A longtime Orange County family practitioner, who has pleaded not guilty to sexual exploitation of a patient and sexual battery of an unconscious person, has been ordered by a judge to be accompanied by a chaperone when he treats females until his criminal case is resolved.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert C. Gannon’s order restricting the medical license of Dr. David Duncan House went into effect on May 18.
That was two days after the Tustin resident entered his not guilty pleas to sexual battery of an unconscious person and sexual exploitation by a physician, psychotherapist or counselor. His first arraignment hearing was in February.
Gannon made it a condition of bail that, “Dr. House is prohibited from providing any medical care or treatment to female patients unless accompanied by a third-party chaperone, during the pendency of this case.”
The physician has been granted a conditional release as he and his attorney Ronald A. Ziff fight the criminal case, which is being prosecuted by Stephanie Caughlin, Charles David Henninger and Keenan Patrick O’Connor of the Orange County District Attorney’s office.
However, it was California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Deputy Attorney General Jason J. Ahn who sought the chaperone order on behalf of the Medical Board of California.
House is a UCLA medical school graduate who specializes in family medicine, has 33 years of experience as a physician and has been affiliated with Kaiser Permanente facilities in Mission Viejo and Riverside, according to online sources.
There are no disciplinary actions listed against House’s medical license on the state medical board’s physician and surgeon database.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.