WEST COLUMBIA — A patient was puzzled why her doctor abruptly left his West Columbia clinic last year. So she started an online discussion, generating dozens of reactions from similarly perplexed patients of Dr. Fernando Xavier Castro.
The April 2024 post on the Reddit social network elicited a range of theories about what led him to vanish from Lexington Rheumatology, with someone even sharing a rumor that he had been kidnapped while traveling overseas.
“I pray he’s okay,” one person wrote. “He was such an awesome doctor ❤️”
But government and court records portray Castro in a far different light, one that’s tied to his departure from the medical facility.
Two Midlands women allege he sexually assaulted them under the guise of conducting a therapeutic massage — encounters that the patients said left them traumatized and seeking justice.
The medical boards of South Carolina and North Carolina have temporarily suspended Castro’s medical licenses while they continue to investigate patient complaints.
“The Board finds that the public interest imperatively requires that (Castro’s) practice as a physician be immediately temporarily suspended pending a hearing, and until further Order of the Board,” the S.C. Board of Medical Examiners said in a Feb. 20 order.
The N.C. Medical Board issued a similar order in March.
Castro still has an active medical license in Florida, The Post and Courier found.
Castro’s attorney, James Snell, declined to comment on the allegations against the doctor. Castro did not respond to messages seeking comment. Court records show he is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by one of the women.
The Lexington Health network, which runs Lexington Rheumatology, said Castro is no longer an employee. He was removed from the rheumatology clinic in late March 2024 after “an investigation was conducted,” and patients were informed he was no longer practicing there, Lexington Health’s Public Relations Manager Catherine Ramirez said.
‘New therapeutic massage technique’
Two of Castro’s female patients from Lexington Rheumatology allege that he sexually assaulted them during treatment sessions in 2022, nearly a year apart, according to information from medical board records, police reports, court documents and interviews with people connected to the issues surrounding Castro. The women do not know each other and have never met, one of the alleged victims told The Post and Courier in an interview.
Each woman had been Castro’s patient for years and said the doctor had never acted inappropriately toward them previously. As a rheumatologist, he diagnosed and treated diseases of the joints, muscles and bones.
Each woman said Castro eventually offered them massage treatments offsite, explaining there was no room at the rheumatology clinic where all other appointments had been held.
Castro called from the clinic phone to schedule these appointments, rather than an office assistant, the women said. They found this odd but had no reason to suspect anything malicious.
Neither woman ever received any billing for her offsite meeting with the doctor, one woman disclosed to law enforcement and another in an interview with The Post and Courier.
One of the patients agreed to meet with Castro at her Richland County residence on Jan. 13, 2022, court records show. She said he’d described the in-home treatment as a “new therapeutic massage technique” that would complement current in-office treatment and help with her well-being.
Instead, the woman said, that meeting upended her life.
While Castro was doing the massage, he “groped, fondled and molested her,” the woman alleged in a lawsuit she filed in January in Richland County Civil Court against Castro, Lexington Rheumatology and Lexington Medical Center, where the clinic is located.
She suffered physical, emotional and mental injury, including humiliation and anguish, the woman said in her lawsuit. She is representing herself in court.
The Post and Courier generally does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault without their consent. The woman asked not to be identified in this story.
‘It was a ploy’
Five months before suing, the woman lodged a complaint against Castro with the S.C. Board of Medical Examiners. She accused the doctor of assaulting her twice: at her home and during a visit to his Lexington County clinic.
“I trusted him and he took advantage of me in my home and touched me inappropriately while in the doctor office during a medical visit,” the woman wrote in her medical board complaint in August 2024.
“He offered me a therapy to help with my condition but instead it was a ploy to get me to have sexual intercourse,” she continued. “Dr. Castro violated me and I’m distraught.”
The woman, now 47, told The Post and Courier in an interview that it took her years to bring legal action against Castro, partly because she’d been in denial about the assault. She said she also felt guilt about not recognizing his scheme early enough.
