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An Alcoa woman has accused Maryville dentist Dr. Conley Shope of screaming at and slapping her 9-year-old daughter during a 10:30 a.m. dental visit last Friday.
Angel Maines, who recently moved to Alcoa from Knoxville, took her daughter, Chloe, to Shope’s office at 2947 Sam James Road to get a cavity filled.

According to Maines, she planned to accompany her daughter into the dentist’s office, but was told by Shope’s office staff that she had to wait in the waiting room.
“Chloe had only been back with the dentist about 10 minutes when I started hearing her whimper,” Maines said. “Some of my kids are babies when they have to go to the doctor or dentist, but not Chloe. She never complained too much even when she had to get shots.

Chloe’s a pretty tough kid — so after I heard her whimpering, I paid close attention to what was going on back in the office.

“I heard a man’s voice yelling at someone, but I never thought it would have been the dentist and Chloe.

“Then Chloe screamed — and I heard the dentist screaming ‘shut up.’ I went right past the receptionist and walked directly toward the room where the dentist was with my daughter.

“I saw him standing over her yelling ‘shut up’ repeatedly — and when he saw me coming, I said ‘that’s enough.’

“Then he slammed the door on me.”

Standing in the hallway, Maines said she told the receptionist to get her daughter because they were leaving. When the receptionist was not able to get Chloe out of the room with the dentist, Maines called the Blount County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the sheriff’s office report, Maines’ daughter told the sheriff’s deputy that Shope had “yelled at and hit her.”

When questioned by the deputy, Chloe said Shope was fixing her tooth and it started to hurt, then he yelled at her to be quiet and hit her on the upper torso two or three times with his hand.

The Sheriff’s Report states that Shope told the deputy he was working on Chloe’s tooth when she started crying. Shope admitted to the deputy that he yelled at the girl and told her to stop crying. When she didn’t stop, Shope said he “patted her several times on the upper torso” in an attempt to calm her.

The report states that there were no visible marks on Chloe’s upper torso.

When asked about shutting the door on the mother, Shope told the deputy his rooms are small and he closed the door so he could finish working on the daughter’s tooth.
Shope did not return repeated calls from The Daily Times on Friday and Monday.

One woman who answered the phone at Shope’s dental office Friday afternoon and said she was Shope’s wife, told The Daily Times, “You need to know those people are TennCare patients.

“They don’t have insurance and we do this to help them out.”

When asked how that pertained to the incident in the dental office that morning, the woman said, “You just need to know they’re TennCare patients.”

Maines said she is meeting with an attorney this week and has already filed a complaint with TennCare.

“Shope told the sheriff’s deputy that he issued ‘verbal commands’ to Chloe,” Maines said. “The deputy said ‘You issue verbal commands to men in the Army — not 9-year-old girls.’

“We won’t be going back there again, that’s for sure.”