Veteran Files Lawsuit After Repeated Sexual Abuse at VA That Now Gives Him Nightmares

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Another veteran said he was sexually abused by a physician’s assistant at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medical Center in Leavenworth, Kansas.

FOX 4 first exposed accusations against PA Mark Wisner in June, and since then several more veterans have come forward with similar stories of abuse.

Wednesday, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Army Staff Sergeant Russell Morris claims Wisner gave him unnecessary anal, testicular and genital exams during medication appointments.

FOX 4 reporter Shannon O’Brien met Morris at the office of his attorney Dan Curry.

“He had a military background so it’s about the trust issue that I was going to get better care from him than a civilian doctor because he’s been down range,” Morris explained.

Instead of better care by his brother-in-arms, Morris said he was sexually assaulted by Wisner after he began seeing the PA at the Leavenworth VA for a back injury and other ailments after he retired from the Army in 2013.

“Since we are talking about him I can see stuff that he has done in the back of my head as we are talking,” said Morris of the nightmares that still haunt him. “The nightmares that I get at night, I have him chasing me in the VA and I can’t get out. All the doors are locked. Even though I get around him, he is constantly chasing me.”

Morris said Wisner would withhold medication until after the unnecessary and inappropriate exams took place, saying he could not prescribe meds unless the exams were done. Often times, the exams were done by Wisner using his bare, un-gloved hand for his own sexual satisfaction, Morris said.

“I feel embarrassed a lot because I let it happen and I knew it was wrong,” said Morris through his tears. “I knew there was something when he did it and the way he did it, and I kept my mouth shut.”

Morris said he was slowly groomed by Wisner. Much of what he now believes was sexual assault is hindsight, not fully realized until Morris received a questionaire from the VA.

Question #6 asks, “Did any staff member manipulate your genitals or perform any actions or procedures that exceeded what you believe to be within the scope of a reasonable exam?”

Suddenly, what Wisner had been doing and how Morris had been reacting, including alcohol abuse, anger outbursts and night terrors began to make perfect sense.

Morris holds the VA and Federal Government as accountable for what he says happened to him as he does Wisner, saying they knew, or should have known about Wisner.

On a 1992 application for a PA’s license from the State of Kansas, Wisner admits to having been convicted of a crime, but the VA never looked into it. If it had, administrators would have known that conviction was for a sex crime in California.

Morris’s lawsuit claims reports had been made to the VA about Wisner’s inappropriate behavior as far back as 2011, two years before Morris began seeing the PA.

In January of 2015, Wisner voluntarily surrendered his PA license. In the document,Wisner says he is “an impaired practitioner and not capable of patient care.”

The U.S. Government filed a request for dismissal, claiming that what Wisner is accused of, is outside of his job description. Friday, a Federal Judge denied that request.

Source: fox4kc.com fox4kc.com

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