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Police arrested Robert Stern, 58, a longtime retired physician, on charges of distributing, possessing and accessing child pornography, Woodstock police said Monday. He turned himself in Monday morning and is being held pending a bail hearing, Police Chief Rod Wilkinson said via email. The charges against Stern were brought after investigators obtained approximately 50 devices during a search of Stern’s home on July 7, Det. Const. Mike Haegens previously told the Free Press. No patient images emerged from the investigation, he said, adding that police were still working through them but had “no reason to believe they were his patients.” Stern began practicing family medicine in Woodstock in 1991, serving at times as chairman of emergency medicine and family medicine at Woodstock Hospital. He has not had medical privileges there since 2014, hospital officials said. Stern had chaired the regional division of the Ontario Medical Association and was president of the Oxford County Medical Society for more than 20 years, according to a now-deleted biography on a medical education website. His primary location was listed as Tillsonburg Memorial Hospital, but he no longer practices there. A spokesperson for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the regulatory body for doctors in Ontario, confirmed that Stern is no longer practicing medicine.
