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John Strobeck, 77, who had offices in Fair Lawn and Hawthorne, was acquitted in Superior Court in Paterson in 2019 of groping a 50-year-old female patient during an exam five years earlier.
Prosecutors were gearing up for a return to the courtroom with several other alleged victims when Strobeck was allowed to enter a pre-trial intervention program that will allow him to clear his record.
Strobeck also agreed not to challenge the permanent revocation of his professional license, which the state Board of Medical Examiners temporarily suspended in 2015.
That's when he last practiced medicine, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin noted.
The Board of Medical Examiners independently accused Strobeck of fondling and groping six female patients between 2008 and 2014 "under the guise of medical treatments" while alone with them in an exam room, Platkin said.
The woman ranged in age from 51 to 80, he said.
Strobeck "engaged in gross malpractice, professional misconduct and sexual misconduct on numerous occasions by fondling and groping the breasts and genitalia of patients...without legitimate medical justification and for his own sexual gratification," the attorney general said.
Strobeck, previously of Saddle River and currently living in New Milford, had been practicing medicine since 1974. He eventually became the chief of cardiology at The Valley Hospital, then in Ridgewood.
Strobeck testified during his only criminal trial that it was possible that he'd touched a female patient's breast during an exam but insisted any touch was "inadvertent" and not motivated by carnal instincts.
"I was examining her lungs, not her breast," he told jurors at the time. "I might have come in contact with her bra, but I didn't reach up and touch her breast."
Platkin, in announcing the medical license revocation on Friday, April 19, called doctors who "sexually exploit patients behind the closed door of an exam room" a "danger to the public and a disgrace to their profession."
“Trust is the cornerstone of the doctor-patient relationship," added Cari Fais, the acting state Division of Consumer Affairs director. "Patients suffer immeasurable harm when doctors abuse that trust for their own sexual gratification."
Strobeck's behavior was "so egregious," Fais said, that "only the permanent revocation of his license could adequately protect the public from the risks posed by his return to practice.”
Under the terms of a final consent order between Strobeck and the board, he is "permanently barred from the practice of medicine and surgery in New Jersey and prohibited from seeking a medical license here at any future time," Platkin said.
"Additionally, he is prohibited from charging, receiving, or sharing in any fee for professional services rendered by others in this state and must divest himself of any current and future financial interest in or benefit derived from the practice of medicine here, including the provision of healthcare activities taking place at his former medical offices.
"Strobeck is also precluded from managing, overseeing, supervising, or influencing the practice of medicine or the provision of healthcare activities in New Jersey, including testifying as an expert witness or serving as an expert consultant," the attorney general said.
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