Behind the Hype

REGARDLESS OF HOW the sordid saga of Dr. Arif Hussain resolves itself, the formerly Harvard-affiliated anaesthesiologist will probably never escape the label "RAPE DOC" which has so often this year decorated the pages of the Herald American in 60 point type. Hussain has made sensational copy throughout New England and the nation: the snappily dressed young intern, attractive wife and infant son in low, cheerfully denies guilt in three separate rape cases, while his flamboyant defense attorney challenges characters and motives of alleged victims.

Hussain's acquittal last week on two charges stemming from incidents in 1978 at Waltham Hospital stirred the expected furor. Some observers began questioning whether the doctor had been unfairly treated all along by muckraking journalists. Others raised new doubts when the 12 juniors were informed for the first time that Hussain was convicted last year along with two colleagues of gang-raping a nurse in a Rockport beach house in September 1980. Jury foreman Glenn C. Wright said after the verdict was announced that he would have changed his mind if Judge Andrew G. Meyer '45 had permitted the prosecution to question Hussain about the previous conviction.

More excitement is in store when the appeal of Hussain's first conviction comes up later this year. "RAPE DOC Part III" will hit the newsstands when a ruling is handed down on the defense argument that confusion over technicalities in the initial trial interfered with the delivery of justice. Just this past Sunday, the garrulous doctor got a jump on the action with an appearance on a WBCN call-in show, casually trading quips with listeners about life under the celebrity spot-light.

IT'S POINTLESS to preach that fans of this real-life soap opera should find something better to do with their time. Did the two former Waltham patients decide to press fabricated charges years after hazily remembered run-ins with Hussain only because the learned that he had been convicted of the gang-rape? Was the drunken affair in Rockport a matter among consenting adults, as Hussain and this co-defendants claim, or was it a violent and horrible crime? The latter verdict was "guilty," but members of that jury have since said they had never understood the formal charges and only punished the three doctors for doing something which seemed wrong. "RAPE DOC BACK ON THE STAND"--the daytime television scriptwriters only dream about plots like this one.

But behind the spectacle of lurid testimony and legal gymnastics several disturbing issues have arisen which have since been eclipsed by the dicier reports of courtroom confrontation. The current lull in the action affords an opportunity for review:

* Hussain, then a resident at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital, was convicted last year with Drs. Alan Lefkowitz and Eugene Sherry of cooperating in the repeated rape of a woman they met a mutual friend's party. Superior Court Judge Walter Steele had the option of handing down prison sentences in excess of 20 years because each man was held responsible for all three attacks. The average penalty for the crime in Massachusetts is an 11-year term. The defendants received suspended sentences under which they would have to spend six months in jail. "Another case where the punishment fit the criminal, not the crime," said a spokesman for a local rape-treatment center after the trial ended.

* Following that initial conviction, three other Harvard-affiliated doctors wrote flattering letters of recommendation for Hussain, with which he landed a new position at Buffalo Children's Hospital. The Buffalo facility apparently had not heard about the highly publicized trial, and Hussain's three patrons all somehow forgot to mention his recent legal entanglement. For their negligence, the letterwriters were reprimanded by but not expelled from the Massachusetts Medical Society.

* Harvard Medical School reflected concern in the medical community over this increasingly embarrassing situation and issued a report warning all faculty members to give the full story in future letters of recommendation. But not until the second batch of charges were brought against Hussain last September and the case had received nationwide attention did Brigham and Women's bother to fire him and fellow employee Eugene Sherry.

* Sitting back and watching these episodes unfold, the state Medical Registration Board never acted on the cases of the letterwriters. It appears that they will be allowed to retain their licenses. Despite his conviction. Hussain also still has his license. Middlesex County Judge Joseph Mitchell stayed a registration board hearing on Hussain until after the outcome of the recently concluded trial.

Why does the state have to wait to see if a man is convicted of rape for a second time before suspending his medical license? Likewise, why does one of Harvard's hospitals have to wait until an employee receives national attention for his rape conviction to formally fire him? Why doesn't committing the implicit lie of not mentioning a rape conviction in a letter of recommendation sent to a children's hospital warrant an immediate expulsion from the state doctors' society?

The answer was suggested by the unabashed private complaints voiced by some area doctors that perfectly good practitioners may be denied the right to work because of all this bad publicity. The Hussain case has clearly demonstrated that our courts and government agencies have special standards for professionals such as doctors. Men implicated in various misdeeds have not received the punishments they deserve. Some serious introspection has occurred, as at the Med School, but it seems that little more is planned, though more is certainly in order.

We bestow on the medical community a special prestige, and with that goes a public trust--in certain types of behavior and self-regulation. That trust was violated several times during the Hussain affair and related events. Guilt or innocence in specific cases is fun stuff for trial watchers, but the issue of professional responsibility will remain after the visage of Arif Hussain has faded from the front pages.