FORT COLLINS, Colo. — When Fort Collins Police officers began investigating an accusation that a chiropractor touched a female patient inappropriately, they wanted to know whether other women made similar complaints.
It turns out, documents show, state regulators knew of another complaint against Brian Rohrick from 2019 -- and may never have told police about it.
Detectives had to serve the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) with a search warrant to get information about the 2019 complaint that they deemed "very similar" to the complaint a second woman made four years later, an arrest affidavit said.
In both incidents, the women described Rohrick touching their breasts and upper legs inappropriately, while making comments that made them uncomfortable, the affidavit said.
DORA would not say whether it passed the 2019 complaint along to law enforcement. The affidavit said the agency took no action against Rohrick following the 2019 complaint, but cautioned "the board was concerned with how you are communicating and interacting with female patients."
Fort Collins Police said they had no investigations into Rohrick until the second woman contacted police earlier this year.
"It was not handled correctly in the least bit, in my opinion," said Bailey Brand, a case manager who works with sexual assault victims at The Blue Bench. "They had to put that forward to at least have the opportunity for law enforcement to do that investigation."
DORA employees -- unlike nurses, doctors, teachers, clergy and many others -- are not mandatory reporters in Colorado. DORA policy states that the agency may forward complaints related to criminal misconduct to local law enforcement or district attorneys -- but it does not have to.
The policy requires DORA to track "all cases referred to local law enforcement," but a spokesperson could not say how many cases the agency has passed along.
In response to questions from 9NEWS, the spokesperson said DORA was re-examining its policy and will begin to track separately the cases it sends on to police.
"In reviewing our current procedures, we believe that cases are being referred to law enforcement appropriately," the spokesperson said.
Rohrick now faces two counts of unlawful sexual contact -- one from the 2023 case and one from the 2019 case dismissed by DORA.
"Law enforcement has access to a lot more resources than DORA has, and if they had passed that along, there might have been a way for law enforcement to step in and interfere before this man was able to harm more people," Brand said.
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