Georgia medical board suspends doctor accused of filming videos during surgeries
A Georgia doctor who has been accused by patients of recording music videos during surgeries without their consent has been suspended by the state's medical board.
According to ABC News affiliate WSB-TV, the state board said the actions of Dr. Windell Boutte, a board-certified dermatologist, were "a threat to the public health, safety and welfare."
Boutte defended the videos Thursday on HLN TV, saying they were made "under safe, controlled circumstances."
"These videos are consented and it is pre-discussed with the patients," she said. "In these instances, these were all consented videos. They were staged. They were planned."
She said that 98 percent of the videos had been shot during the postoperative period and the videos took 30 seconds to 60 seconds to tape, with her staff "monitoring everything" during the surgeries.
In multiple videos obtained by ABC News, Boutte and her staff could be seen singing and dancing as she operates on patients. The videos were posted to YouTube but have since been deleted.
As a physician in the state of Georgia, Boutte had been allowed to perform surgeries in her office-based setting.
In an interview with WSB-TV recently, Latoyah Archine identified herself as one of the patients in the videos.
"To see that video, with my flesh being cut without a straight line -- and [her] dancing while cutting me, that's horrible," Archine told WSB-TV. "I feel disrespected on a lot of levels. ... It never goes away."
Archine said she'd retained a lawyer and intended to take legal action against Boutte for the video and the results of her surgery, which she said had left her "disfigured."
Boutte is being sued by several patients who allege that their liposuctions and lifts went terribly wrong, according to WSB-TV.
"She is still getting up and going to work every day and making a great deal of money and subjecting patients, who are none the wiser, to her unsafe practices," lawyer Susan Witt told WSB-TV regarding Boutte..
According to WSB-TV, the board said in its order of suspension that "(Boutte's) continued practice of medicine ... requires emergency action."
Boutte did express some regret over what she called "negative agendas."
"Had I had the forethought and the foresight that an entity could take those innocent, consented, educational and celebratory videos, misconstrue them, edit and fabricate the context, and use it for negative agendas, I would not have done it," she told HLN.
ABC News affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta and WSB-TV investigative journalist Jim Strickland contributed to this story.
