Mar 27, 2006 4:59 pm US/Mountain
Fake Doctor Gets 13 Years In Teen's Death
By Jon Sarche, Associated Press Writer
by Rick Sallinger
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) ―
An alternative medicine practitioner was sentenced to 13 years in prison Monday after a judge told him he had shown no remorse over the death of a teenage cancer victim he was treating.
Brian O'Connell, 38, pleaded guilty last month to criminally negligent homicide in the death of 19-year-old Sean Flanagan. He also pleaded guilty to illegally practicing medicine, assault, perjury and theft in Flanagan's case or others.
Prosecutors said he had lied about his education and credentials.
O'Connell practiced naturopathy, which relies on natural remedies. He asked for leniency, saying he didn't know it was illegal to call himself a doctor or to use some the invasive treatments he performed
He had treated Flanagan and others by removing blood, exposing it to light to "cleanse" it, and returning it to the body with hydrogen peroxide.
"I never did any of this out of malice," he said. "I did not intend to steal money, hope, time or anything from any of the people I worked with."
Jefferson County District Judge Margie Enquist told O'Connell she didn't believe him, and sentenced him to just two years less than the maximum.
"People came to you in the most desperate of situations and you took advantage of them," she said. "You stand here today without remorse, without regret, and denying what you pled guilty to, and you still call yourself a victim."
Flanagan's father, David Flanagan, told the judge there was never any doubt his son would die of cancer. He said his family sought alternative treatment because they believed it could prolong his life.
He said O'Connell promised a cure the first day he saw Sean Flanagan.
"Mr. O'Connell stated `I can cure your son. No Irish kid's going to die on my watch,"' Flanagan said.
"I truly do believe O'Connell has helped some folks, but I also truly believe it's by luck that he hasn't hurt more people," he said.
After the hearing, Flanagan and his wife, Laura Flanagan, said they thought the sentence was fair.
The homicide charge stemmed from O'Connell's treatment of Flanagan. The assault and theft charges came from O'Connell's treatment of a 17-year-old girl who had to be resuscitated after a cardiac arrest in his Wheat Ridge office and from his unsuccessful treatment of an elderly woman's breast cancer.
"I was so concerned I was losing my wife, I didn't care what he was," Jimmy Shoemaker, who paid $17,000 for treatment for his wife Gladys, told the judge. "I was desperate for treatment. ... I would have done anything."
The perjury charge stemmed from his testimony in an earlier court case when he falsely claimed to have a master's degree.
The homicide, theft and perjury charges are felonies; the assault and illegal practice charges are misdemeanors. O'Connell was sentenced to a separate three-year jail term on the misdemeanors but it runs at the same time as the 13-year prison sentence for the felonies.
Laura Flanagan said she hoped the case would help prompt lawmakers to require naturopaths to obtain state licenses.
Since 1993, the Legislature has rejected three attempts by the Colorado Association of Naturopathic Physicians to approve licensing and regulation.
Association president Rena Bloom has said the group will ask the Legislature in 2007 to follow a recent recommendation from state regulators to require licenses. She said she was concerned that O'Connell's case would convince the public that alternative treatments not approved by the conventional medical system are "quackery and snake oil."
"Here you have a fellow with a minimal amount of correspondence-school training running with a title," she said of O'Connell. "It's very confusing to the public."
Fourteen states license naturopaths who graduate from one of three universities accredited by the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education, which has accreditation authority from the U.S. Education Department.
Earlier in the hearing, about a dozen of O'Connell's former patients told the judge they didn't care that he had lied about his education or his title because they believed he had solved health problems that hadn't responded to conventional medicine.
"I just needed some help," said Phil Broncucia Jr., who had an inner-ear disorder. "I would do it again."
O'Connell showed no emotion when Enquist announced the sentence, but his wife, seated in the front row of the gallery, wept.
Defense attorney Richard Jaffe said no appeal was likely, but he said people who would have sought care from O'Connell were also victims.
"There are victims on the other side too that can't get treatment now," he said.
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
