CONWAY -- A Conway physician charged with sexually molesting patients will get a hearing in December on a motion to suppress some evidence.
Dr. Robert Rook, 61, appeared in Faulkner County Circuit Court on Monday for a pretrial hearing. Seated at the back of the large courtroom, Rook walked to the front when his case came up but said nothing as he stood by his attorney, Patrick Benca.
As Rook left the crowded courtroom minutes later, he extended his hand to a blonde woman seated near the front and they walked out together. A group of supporters, including a few women wearing medical scrubs, followed.
During the hearing, Judge Charles Clawson Jr. set a hearing on the suppression motion for Dec. 2.
Also Monday, special Prosecuting Attorney Jason Barrett filed another amended list of felony charges against Rook. This time, he changed one rape count to second-degree sexual assault. The 20th Judicial Circuit's prosecutor, Cody Hiland, has recused.
Rook now is charged with nine counts of rape, 11 counts of second-degree sexual assault and one count of third-degree sexual assault involving a total of 13 women.
Clawson granted two defense motions without objections from the prosecution.
One would require the state to produce any physical evidence, any video or audio and all rough notes taken about the defendant. The other would require law enforcement and any other government entity to record exculpatory information given to them by witnesses. Such information refers to that which is favorable to the defendant.
In the exculpatory motion, Benca wrote that on June 27, three people entered Rook's Conway clinic. Two identified themselves as agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; the other as an investigator with the Conway Police Department, Benca wrote.
The three law enforcement agents then asked to talk with a nurse and did so in a black sport-utility vehicle parked outside.
According to Benca's motion, the agents interrogated the nurse. "The questioning done to her was coercive," he wrote.
Among questions asked of the nurse were whether Rook overprescribes for his patients, whether he had ever "flirted or made advancements" toward her, whether she was a patient and whether she "exchanged sexual favors to Dr. Rook for pills," the motion said.
Benca said the nurse responded that Rook does not overprescribe and that he had never flirted with her or made advancements to her "or anyone else" that she had seen. The nurse also told the agents, Benca said, that she had never been one of Rook's patients and had "never exchanged sexual favors to Dr. Rook, or any other person, for anything."
Benca said the nurse told the agents that Rook "runs his office above board" and "is a good person and a good doctor."
About a week earlier, Benca said, two government agents visited the home of Rook's receptionist one evening and asked similar questions.
"The receptionist, same as the nurse, responded that Dr. Rook is professional, ethical, and that she has never seen anything out of the ordinary at his office," Benca wrote.
The prosecution did not file a written response to either motion. Nor has it responded to the more recent suppression motion.
The Arkansas State Medical Board voted to suspend Rook's license in June. In August, the board lifted the suspension after its attorney, Kevin O'Dwyer, said he had been unable to find out the names of Rook's accusers or to ask them to testify.
O'Dwyer was out of his office and unavailable for comment Monday about whether the board would revisit the suspension issue in light of the new charges. He did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.
State Desk on 09/27/2016