Shoreline dentist's license suspended

A Shoreline dentist's license was suspended by a state board after it found that he heavily sedated a female patient, who was found partially clothed in his office after she visited him for a dental procedure after office hours.

The state Dental Quality Assurance Commission ordered Thursday that Christopher A. Wodja's license be summarily suspended pending further proceedings. Wodja is dentist and principal of North City Dental. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Commission staff said in a statement of charges that a female patient went to Wodja's office the evening of Oct. 17 for treatment of an abscessed tooth. Before her arrival, she took two tablets of a sedative/hypnotic drug, Triazolam, which Wodja had prescribed.

The dentist called the patient's roommate and asked her to bring the remaining four tablets from the prescription to the office. When two roommates arrived, they saw the patient wandering around wearing a see-through gown with no pants or underwear.

No staff or chaperones were in the office with Wodja and the patient. The patient allegedly told her roommates Wodja had touched her in the genital area.

After leaving his office, the roommates called the police and the patient was taken to the hospital, "unable to respond to verbal commands or questions. The patient was not coherent until the following morning," the statement of charges said.

The statement said Wodja "has a history of assaultive behavior toward young women," noting that he pleaded guilty to assault and battery of a 16-year-old-girl in 1999 in the Boston area. He served jail time before moving to Washington in 2000.

Wodja was originally charged in the Boston case with kidnapping, attempting to rape, indecent assault and battery, threats, and assault and battery, according to an article at the time in The Boston Globe. Prosecutors said Wodja had offered the girl a ride to Harvard University, where she was taking summer classes, but he grabbed her and pulled into a parking lot, where the girl fled from him.

The dental commission's suspension order said the incident in Wodja's dental office showed his "willingness to abuse his prescriptive authority and dental credential to gain access to victims, render them vulnerable, and humiliate them without regard to the devastating consequences that result."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com