James N. Sears

James N. Sears (aka Dimitri the Lover), born August 21, 1964,Fact|date=August 2008 is a former physician from the Toronto area, whose license was stripped for reasons of sexual misconduct. He is now a self-professed seduction guru who created and runs Toronto Real Men which provides meetings and workshops instructing men how to assert themselves with women.Molotkow, Alex, [http://www.eyeweekly.com/city/features/article/22843 "Portrait of a Pickup Artist"] , "Eye Weekly", April 2, 2008.] His name and group are associated with the seduction community. In particular, Dimitri the Lover gained widespread notoriety after two of his voicemail messages left for a female recipient became a viral video receiving over 100,000 views in the first two days it was published on YouTube.cite web
last =vlmspecs4
authorlink =
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title=Dimitri the stud
publisher=YouTube
date=June 26, 2008
url =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c06pinaKl8o
accessdate=2008-07-04 ]

Background

Sears was born in Toronto in the early 1960s. According to court transcripts and disciplinary records from College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, one parent of Sears was abusive and alcoholic and his other parent struggled with mental illness.Yuen, Jenny, [http://www.torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2008/04/13/5272201-sun.html "Disgraced doctor is T.O's seduction guru"] , "Toronto Sun", April 13, 2008. ] Sears describes his parents: “My father was very physically and emotionally abusive. My mother was just a borderline manic, histrionic, dramatic woman, and I did not grow up really understanding what love was.”

He entered medical school at the University of Toronto in 1983. By 1986, during his third year of medical school and while serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, he was evaluated by a military psychiatrist as a result of erratic behavior that drew complaints. He was forced to repeat a year of medical school, but graduated in 1988. He was commissioned as a medical officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and was honorably released in 1991 at the rank of Captain.http://www.secondopinion.ca/sears.html Retrieved on July 4, 2008]

exual assault allegations and loss of medical license

In 1991, the College of Physicians and Surgeons received complaints from female patients of Sears. According to Justice Hugh Locke in court documents, Sears made “verbal sexual overtures” toward his patients and “sexually assaulted them by attempting to kiss and embrace them.” The records also state that Sears would compulsively masturbate by going off to the washroom in between patients. Sears pled guilty in 1992 to two counts of sexual assault and was stripped of his medical license the following year. [ [http://www.cpso.on.ca/Publications/Discsum/1993/disc93.07.htm#Dr.%20James%20N.%20Sears "Discipline Committee Decisions"] , The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, July/August 1993.] Sears alleges that he was pressured by his lawyers into pleading guilty. He contends that the events behind the alleged assault were benign, “I asked [one patient] out on a date, and we chatted a bit, I said give me a call sometime, gave her a goodbye hug. That was it.” He states that two other women came forward with similar stories only after they read about the initial complaint in newspapers. He explains the appearance of impropriety by saying, “At the time, I was married. And my wife was sexually dysfunctional, I had not had sex with her in a year and a half.” Subsequent to the initial hearing, Sears appealed his conviction, defended himself, and was acquitted of the assault charges. However, he was unsuccessful in his appeal of the revocation of his medical license. [ [http://www.cpso.on.ca/Publications/Discsum/1994/disc94.07.htm#Dr.%20James%20N.%20Sears "Discipline Committee Decisions"] , The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, July/August 1994.]

Medical background check company and controversy

In 1994, Sears founded Second Opinion Medical-Legal Consultants Group, Inc. which provides forensic medical investigations into malpractice, sexual harassment, and wrongfully accused cases. [The Second Opinion website, http://www.secondopinion.ca/med_malpractice.html Retrieved on July 4, 2008.] Typical services include medical background checks for companies wanting to verify the health history of job candidates or assess the claims of current employees. The Toronto Transit Commission confirms that it has used Sears’s company on a few occasions.

Despite the fact that he was stripped of his medical license two years earlier, Sears continued to bill himself as a doctor, stating that his actions are not misleading under Canadian law. “Anyone can review a medical file and give a medical opinion. Lack of a license is a non-issue. I don’t tell them unless they ask, and most people don’t ask.”Tomlinson, Kathy, [http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1115167462268_11/?hub=CTVNewsAt11 "Unlicensed doctor hangs out shingle"] , "CTV News", May 4, 2005.] The business website of Second Opinion contains a page about Dr. Sears and lists his dates of graduation and licensing, but does not mention that he lost his medical license in 1992.

