After cinema, politics, audiovisual, sport, it's the turn of the medical world to know its #MeToo movement.
Victims - especially women - are speaking out today to denounce the sexual abuse they have suffered from their practitioner.
“It's a taboo that is beginning to fall, assures LCP, which devotes a documentary on the subject, broadcast on television Wednesday January 11.
For decades, no one knew anything about doctors who rape or sexually assault their patients behind closed doors in their medical offices.”
But as tongues loosen, business multiplies.
On November 24, endometriosis specialist Émile Daraï, a renowned gynecologist at the Tenon hospital in Paris, was indicted for "voluntary violence" against 32 women, and is now the subject of 36 complaints for "rape".
When in Val-d'Oise, a retired gynecologist, Doctor T., is accused by 130 patients of having committed rape and sexual assault during his consultations.
In Châlons-en-Champagne again, another “gynecologist”, suspected of rape or sexual assault on at least five patients, was indicted and placed under judicial supervision, the prosecution informed in May 2022.
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"Do you feel that I want you?"
From 2011 to 2022, directors Xavier Deleu and Julie Pichot followed several women sexually assaulted or raped by their psychiatrist, gynecologist or obstetrician.
In their 55 minutes entitled
#MeToo at the doctors
,
we first discover Jackie, who says she was raped by her psychiatrist on several occasions.
When she comes to consult him, she is depressed because of sexual abuse suffered since childhood.
And then suddenly, after a session, everything changes.
"The first time, I was going to leave and then he takes me, he says to me:" Do you feel that I want you, Jackie? I'm getting a hard-on, "says this former Corsican civil servant, facing the camera.
“He takes my hand and puts it on his penis.
He said to me: "You feel, I have desire for you."
There, we had a passage to the act.
Standing, against the radiator and the cabinet door.”
When we go to see a psychiatrist, we expose ourselves
jackie
Since then, Jackie has filed a complaint.
But the judge considers that the two adults are consenting;
it does not take into consideration the link of authority between a doctor and his patient.
“When you go to see a psychiatrist, you expose yourself, you tell your life story.
He knows a lot about you.
He knows your flaws, your fragility and he played on it, ”she explains.
Other patients would have been victims of the same doctor, but none of them would have had the courage to file a complaint.
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A well-honed strategy
The documentary also sheds light on the testimony of Anne, also a victim of her "shrink" whom she accuses of sexual assault.
A minor at the time of the events, she has been in therapy since she was 14 and a half to overcome the suicide of her older brother.
“I am a small, forceless object at the mercy of his great arms.
The gentleman kisses me on the lips.
He treats me like an adult woman that I am not,” reads his writings, which appear to be enforceable.
The man Anne is talking about is Jean-Paul Guittet, a psychiatrist in Le Mans.
One day when she felt "particularly weakened", the teenager then went to her office unexpectedly.
She is in tears, he approaches her and kisses her on the mouth.
"He says something like, 'I know there are bonds that can be created, but I don't want to hurt you at all.'
(…) Then, little by little, he goes under my clothes, he puts his hands on my chest.
As Anne describes it, the specialist has a well-rehearsed strategy to trick his prey.
“He always plays on somewhat parallel and different registers, speaking of tenderness, speaking of friendship and mixing more sexualized things, she says.
In fact, I tell myself that if it had been a stranger in the street, I would have been afraid, but we know that we can be afraid of it.
With the guy we have known for a long time – I had known him for two years – I had laid down my arms, given my confidence and that is where he acts.
Accused of sexual assault by several patients, Jean-Paul Guittet will be sanctioned at the end of his career: he is under judicial control with a ban on practicing.
On the other hand, he was not struck off the College of Physicians.
The inaction of the council of the order
In
#MeToo at the doctors
, we finally discover the story of Cécile Poitevin.
Several years ago, in the hope of having a child, she consulted a gynecologist recognized for his work on in vitro fertilization (IVF): Dr André Hazout.
The latter takes advantage of a consultation, where Cécile goes alone, to sexually abuse her.
But the wife speaks directly to her husband about it.
"I believed her right away, I supported her and now we both went to war," explains Richard Poitevin.
The couple has since found around forty alleged victims, testifying to attacks committed over several decades by André Hazout.
This led to the specialist's conviction in 2014 to eight years in prison.
He will give up appealing.
That said, the three cases in the LCP documentary highlight a major problem: the inaction of the Council of the Order of Physicians.
This disciplinary body, in which sit only doctors (mainly men, under the chairmanship of a magistrate), has indeed remained deaf to complaints from patients, including those against Dr. Hazout.
And this, despite repeated alerts since the 1990s. Richard Poitevin himself paid the price.
Doctor, he was punished with a reprimand for defamation after having denounced the rape of his wife to the council.
If today, women increasingly dare to speak in front of police and magistrates, the names of rapists in white coats continue to be pasted on the walls of cities at the initiative of feminist collectives.
Proof that the #MeToo revolution in the medical community has only just begun.
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