RMC INFO. The mother of a vulnerable patient, sexually assaulted in her room by another patient, filed a complaint against the Sainte-Périne-Rossini hospital (AP-HP) after facts observed in flagrante delicto by the nursing staff on her daughter. ‘last summer. The management is accused of having neither taken legal action nor removed the patient in question.
It was a caregiver who caught the attacker in the act. On July 27, in the gerontology department of the Sainte-Périne-Rossini hospital in Paris, in the 16th arrondissement, this temporary worker accidentally opened the door to a patient’s room and discovered her in her room. bed with another patient who was naked and lying against her, according to information collected by RMC.
Called urgently, a doctor also witnessed the incident and ordered the patient to get dressed and return to his room, located on the same floor. The victim, a 50-year-old woman with Down syndrome, suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and has lost the ability to speak.
His mother, Christina (not her real name), who is also her guardian, was notified by the medical team the next day, assuring her that measures had been taken. However, a few days later, when she came to visit her daughter, Christina was stunned: “I got out of the elevator and in front of my daughter’s bedroom door, I found this gentleman,” she tells RMC .
No reporting to justice
Almost a month after the events, on August 23, Christina was received for an information meeting in the presence of a member of the hospital management and a department manager, himself the attending physician of the patient put in charge. cause.
During this exchange recorded by Christina and of which RMC reveals anonymized extracts, the management representative explains to the victim’s mother that the facts can “be qualified by a judge as ‘sexual assault’, while explaining that the hospital has not yet reported these facts to the courts, as it has a legal obligation to do.
“For the moment, we have not made this report to the prosecutor, it is a question that we are seriously asking ourselves…”, she said.
In reality, those responsible for the Sainte-Périne-Rossini hospital never contacted the Paris prosecutor’s office, which notably prompted Christina to file a complaint at the end of October on behalf of her daughter for rape of a vulnerable person.
“I am someone who respects institutions and I trust them. I was waiting for them to do something. And then I realized that they don’t do anything. He (the alleged attacker, editor’s note) is still there and my daughter continues to be under the same threat,” laments the mother of the complainant at the microphone of RMC.
“He is criminally responsible”
Upon receipt of this first complaint, the Paris prosecutor’s office immediately opened a preliminary investigation, entrusted to the 1st district of the Paris judicial police.
This investigation must in particular “specify the materiality and qualification” of the facts, specifies RMC the Paris prosecutor’s office, adding that “the suspected man being himself interned in psychiatry for many years, medical elements must be collected before any hearing”.
An assessment should be carried out to find out whether the patient in question is suitable to be questioned. During the meeting on August 23, this man’s treating doctor stated: “This gentleman is not fully aware of what he is doing, even if he is criminally responsible.”
Already two “doubts” in ten years
Also during this meeting at the end of August, the head of the department explained to Christina that his patient had already been suspected of similar acts in the past.
“There have been two episodes in ten years where we had doubts about something of this type, on the order of sexual assault. (…) It was a bit like what happened with (your daughter),” he declares before estimating a little later that “he’s not a big repeat offender, I’m not sure it is very dangerous”.
At the time, this doctor also said he was wondering about the advisability and possible consequences of moving away the patient in question, “because leaving them on the same floor means maintaining a certain number of risks”, he underlined.
Ultimately, no such measure seems to have been taken, according to Christina, who claims to regularly see this man when she comes to visit her daughter.
She therefore filed a second complaint at the beginning of December for “failure to assist a person in danger” against the hospital, which she accuses of “not taking any measures to protect (her) daughter”.
His lawyers, Alexandre Lobry and Laura Abecassis, denounce a broken trust with the hospital establishment and also want the opening of an administrative investigation in order to understand “why the facts were not reported to the public prosecutor and why measures were not taken to protect the patient”.
Contacted by RMC, the AP-HP, to which the Sainte-Périne-Rossini hospital depends, did not wish to answer our questions or make any comments. The patient implicated in this case remains presumed innocent.
2023-12-22 12:19:53
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