Sharon Danley, a victims advocate, does not believe that someone with a history of sexual assault should be permitted to look through women’s medical histories, saying, “He’s got all this information to go after her if he chooses to and what safeguards are in place for her?”

The circumstances shed light on the state of information, or purported lack thereof, on doctors subject to disciplinary hearings by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The college has rejected suggestions that it should publish, or make available to the public, lists of doctors who have lost their licenses for disciplinary reasons. Further, the college does not monitor doctors whose licenses have been stripped; Dr. Rocco Gerace, the college registrar, states, “If we’ve taken away their licenses, they’re not members and so we have no jurisdiction over those individuals.”

Toronto Real Men and Dimitri the Lover

As a result of what he perceived as “feminist alarmism”, Sears created Toronto Real Men in 2004, which is supposed to be a “rebellion against society, and what they’ve turned men into…. [It] is a rebellion against feminism, and really feminism is what’s created a lot of this.” The group offers classes, workshops, and personal coaching courses to help men assert their masculinity.

Toronto Real Men is a part of the seduction community whose members range from self-described “seduction gurus” or “pickup artists” (PUAs) to introverted or socially awkward men who are seeking confidence and advice with relationships. The community has come under fire from critics who call it misogynistic or a “puerile cult of sexual conquest.” [cite news |last=Ganahl |first=Jane |url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/25/LVGPHEQA941.DTL |title=Ahead of the game |publisher="San Francisco Chronicle" |date=2005-11-25 |accessdate=2006-12-22] University of Toronto professor of feminist philosophy Amy Mullin states, “You need to think of women as more than instruments to your own pleasure, which [Sears] tended to reduce them to."

With Toronto Real Men, Sears reinvented himself as Dimitri the Lover and teaches men to follow a more “European” approach to picking up women. According to Sears, Canadian men suppress their natural sexuality because the media equates assertiveness or machismo with abusiveness.

Internet notoriety

An example of Sears’s assertive style to approaching women gained him internet notoriety when two of his voicemails to Olga, a woman he met on the street in San Francisco, surfaced on YouTube and was viewed over a 100,000 times the first day. [ [http://jezebel.com/5020082/your-friends-were-very-jealous-even-if-they-say-they-werent-they-were-envious-i-approached-you "Transcript of messages"] ] It quickly became a phenomenon among bloggers, then met with newspaper and radio coverage. [ cite web
last =TheYoungTurks
authorlink =The Young Turks
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title=How a Cheeseball Stud Picks Up a Woman
publisher=YouTube
date=June 27, 2008
url =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3KVMfW7zS4
accessdate=2008-07-04]

One of the witnesses in Sears’s sexual assault case told the Toronto Sun that the phone messages were “deeply deluded” and expressed concern that “people are encouraged by [this] behavior and that no one’s intervening.” [Yuen, Jenny, [http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2008/06/29/6019126-sun.html "Disgraced doc leaves pushy messages on woman’s machine"] ,"CNews", June 29, 2008. ]

Capitalizing on the attention, Sears re-launched [http://www.dimitrithelover.com his website] and has multiple upcoming projects. [ [http://gawker.com/tag/dimitri-the-lover/?i=397310&t=worlds-worst-pickup-artist-has-worlds-greatest-website "World's worst pickup artist has world's greatest website"] , "Gawker", June 27, 2008.] [Official Website of Dimitri the Lover, http://dimitrithelover.com] He is currently filming a documentary about himself with a potentially fictitious production company called "Thought Crime Films" and working on two television shows, “Dimitri’s Real Men” and “Doctor Dimitri, Malpractice Investigator.” He is also planning two book releases, “Mein Kock” and “The Dimitri Code.” [Topping, David, [http://torontoist.com/2008/06/remember_dimitri_the_lover.php "Remember Dimitri the Lover?"] , "Torontoist", June 28, 2008.]

Intervention

Livejournal blogger hush-doc [http://hush-doc.livejournal.com] began a letter-writing campaign to persuade government officials to shut Sears down, asserting that he had created a conflict of interest by working as both an expert witness in sexual assault/harassment cases and as a pick-up coach/sexual predator. To promote the campaign a video was released on YouTube with the title "The Un-Funny Truth About Dimitri The Lover", followed by a revised version of the video [http://www.youtube.com/user/HushUpDoc] . Hush-doc's Livejournal website is linked to the Youtube site and provides background information and a sample letter urging government officals to intervene.

References