California Panel Seeks Censure of Optometrist : Eye care: Virginia board failed to notify state officials of results of disciplinary hearing against San Juan specialist. He practiced without a license and was found to have engaged in inappropriate physical contact.

To his patients, Dr. Rick Abelson is a San Juan Capistrano optometrist with an eye-wear shop that advertises $38 eye exams, “walk-ins welcome.”

In a Yellow Pages ad, the 30-year-old Abelson boasts of being “one of the youngest doctors ever to graduate from the prestigious Pennsylvania College of Optometry” and has “solved some of the most difficult vision problems for the young and the not-so-young. . .”

What Abelson does not say is that he once went by the name Riad A. Aboulhosn, was caught practicing optometry in 1988 in Virginia without a license, and accused that same year of fondling a patient’s breasts during an eye exam. Three years ago, Aboulhosn legally changed his name in California to Abelson, records show.

Abelson said the woman, Sharon Kay McDaniel, asked for a breast examination and said she believed her eye problems were related to a lump in her right breast. McDaniel, he said, was seeking a referral from him to see a physician at a local medical college.

“I made a mistake and I paid for it and that’s the sad story,” he said. “I have not had a single complaint against me before then or since.”

McDaniel, 30, of Richmond, who has been married 14 years and has two children, tells a different story. She said she visited Abelson in June, 1988, complaining of severe headaches, and said she had a history of diabetes, heart trouble and high blood pressure. Aboulhosn, she said, began fondling her breasts.

In November, 1989, McDaniel filed a civil lawsuit against Abelson and the optometrist he worked for, seeking $100,000 in damages.

The matter was settled out of court. Without admitting any wrongdoing, Abelson paid $10,000 and the insurance company that covered the optometry practice paid $6,000, according to Gary R. Hershner, the Richmond attorney who represented McDaniel.

Although Abelson was acquitted of sexual assault charges stemming from the same incident, it cost him any chance he might have had of regularizing his situation by taking the Virginia licensing exam, and he was told in 1990 not to bother reapplying for five years, according to the Virginia board’s final order.

After a disciplinary hearing over McDaniel’s allegations, the optometry board concluded that Abelson “engaged in inappropriate physical contact” with McDaniel, which included “touching and fondling of a sexual nature under the guise of a legitimate optometric examination.”

At his Virginia disciplinary hearing, Abelson told Virginia’s optometry board that he already had a license in California and couldn’t understand why they would not grant him the chance to take the exam, according to Frank Pedrotty, assistant attorney general for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Pedrotty represented the optometry board against Abelson.

Virginia’s optometry board never notified California’s Board of Optometry about their ruling, as required. If they had, California optometry officials say they would have pursued a case against Abelson sooner.

“This looks like it slipped through the cracks,” Pedrotty said.

California medical authorities were finally tipped off to Abelson’s whereabouts last year by Richmond television station WRIC-TV, which had aired a story about McDaniel.

The California Board of Optometry filed a complaint against Abelson in February in which they have sought to suspend or revoke his license, based on the Virginia incident. A hearing date has not been set.

“We are pursuing this because of the seriousness and nature of what happened,” said Rex Farmer, assistant to the optometry board’s executive officer.

Farmer said Abelson got his California license while criminal charges were still pending in Virginia. At the time he took the examination for his California license, he had not yet been convicted of practicing optometry without a license, Farmer said.

But Virginia records indicate otherwise. In September, 1988, three months before he obtained the California license, Abelson was fined $200, given a 60-day suspended jail sentence, and placed on probation for three years for practicing optometry without a license.

Following California’s complaint, Abelson must now go before an administrative law judge, who will conduct a hearing and render a proposed decision.

The judge’s decision then goes to California’s nine-member optometry board, a combination of professionals and public members, most of whom are appointed by the governor.

The board votes on whether or not to uphold the administrative law judge’s decision.

Although the executive officer of the board has asked that the Abelson’s license be suspended or revoked, the judge could rule otherwise. Punishment could range from a type of supervised probation--with someone else present for all eye examinations involving women--to license revocation.

Farmer said the board rarely decides not to discipline an optometrist after consulting with the state Attorney General’s office and filing an accusation.

“We’ve done our homework beforehand, so we pretty much know what we’ve got,” he said.

To this day, McDaniel said she is haunted by her visit to Abelson’s office.

“He touched me in the way only my husband had touched me,” McDaniel said. “He wasn’t the least bit interested in any kind of eye exam.”

Abelson said he has a thriving practice in San Juan Capistrano, which he opened two years ago. Before that, he worked at various optometry stores throughout Southern California.

In a biography that he provides to prospective patients, Abelson says he is a 1983 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University with a bachelor of science in biology and a 1987 graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry. Records indicate he was born in Lebanon.

The Registrar’s office at Virginia Commonwealth University says Abelson never graduated. But records indicate he did obtain his optometry degree from Pennsylvania. In an interview, Abelson acknowledged not graduating from Virginia Commonwealth but said he spent an extra year at Pennsylvania College of Optometry that allowed him to obtain an undergraduate degree.

Times staff writer Elaine Tassy contributed to this story.