State Speeds Up Bid to Shut Down Doctor’s Practice : Investigation: Dozens of women have filed complaints alleging that a Tustin gynecologist sexually molested them.

State officials, already seeking to revoke the medical license of gynecologist Ivan C. Namihas, sought to accelerate the process Tuesday by drafting a request to shut down his practice immediately, while police explored possible criminal action against him.

By midday Tuesday, more than 50 women--some choking back sobs--had called the California Medical Board claiming that Namihas had molested them sexually as far back as the late 1960s, said Kathleen Schmidt, a senior investigator for the board in Santa Ana.

Assuming all the women’s allegations prove true, “this is the worst case of its kind in the history of the state,” Schmidt said. “How he got away with it for so long, I don’t know.”

Janie Cordray, a board spokeswoman in Sacramento, said investigators were assembling evidence to bolster their bid “to shut him down.”

Barry Ladendorf, who supervises the attorney general’s Health Quality Enforcement Unit, said his deputy hopes to seek a temporary restraining order from an administrative law judge in San Diego by the end of the week. Such an order would prevent Namihas from seeing patients while both sides await the outcome of the license revocation proceedings.

That effort hinges on Schmidt, who said she was working at top speed Tuesday interviewing the alleged victims and preparing sworn declarations outlining their claims.

One of the women who complained to the medical board also filed a criminal complaint against Namihas with the Tustin Police Department. Investigators there said they plan to meet this week with Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan C. Sturla, head of the district attorney’s sexual assault unit, to determine whether criminal charges against Namihas are warranted.

Sturla said allegations such as those against Namihas are difficult to prosecute criminally because they do not meet the requirements of most sexual offenses. But someone who touched a woman sexually against her will could be prosecuted for misdemeanor sexual battery, Sturla said. It carries a maximum punishment of six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.

But sexual battery is also subject to a one-year statute of limitations, Sturla said, precluding prosecutions of incidents older than that.

It is easier to prove professional misconduct that would strip a doctor of his license--such as having sex with a patient, regardless of the woman’s consent--than it is to prove he committed a criminal offense, Ladendorf said.

Namihas and his lawyer did not return a reporter’s calls.

The doctor, who has been licensed to practice medicine for 30 years, was charged with gross negligence and sexual misconduct by the medical board in December based on the allegations of five women, describing incidents between 1968 and 1988.

Once those charges became public, however, they prompted an outpouring of similar allegations, Schmidt said, especially after a newspaper report on Sunday.

Roberta Ward, the first woman to file a complaint against Namihas with the medical board, said Tuesday that the flood of complaints from other women has made her feel “vindicated” after suffering a decade of pain. She contended that Namihas touched her sexually during an examination in 1981.

“I’m finally getting someone to do something,” said Ward, who lives in Santa Ana. “If something would have been done sooner, maybe 10 years of abuse (of other women) might not have happened.”

Both Schmidt and Ladendorf, however, said the board had little choice but to wait so long to pursue charges because it only recently assembled sufficient evidence.

“You can’t just go into court and say to a judge, ‘Hey, this woman says this, so you’d better suspend this doctor’s license,’ ” Ladendorf said. “It’s not that easy.”

Schmidt added: “With a gynecologist it’s even harder to prove these sexual-touching things because the doctor can say, ‘Oh, I was just examining her and she misinterpreted me.’ ”

For Schmidt, the case has been something of a personal mission, and she admits that luck played a role in its progress. The first complaint, Ward’s, reached her in 1982, Schmidt said, but was not sufficient to warrant action on its own. Nonetheless, she said, “I knew in my heart I’d be hearing more about this guy.”

A 1987 complaint against Namihas landed on the desk of another investigator, who was unaware of the previous complaint, so the two were never linked, Schmidt said. But when a third appeared in 1990, it came to Schmidt, who remembered the 1982 case.

The first case file had been destroyed, a routine action taken if the case is not prosecuted within five years, Schmidt said. But she harbored such a “gut feeling” about that case that she had retained a copy of the file. Now she had all three complaints, and then two more were filed.

Schmidt said she is frustrated that the original case still has yet to come before an administrative law judge for a hearing. But she said there are so few prosecutors and investigators to handle the volume of complaints that such delays are commonplace.