BOSTON -- A doctor accused of sexually molesting seven young boys while treating them at Children's Hospital in Boston will stop seeing patients, a UNC School of Medicine spokeswoman said Thursday.

Dr. Melvin Levine, 68, who denied the allegations earlier this week, was named in a civil law suit filed Monday and charged with a pattern of abuse over a period of 17 years that ended in 1984. Levine has been affiliated with UNC since 1987. He retired in 2006, but was still seeing a few patients about twice a month.

VIDEO: Accused Doctor To Stop Seeing Patients

One of the men charging the doctor with sexual abuse said he was "unable to recall" the events until February 2006. The man claimed that the assaults started in 1980 and were done, "under the guise of performing repeated, but unnecessary, physical examinations."

The accuser, who is unnamed in the civil suit, was 8 years old at the time and saw Levine for psychiatric treatment. At the time, Levine, a Harvard-educated physician, was the chief of the Division of Ambulatory Pediatrics at the hospital.

Levine is a nationally recognized expert on child learning and now a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School. He is the author of at least six books, including "A Mind At A Time," a New York Times bestseller.

"He adamantly denies these claims," said Levine's attorney Edward Mahoney. "Dr. Levine is distressed about the distorted or misrepresented memories from decades past, and questions the motivations."

The other men claiming sexual assault said the abuse also occurred when they were Levine's patients in Boston. Their ages at the time ranged from 5 to 13.