Maria Moutsidis is used to being under a spotlight. Under her adopted stage name, Maria Mercedes, she has followed a long, glorious trajectory in musical theatre, starting out from a TV talent contest in the early 1970s, when she was still a teenager. But now she made news as one of the key players in a harrowing story, revealing a dark secret that has been tormenting her for decades.
Speaking to the Age, Maria talked about her repeated sexual abuse in the hands of a Hawthorn-based Greek doctor, very respected and popular among Greeks (despite being named in the Age report, Neos Kosmos withholds his details for legal reasons, as there have been no charges pressed yet). Two more women stood by Maria’s side, reporting similar – or worse – experiences of inappropriate behaviour, touching, harassment, verging to sexual assault.
The 75-year-old doctor, who is now retired, claims that he has no recollection of the women who say that were his patients. His lawyer claims that the doctor suffers from “significant cognitive impairment”, which prevents him from remembering patients, but is insisting on his innocence.
Since the paper came out on Sunday, ten more women have reportedly also come forward, joining their voices with the original three accusers.
“There are so many other women, who are in my position and are too afraid of the consequences,” Maria Moutsidis tells Neos Kosmos. “They are afraid of what may happen, who’s going to believe them,” she adds. This is the fear that she had experienced herself, when she first went to her parents and told them what had been happening in the examining room.
At the time, Maria had not yet turned 21 and was in a very vulnerable situation. “On top of being a first generation Greek-Australian, trying to find my place in society, I was also finding it difficult to cope with the entertainment industry. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” she remembers.
“I had been to three doctors prior to him, they all said I had to slow down, but no-one was offering any solutions. Then, my cousin who was a receptionist at his practice suggested him; my parents and sister had started seeing him, as did a lot of our relatives. So did I, and he did help me greatly; he put me on vitamins, he helped me get over the situation that I had been in, but very soon after, the line was crossed.”
The examination would always take place behind locked doors and “for whatever medical reason I came to see him, sore throat, anxiety, abdominal pain, he would ask me to fully undress. Always,” she remembers. “He would also conduct these so-called exercises, where he would get you to bend backwards and forwards and he would stand behind you, push himself against you, you could feel exactly what was going on,” she says.
The worst part was his insistence on conducting ‘internal examinations’: “He would insert his fingers and start feeling around there and pressing my stomach and spending a lot more time than he should have,” she says.
“One day, he went too far, so I left and never went back,” she says.
“When I told my parents, my father was furious, but they didn’t know what to do, they felt powerless because he was very well-known and respected,” she explains.
Maria Moutsidis knows what everyone who hears about this, wants to ask. “If you were treated like this, why did you go back?
“I was manipulated into believing that he was the only one who could take care of me and my health,” she explains, describing a relationship based on power and a dominant culture that led her to believe that she was responsible for what was happening. “These people exploit their position of power and they totally manipulate your emotions and your feelings; you think that you can’t go anywhere else. That’s how a lot of these people operate,” she says. “Everytime I was sick I was filled with dread because I had no options.”
What is particularly strange is how this behaviour could have been going on for decades and still not be reported.
“How can he operate for 50 years and no one really know what’s going on? Certainly someone within the Greek community must have heard about his behaviour, someone must have known,” she says.
Maria Moutsidis found the strength to face this haunting experience that had been torturing her, with the emergence of the #metoo movement, bringing forward various cases of sexual harassment in show business.
“I did a post on Facebook saying that this is so right, but it is not only happening in our industry, but also in other areas within our community,” she remembers.
Finding the courage she had lacked for decades, she went on to publicly write her experience and expose her abuser – later removing the doctor’s name, fearing that she may face defamation charges. A friend who read the post, contacted her and introduced her to her sister, Sandra Rokebrand, who had a similar experience and had even filed a complaint to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), to no avail. “They are there to protect the public,” says Maria Moutsidis, “and they don’t do that.”
She went on to file a complaint herself, only to receive an answer when the agency was contacted by the Age, as part of their investigation.
“If If they had done their job and intercepted earlier and brought him to the tribunal a lot earlier, then he would be stopped a lot earlier,” she says bitterly.