Former local doctor in trouble

A former Shelbyville physician is facing charges of rape and sodomy in Alabama.

Dr. Michael Roy Sharpe was fired from three Tennessee hospitals -- twice when he was accused of sexual misconduct -- but was allowed to set up a pediatrics practice in Alabama, where he is now accused of having sex with a 15-year-old patient. The third Tennessee hospital that supposedly dismissed him was Bedford County General Hospital (now known as Heritage Medical Center).

The doctor was fired from the hospital in Shelbyville after a woman complained that he hit her son during an emergency room visit. However, there was evidence the teenage boy was extremely drunk and provoked Sharpe.

Slapping alleged

According to the longtime head of Alabama's medical licensing agency, State Sen. Larry Dixon, the incident at Bedford County General Hospital took place on Dec. 20, 1994. Sharpe was dealing with an intoxicated teenager in the emergency room.

"He slapped him once to get his attention," Dixon read from the report.

Dixon told the Times-Gazette he had concerns with how The Associated Press handled this story. He said the initial news report made it seem as though doctors were being allowed to get licenses in other states after having been reported for abuses.

"There's no attempt to let bad doctors go from state to state," he said.

Incidents reported

Dixon also said the report implied that none of the incidents had been reported to state medical boards. In the original AP story, it stated: "A review by The Associated Press found that Sharpe surrendered his medical license in Alabama rather than face professional sanctions, and the firings in Tennessee may never have been reported to regulators there."

"If the hospitals never reported it to the Tennessee board, then they wouldn't know about it either," he said. "They did."

Alabama medical licensing officials said the firings for alleged sexual misconduct in Tennessee did not turn up in a search of a federal databank on physicians, possibly because the hospitals didn't report them.

Tennessee health officials said confidentiality rules bar them from saying whether regulators there ever heard about the sexual misconduct allegations against Sharpe.

Clean record

Despite his arrest and red flags dating back to the early 1990s, Sharpe's professional record is clean.

Shelley Walker, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Health, said state licensing officials have never disciplined Sharpe but wouldn't elaborate because of the confidentiality rules.

When he voluntarily surrendered his medical license in Alabama after his arrest in February, the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners ended their investigation and left his record clean.

Dixon said it was clear Sharpe was in trouble when he quit, even if the details weren't public.

"We said he surrendered his license while under investigation, and every medical board in the country knows what that means," Dixon said.

A graduate of the University of Alabama medical school, Sharpe was first licensed in Alabama in 1974. He was also licensed in Connecticut, Georgia and Illinois as well as Tennessee.

Fired twice

Court testimony showed Sharpe was fired from a hospital emergency room in Lebanon in 1992 after a woman complained he touched her inappropriately, and a hospital in Lawrenceburg fired him in 1994 after a woman claimed he fondled her.

Sharpe, of Albertville, is fighting state rape and sodomy charges involving the girl in Marshall County, Ala. He pleaded not guilty last week to federal child pornography charges involving the same teen. U.S. Magistrate Judge Harwell G. Davis III said Sharpe was a danger to the public and ordered him held without bail.

"He is confident that he will be exonerated," said defense lawyer Robert Tuten.

An FBI agent at a federal court hearing testified Sharpe and the girl had sex three times. She sent him nude photographs of herself by cell phone that he deleted only when police asked to see them, according to an order by Davis.

Following Sharpe's arrest, five more young people came forward with allegations of misconduct, according to court testimony. Two teenage girls claimed Sharpe made inappropriate comments, and a 16-year-old girl claimed she was forced to disrobe and dance for him during an exam.

The consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen ranks states on how often they discipline physicians, and Alabama and Tennessee both ranked in the bottom third nationally over the past three years.