The case raises further questions about what the Health Care Complaints Commission and the NSW Medical Board knew of Mr Reeves, and about the role of health authorities in reporting such cases.

Under public pressure, the complaints commission finally revealed last week that it had received 25 complaints against Mr Reeves between 1990 and 2007.

But it said only three were linked to patient deaths, including one baby, and one not substantiated.

The court files, however, reveal the deaths of Mrs Taborek’s twins have been linked to Mr Reeves. At least seven known civil cases, most successful, were brought against Mr Reeves, who is now under police investigation over claims of hundreds of botched procedures and sexual assault and genital mutilation.

Mr Reeves was not banned from obstetrics until 1997, two years after he attended Mrs Taborek, and was allowed to continue practising gynaecology under supervision. He was deregistered in 2004 for working as an obstetrician at two south coast public hospitals after the health department failed to run background checks.

Iwona and Arthur Taborek sued the Northern Sydney Area Health Service and Mr Reeves in 1999 for $750,000 and settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Last week, the complaints commission and the NSW Medical Board refused to confirm whether they investigated or even if they were aware of the twins’ deaths. Both said they could not comment on individual cases. But Mrs Taborek says she gave evidence to a Medical Board hearing in 1996.

In another case against Mr Reeves, a Supreme Court judge awarded Margaret Russell $129,250 due to the trauma she suffered from the vaginal delivery of her dead baby at the Sydney Adventist Hospital in September 1996. Mr Reeves told her to “shut up and push” and grabbed the baby’s head and twisted it at “severe angles” in an attempt to dislodge the baby’s shoulders after he became stuck for 40 minutes, Justice Richard Chesterman said.

Mr Reeves had refused a caesarean. The judge said the mother had recalled Mr Reeves “putting his foot against the bed whilst pulling the baby by the head to complete the delivery”.

“Her fear was such that she thought she was going to die and she attempted to say goodbye to her husband,” he said.

Lisa McCann sued Mr Reeves in the District Court for $750,000 alleging he advised her to proceed with a pregnancy and vaginal birth despite a congenital pelvic abnormality that put her at high risk of uterovaginal prolapse, which in fact occurred after her baby was born in April 1995 at Hornsby Hospital. He later unsuccessfully tried to surgically fix her uterus to her abdominal wall and she suffered a serious post-operative infection.

She abandoned her claim against him in 2001, two years after he was declared bankrupt.

Carol and Joseph Bleakley settled their case for $750,000 with Mr Reeves on the morning of their 1999 hearing. He failed to diagnose a foetal abnormality in 1995 that would have led them to terminate the pregnancy because he misinterpreted her ultrasound, court documents said.

Mrs Taborek, who has a 29-year-old son, was shocked when she learned Mr Reeves was allowed to keep working.

“How can he do this practice when he is a dangerous man?”