Former ER worker arrested on rape charges in Alabama

Harriet Neiman believes that if justice had been served in Bedford County 15 years ago, certain children might not have been abused in Alabama last year.

Neiman is the mother of the teenage boy Dr. Michael Roy Sharpe allegedly slapped in the Bedford County Medical Center emergency room on Dec. 20, 1994.

Sharpe of Albertville, Ala., is fighting state rape and sodomy charges involving a girl in Marshall County, Ala. 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 head of Alabama's medical licensing agency, State Sen. Larry Dixon, is looking into reports of incidents involving Sharpe and quoted from a report that 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," said Dixon.

Neiman also went to the police after her son was slapped in the emergency room, but criminal charges were dropped when the grand jury returned a "no true bill."

"They said there wasn't enough evidence," said Neiman. "Who did they ask? They didn't ask me."

Neiman said she was there when the incident occurred and admits her son, then 17, was drunk. In fact, she said, he was drunk to the point of being unconscious and was being held on the gurney with restraints.

"The lady officer told me it was for his own safety," she said. There was no way, she added, that the boy could have said or done anything to provoke the doctor into slapping him.

But when she protested, and demanded her son be taken to another hospital, a second police officer arrived and arrested her, said Neiman. He released her when the first officer interceded, but did, in fact, arrest her other, older son, but those charges were eventually dropped, she said.

Neiman said when she contacted the head of the hospital, she was told that Sharpe was a "rent-a-doc," brought in from another hospital, and the Bedford County hospital was not liable.

Although she is still unhappy with the way the hospital and the justice system treated her and her family, she is more concerned about how they do -- or don't -- treat doctors accused of breaking the law.

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. And yet, despite his arrest and red flags dating back to the early 1990s, Sharpe's professional record is clean. After voluntarily surrendering his medical license in Alabama after his arrest in February, the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners ended their investigation and left his record clean.

"I'm not surprised they had no records," said Neiman. "They probably just got rid of him right away. If they had stopped that man, maybe he wouldn't have hurt those little girls."