t have anything to offer.”

In 2000, Abdelmalak moved with his family to Cleveland, where he began a fellowship. His goal, the report reads, was to bring expert urology care back to his home country of Egypt. It culminated in 2014, when Abdelmalak created Cleveland Clinic’s first Pelvic Pain Center.

It was around this time, in 2012, when, according to Board records, Abdelmalak received his first patient complaint. A 33-year-old woman with bad back problems visited him at Fairview Hospital. Abdelmalak eventually gives her three epidural block injections, usually given to birthing women.

After surgery, Abdelmalak’s professionalism changed. He ordered the 33-year-old to remove her gown as to examine her pain receptors. Her gown over her waist, Abdelmalak “stepped forward again to the right side of me,” she told an examiner for the Board, “and he reached down, and touched my right labia, my pubic area, and my left labia.”

When asked if she had ever been touched in such a way during a medical examination, the 33-year-old balked. “I felt his—his demeanor changed,” she said. “It felt like he had an excited energy. He seemed giddy. It didn’t feel medical.”

The 33-year-old immediately told her husband, and then reported Abdelmalak to Cleveland Clinic’s ombudsman’s office.

Abdelmalak wrote off the event as routine. “He does 25 of these procedures a day, and therefore these exams are done quite quickly,” the investigator relayed, according to the report.

“Physician reported that his exam was not inappropriate,” it added. “It must be done and he apologizes that there was miscommunication.”

A similar kind of track record colors the remaining six patients who confronted Abdelamalak. One patient had her breasts groped underneath her bra, which Abdelmalak told investigators was an examination “of the costochondrial junction.” Another patient’s groping was written off, the doctor argued, as retaliation: she was “mad” after Abdelmalak denied her fibromyalgia drugs.

But several patients described what seems to be an overall sense of disappointment in a professional in which they sought both answers and relief from suffering.

One patient, a 41-year-old woman from Milwaukee, even relocated to Detroit to be closer to Abdelmalak’s satellite office. Abdelmalak had diagnosed her with pudendal neuralgia—something few doctors in Michigan apparently deal with — n —which had meant framing Abdelmalak as a kind of lifesaver.

A faith which upended itself in 2016. After one visit that year, the 41-year-old said Abdelmalak put her feet into a butterfly position, pulled her pants down and touched her clitoris and labia without gloves on.

“What was going through your head at this point?” a hearing examiner asked her in 2023.

“Screaming—like, what is going on right now? How is this—what is happening? Like what’s going on? Just like chaos, screaming, pretty much a circle,” the 41-year-old testified. “A circle loop of what is going on? How is this happening? I cannot believe this is happening. I need to run out of here. How do I get out of this room?”

Abdelmalak did not respond to a request for comment.

The State Medical Board is seeking to rid Abdelmalak of his chance to do medicine anywhere in Ohio. They’re also intending to fine him anywhere from $6,000 to $20,000 as repayment for psychological damages and violation of medical policy.

And an obvious breach of trust.

“These complaints have been made for many years against Dr. Abdelmalak, and as they were investigated, people all along the way gave him the benefit of the doubt because he is a physician,” the Board wrote.

“None of the patient witnesses have sued him, and none appeared to have anything to gain from their testimony,” it added, “except for the closure that comes from speaking their truth.”