Noted Learning Specialist Sued, Gives Up Medical Practice

Dr. Mel Levine, a best-selling author and authority on treatment of learning disabilities in children who retired as a professor in the School of Medicine in 2006, has asked the N.C. Medical Board to render his medical license inactive after being accused of sexually abusing young boys more than 20 years ago.

According to The New York Times, Levine, 68, was charged in a civil lawsuit with sexual abuse of seven patients at Children’s Hospital Boston aged 5 to 13 years between 1967 and 1984. The hospital is named as a defendant in the suit. The hospital said in a statement that it had never had complaints about Levine from children or parents, the Times said.

According the Times, Levine was chief of ambulatory pediatrics at Children’s Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, before he came to Carolina in 1985.

Levine said he was innocent of the charges. Levine’s lawyer, Edward Mahoney, characterized the allegations as “distorted or misrepresented memories from decades past,” the newspaper reported. Mahoney said Levine questioned the accusers’ motivations.

The inactive status prohibits Levine from seeing patients.

The Times reported that the allegations were revealed at a news conference held by Boston lawyer Carmen Durso. Durso said that since the announcement, about 16 others had come forward with similar allegations against Levine.

Levine is the author of A Mind at a Time and other books on learning disabilities. After studying learning disabilities for about 25 years, he founded the All Kinds of Minds Institute to disseminate his ideas to school systems across the country and to others in the medical community.

In 2000, Levine told the Carolina Alumni Review, “People’s brains are wired in many different ways, so our educational system shouldn’t rely on the same methods of teaching for everyone. Some children have very specialized minds. … They’re expected to be good at everything, which means they’re not encouraged to use their special strengths, and this causes the children to pay a heavy price.

“If someone’s mind is different, that doesn’t mean he or she is abnormal or has some kind of ‘disease’ like ADD. … So our basic premise at All Kinds of Minds, is: Let’s respond to variation. Let’s increase the portion of children who can experience successes, and do it while they’re still children.”

At Carolina, Levine was and director of Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning before his retirement.

Related coverage is available online:

• One Mind At A Time: Mel Levine is selling school teachers on the idea he’s refined over the past 25 years: No one has a perfect brain.
  Feature story from the November/December 2000 issue of the Carolina Alumni Review, available online to Carolina Alumni members.