“It should have never happened,” she said in the interview. “I felt like, ‘Damn, I was so (expletive) naïve.’”
The woman said she decided to come forward to warn others and, if there are other alleged victims, embolden them to speak out.
‘Angry, dirty and ashamed’
In late 2022, another female patient reported being sexually assaulted.
This woman met with Castro at a motel across from Lexington Medical Center on the afternoon of Dec. 8 that year, according to a Lexington County Sheriff’s Department incident report. She reported the alleged assault to the sheriff’s office seven days later.
She told investigators that Castro, after entering the motel room, took off his long-sleeved shirt and dress slacks and changed into a T-shirt and shorts. Her name was redacted in the sheriff’s reports.
The woman alleged that she sat in a chair while Castro massaged her shoulders over her clothes, and then he asked her to take off her shirt and bra.
She remembered thinking the therapeutic massage was not going the way she’d expected and “became numb because she was in shock,” a subsequent incident report states. What happened next was redacted.
Castro then did another round of massages before leading her through exercises they had done in his clinic, according to the report. The woman felt it was an attempt to “legitimize the acts that had just occurred.”
The woman said she left the motel room as soon as Castro entered the bathroom to shower.
Later that day, the woman confided in someone that Castro had “sexually violated” her and she had just wanted that moment “to be over so she could leave without being harmed,” the incident report states. She talked about feeling “very angry, dirty, and ashamed.”
She described Castro as a predator disguised as a professional.
A clerk at the motel confirmed to the sheriff’s department that Castro had rented a room for about two hours on Dec. 8, 2022, where he’d met with an unidentified woman.
But investigators couldn’t find probable cause to charge Castro with a crime and closed the case on April 4, 2024.
“So, he just gets away with it?” the woman said when told of the decision, according to an incident report.
Ongoing investigations and lawsuit
Less than a year after Castro left Lexington Rheumatology, a North Carolina health care system welcomed him to its medical team.
Castro’s care philosophy was to “treat patients the way he would like to be treated,” UNC Health Pardee said in a Feb. 19 press release. It said Castro, based at a hospital in the Blue Ridge Mountains town of Hendersonville, cultivated relationships with patients based on “respect and empathy.”
The following day, the S.C. Board of Medical Examiners temporarily suspended his medical license, citing probable cause from patient complaints. The board will conduct a hearing, but officials declined to provide details due to state confidentiality laws.
It’s not common for the board to order temporary license suspensions, said Holly Beeson, an attorney with the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, which encompasses the medical board.
In order to take emergency action to suspend a medical license pending an investigation, Beeson said the board must reach the conclusion that doing so is needed “to protect the safety and welfare of the public.”
On March 19, the N.C. Medical Board also temporarily suspended Castro’s license, citing South Carolina’s action against him.
Meanwhile, Castro’s license to practice in Florida is valid through 2027 before it must be renewed, according to records with the state health department’s licensing and regulation office. A staffer there said they were not aware of the license suspensions in North and South Carolina until a Post and Courier reporter called to inquire about his status.
While the women allege Castro sexually assaulted them, even consensual sexual relationships between doctors and patients can be grounds for revoking a medical license. The American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics says “romantic or sexual interactions between physicians and patients that occur concurrently with the patient physician relationship are unethical.” The South Carolina Board of Medical Examiners states that “patient consent should not be viewed as a legal defense.”
Castro is asking the Richland County civil court to dismiss the case filed by the woman who accused him of assaulting her at home in January 2022.
Snell, Castro’s attorney, said in court papers dated June 2 that the lawsuit is barred by the state’s statute of limitations, or the deadline for initiating such an action. He did not address the woman’s sexual assault allegations.
The other defendants, Lexington Rheumatology and Lexington Medical Center, have similarly asked the court to throw out the case. Their reasons include the statute of limitations, as well as the argument that Castro’s alleged crimes were outside the scope of his employment at the health care network.
