Successfully Responding After Being Vilified

(Doctor Hasan Gokol. Image courtesy of the Houston Chronicle and freelance photographer Thomas Nguyen.)

It didn’t seem to matter that a Houston doctor had the support of the Texas Medical Association and the Harris County Medical Society. His name, reputation and psychological and financial well-being were being attacked.

Gokol had been fired from his government job, charged with stealing the Covid vaccine. This action led to the doctor becoming a target of the Harris County district attorney. That office issued a press release:

“Fired Harris County Health Doctor Charged with Stealing Vial of Covid-19 Vaccine.”

In a pandemic, that’s quite the scandalous charge and ugliness against one’s ethics and character. Clearly this was upsetting and offensive to a scared public, as Gokol’s attorney stated.

“Everybody was looking at this guy and saying, ‘I got my mother waiting for a vaccine, my grandfather waiting for a vaccine,’” the lawyer, Paul Doyle, said in the New York Times story by Dan Barry. ‘They were thinking, ‘This guy is a villain.’”

Despite a criminal court judge dismissing the case for a lack of probable cause, the D.A., Kim Ogg decided it was worthy to pursue a case against Gokol, presenting her work to a grand jury. However, that legal aggression, while maybe good for public relations on some level for the D.A. office, fizzled out. Gokol will not be indicted.

The directive he and his department had received was clear. It detailed who was given 1(a) and 1(b) priority for vaccine does and then, after that, directed to “Just put it in people’s arms. We don’t want any doses to go to waste. Period,” Barry wrote in his article.

Waste was irresponsible and immoral. Gokol agreed and wanted to avoid it. It’s also important to know that “The 10 or 11 doses in a vial are viable for (only) six hours after the seal is punctured,” Gokol told the Times.

So what did he do? Barry details it in his first article about the story.

“Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his home outside Houston. Some were acquaintances; others, strangers. A bed-bound nonagenarian. A woman in her 80s with dementia. A mother with a child who uses a ventilator,” he wrote. “After midnight, and with just minutes before the vaccine became unusable, the doctor, Hasan Gokal, gave the last dose to his wife, who has a pulmonary disease that leaves her short of breath.”

What was wrong to the district attorney was her office’s perception and the appearances to the public.

Prosecutors created the image of the doctor as “a cold opportunist,” Barry wrote.

“He abused his position to place his friends and family in line in front of people who had gone through the lawful process to be there,” Ogg said, reported Barry.

Understandably this was deeply traumatic to Gokol.

“It was my world coming down,” Gokal told Barry. “To have everything collapse on you. God, it was the lowest moment in my life.”

He lost trust, credibility, support and employment and hospitals decided to treat him as a public relations liability until his name was cleared.

Yet with the news he won’t be indicted, the doctor feels some relief.

“For the first time in six months I’m going to be able to go to bed tonight and not wake up in the middle thinking about this,” he told Barry in a follow-up article in the New York Times.

Yet even in legal defeat, the district attorney’s office could not resist one more ego-driven, self-righteous, arrogant dig. “We respect the decision of the grand jury in this and every case. Evidence, not public opinion, is the guiding principle of our work.” Ogg and her team didn’t take the legal setback well.

So how does Gokol overcome the emotional, psychological and reputation injury and trauma he’s endured, that to some degree, his wife and family also have endured?

Allegations not tied to truth hurt, deeply. Attacking someone’s professional, ethics, morals and character often leave people in stunned disbelief. People’s assumptions about you and hateful judgment are painful and excruciating. Threats of punishment and actual punishment incite fear and overwhelm. Being forced to prove that people allegations are not rooted in truth can prove to be futile despite the efforts. The emotions can lead to helplessness, anger, resentment and the darkest of non-stop depression. It’s abuse, legally protected.

Yet someone in such a pit doesn’t have to feel they are all alone.

There are legal professionals to have conversations with to learn if and how they can best help. There are reputation professionals who can offer the same. It’s important now for Gokol to know, and others suffering as he has and is, that there is a path forward that will greatly help overcome what he’s been through.

As he hopes to re-establish his name and reputation in medicine and his community, it would be wise, imperative and beneficial to widely tell his story to media, with equal parts humility, compassion and courage, while also continuing with his professional work. There will be offers for him to do so and if they seem to be lacking, an attorney, PR professional and reputation professional will help him to accomplish that critical task and objective.

Doing this and at a high level will allow Gokol to be resilient and help him traverse through the hellfire to recovery, added respect, reputation restoration, fresh opportunities and peace.