The latest Four Corners investigation left many of us staring at our screens in stunned, nauseated silence.
For women who have suffered through endometriosis, a condition that affects approximately one in seven Australian women, the report was both deeply personal and profoundly enraging. For the rest of us, it was a masterclass in how catastrophically the medical system can fail women when it chooses to.
The investigation centred on Dr Simon Gordon, a Melbourne gynaecologist who operated out of Epworth Hospital and his private clinic, Endo Health, branding himself as a specialist in laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis.
According to Four Corners‘ seven-month investigation during which gynaecologists reviewed patient records and pathology reports, Dr Gordon repeatedly performed surgery on women, including removing tissue and organs, despite post-operative pathology showing little or no trace of the condition he was treating, allegedly.
The story of one patient, Courtney, is almost incomprehensible in its scale: seven surgeries for “severe” endometriosis, both ovaries removed, a hysterectomy, all by the age of 25, and pathology that repeatedly showed no evidence of disease. She only discovered the truth when she requested her own medical records.
Conveniently, once Four Corners began asking questions, Dr Gordon retired. In a statement, he said that across his entire career he never performed surgery unless he was “absolutely convinced it was in the patient’s best interests.” He also claimed he was never made aware of complaints from patients or clinicians at Epworth, and that Medicare had never contacted him regarding inappropriate billing. This, despite what the investigation describes as complaints from both patients and fellow clinicians’ complaints that went, for too long, unheeded and apparently an open secret.
At least three law firms are now fielding inquiries, potentially in the hundreds, from women who were treated by Dr Gordon. In February 2026, he surrendered his medical registration while under investigation by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). For many of those women, that news comes far too late.
Let us be unambiguous about what this is. This is not a story about one rogue surgeon. This is a story about multiple, compounding, systemic failures that include a surgeon who allegedly deceived his patients; a hospital that received complaints and did not act with sufficient urgency; a regulatory system that was too slow; and a broader medical culture in which women’s pain is so routinely dismissed that, when someone finally claimed to take it seriously, patients trusted them completely because what other choice did they feel they had?
Endometriosis is a condition defined by being disbelieved. Women with endo spend years being told their pain is normal, that they’re overreacting, that it’s just a bad period. The AIHW confirms the diagnostic delay sits between six and eight years — years of suffering, of being turned away, of being made to feel hysterical. When a doctor with impressive credentials, a specialist practice and a commanding bedside manner tells you that you have severe endometriosis and need surgery to feel better, you believe them. You don’t demand a second opinion. You have been fighting to be taken seriously for years. You are exhausted. You are in pain. You trust.
That trust has now been shattered, and the reverberations are spreading far beyond Dr Gordon’s patient list. Social worker, counsellor, public speaker, author of Parenting Different and patient of Dr Gordon, Sarah Hayden has spoken out powerfully about the experience. “As a patient of Dr Simon Gordon, I know this fear intimately as he removed my ovary and fallopian tube. When this story broke, the anxiety was deafening. All I had ever wanted was to feel like myself again and pain free. Since Four Corners aired, I’ve had hundreds of women reach out, some his patients, others suddenly doubting their own diagnoses. The distress this has caused is immense, and for many women, especially those who watched that investigation, it has triggered real PTSD”.
Sarah Hayden continued: “Women deserve to be heard. Women deserve to be treated by professionals who listen and have their health and wellbeing first and foremost. This now diminishes our health system and our faith in it. Women deserve better.” She is right. And the anger so many of us are carrying right now is not irrational, it is appropriate.
My daughter is nearly an adult. She will one day sit across from a specialist perhaps a gynaecologist, and be told she needs a procedure. And thanks to this investigation, I will sit beside her carrying a weight of doubt I never had before. Do we now seek second and third opinions as a matter of course, in an already overstretched health system where waiting months to see a specialist is routine? Do we request pathology reports we don’t have the training to fully interpret? The burden this places back on women again is enormous.
A dear friend texted me after the episode aired, shaken. Years ago, before the birth of her second child, she had a fallopian tube removed. She said that watching Four Corners sent her spiralling, even though Dr Gordon was never her surgeon. “I hope my tube removal wasn’t one of these,” she wrote. That sentence breaks my heart not because her fears are grounded in fact, but because the fear itself is so completely understandable. This is the scale of the damage done: a woman who has no connection to this case, sitting with dread about her own medical history because the system has given her reason to doubt.
We cannot tar every doctor with the same brush, and we must not. The vast majority of gynaecologists in this country are dedicated, careful practitioners. But we can and we must demand accountability from the systems that failed to protect these women. Epworth Hospital received complaints. Colleagues knew. Regulators did not move quickly enough. And it took a public broadcaster’s seven-month investigation to force action.
Victoria recently held an inquiry into women’s pain management. That inquiry heard testimony about how routinely women are not listened to, how their pain is minimised and their symptoms misattributed. The Dr Gordon case is not separate from that inquiry rather it is its most extreme, most horrifying expression.
So, what now? Women who were treated by Dr Gordon are encouraged to request their histopathology reports and medical records to understand what was and was not found in their surgeries. Sarah Hayden’s Instagram page @mama_slayden provides accessible templates and guidance to help women do this. Three law firms Maurice Blackburn, Arnold Thomas & Becker, and Margalit Injury Lawyers are currently accepting inquiries from affected patients.
But beyond the individual, what we need is structural. We need mandatory, independent review processes when complaints are made against surgeons and not internal hospital reviews that move at a bureaucratic pace protecting an organisations reputation and finances, while women continue to be harmed. We need AHPRA to act faster and more transparently. We need hospitals to treat patient safety complaints as urgent, not inconvenient. We need a culture shift in medicine that stops treating women as unreliable narrators of their own bodies.
Women deserve better. The healthcare system must do better. And those who knew what was happening and stayed silent because it was professionally uncomfortable, because he was a colleague, because these were just women complaining must reckon with what that silence cost.
If you were a patient of Dr Simon Gordon at Epworth HealthCare or Endo Health and wish to access your records or seek advice, visit @mama_slayden on Instagram for guidance. Legal advice is available from Maurice Blackburn (1800 810 812), Arnold Thomas & Becker (1300 333 300), and Margalit Injury Lawyers (03 9133 0288). AHPRA’s investigation is ongoing; no findings have been finalised.
If you are living with endometriosis, Endometriosis Australia (endometriosisaustralia.org) offers support and resources.