A Florida foot doctor gave up his license, but avoided jail after raping a patient
Palm Beach County’s Saul Lipsman was a licensed podiatrist for 52 years, and admitted in August that he’s also a rapist.
As of Feb. 6, he’s no longer a licensed podiatrist.
Lipsman, 78, relinquished the podiatric physician license he’d held since Feb. 11, 1971. His voluntary surrender was part of his guilty plea to sexual battery on an adult patient, for which he got a five-year probation that began Aug. 31. Sentencing paperwork signed by the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney says, “This plea is at the specific request of the victim.”
The patient, who has filed a civil medical malpractice lawsuit against Lipsman, was the fourth female patient between February 2014 and March 2022 to say Lipsman touched them improperly during an office visit. At least two of the previous three filed reports with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
READ MORE: Accusation No. 4 by patients is sexual battery arrest No. 1 for a Florida podiatrist
The PBSO report after Lipman was arrested in August 2022 described three of the women’s accusations. A fourth was in an administrative complaint filed last July 11. In reverse chronological order:
▪ Lipsman’s guilty plea admits that on March 29, 2022, during a follow up visit by a Nassau County woman who had seen him the previous day for foot pain, he put his fingers inside the woman’s vagina. She told PBSO investigators that he’d also tried to kiss her breasts during the visit at Lipsman’s suburban Lake Worth office, 6894 Lake Worth Rd.
▪ On Aug. 16, 2016, a woman reported Lipsman to PBSO. She said she saw Lipsman for a infected toenail and mentioned back pain. He had her come back later that day. The woman told sheriff’s investigators in 2022 that, though her 93-year-old mother was in the room, Lipsman thrust at her from behind while she was bent over and twice tried to put his penis in her hand. She told sheriff’s investigators she went to law enforcement and told the Florida Department of Health about Lipsman because she was afraid he “might be doing this to children.”
▪ A woman told the Florida Department of Health that on Oc,t. 20, 2015, during a follow-up to a podiatric appointment at the Lipsman Foot and Ankle Center in Palm Beach Gardens, she told Lipsman of her sciatic nerve pain. She said Lipsman had her stand, bend a little from the waist, then squat and rise repeatedly by bending at the knees. While doing so, she said, she felt [Lipsman’s] penis bump up against her. She said he also tried to take her hand and put it on his penis. This administrative complaint was filed July 11, 2023.
▪ A woman told the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office in February 2014 that Lipsman, after asking her aide to leave the room, touched her buttocks and pressed against her to where she could feel Lipsman aroused. By the time sheriff’s detectives spoke to her in 2022, the woman had memory problems from a 2021 stroke. But, she told detectives, if she went through the trouble of reporting him to law enforcement, “this doctor must have done something really bad” to her.
