They are nurses, caregivers, doctors or even members of the hospital’s administrative staff: four women told AFP about the attacks they were victims of at the hands of doctors. Testimonies collected after the accusations of infectious disease specialist Karine Lacombe towards emergency media specialist Patrick Pelloux.
Sara*, 34 years old, nurse
“That day, I was on duty in the maternity ward,” Sara remembers. In 2017, the 27-year-old young woman was a temporary nurse in a hospital in Seine-Saint-Denis. “I needed a doctor and I went to find the intern. I had seen him before and he seemed friendly enough.” But on the way, between two swinging doors, “he grabbed my butt”. “He said something like ‘a la queuleuleu’ to me to make it look like a game. I was stunned, I remained frozen, I couldn’t do anything.”
The nurse warns the nursing managers, who support her. The head of department, on the other hand, warns her: “We are short of doctors, it will be your word against his.”
Elisa*, switchboard operator, 51 years old
“I worked at night in a room a little far from the main hospital building”, in Calvados, says Elisa ten years after the events. “An anesthesiologist came to see me and offered me several things to eat. He was drunk and I refused.” The doctor, on duty, returns to his post before returning to the charge. “He managed to pin me against the wall and grabbed me by the neck to forcefully kiss me. I backed away, but he came at me and continued: I saw no way out, I I was panicking.” She was eventually saved when an alarm went off. A few days later, unable to sleep, on sick leave, she took too many sleeping pills and ended up in the emergency room.
His complaints to the gendarmerie and the order of doctors were closed. The anesthetist was fired from the hospital and found a job in Paris.
Sandrine*, caregiver, 58 years old
“For my first time in the operating room, I asked where I should stand and the anesthetist showed me a place,” says Sandrine, who worked in an establishment in Normandy. “He ‘rubbed’ me during a whole part of the operation. I was barely 30 years old, I was paralyzed.” The surgeon understands what is happening and suggests that the young woman change places in the operating room.
A few years later, she is in the ENT department. “The surgeon was known to have affairs with student nurses, he told everything in detail.” One Sunday morning, when it was quiet, he asked me to go get him a blouse. He followed me to the locker room and tried to kiss me. I threw the blouse rack at him and ran.”
She told her union about the incident but did not file a complaint. “At the time, I felt guilty. I asked myself ‘but what did I do to make him do that? Did I make a gesture, a look that he misinterpreted?'”.
Julia*, 33 years old, doctor
“We were doing a medical examination. Suddenly the doctor started gesticulating, rubbing against my chest and it messed up my blouse a little,” describes Julia, then a 27-year-old intern. She doesn’t let anything show in front of the forty-year-old, who uses the excuse of a joke seen on television.
He ends up apologizing, under pressure from his female colleagues. Today, she says she is very surprised by this gesture on the part of a rather “benevolent” doctor despite “his tough wit” and “his salacious jokes”.
Earlier in his course, in an operating room, “the surgeon asked me to be behind him to watch the operation closely” “My chest is stuck to his back, and there, he throws at the intern in in front of him ‘she has a BT!’. Julia, then 23 years old, understood shortly after the meaning of these initials: beautiful chest. “A heavy joke”.
*The first names have been changed at the request of the women testifying.