Two former nursing assistants from a specialized reception center in Cantin (North) were sentenced to suspended prison sentences and banned from practicing for five years for having dressed in sexy underwear and then photographed a patient heavily polyhandicapée, according to the lawyers.
Read also: Two caregivers convicted of violence on a nursing home resident
The management of the establishment had dismissed the oldest, two years from retirement, and had not renewed the CDD of his colleague, aged twenty years, after the discovery of the facts dating from September 2020, according to lawyers confirming information from the Voice of the North. The Douai correctional court sentenced them on Tuesday to respectively five and three months in prison suspended and damages of a few hundred euros, for voluntary violence without incapacity on a vulnerable person likely to cause psychological trauma, and the capture and dissemination of images of a sexual nature.
During a night of work in September, they had dressed in "
erotic
"
underwear
, brought by them, a 38-year-old patient whose mental age is that of a six-year-old child, according to medical experts. They then took pictures of it, which they showed to colleagues. Was it to humiliate and make fun of her? Or with his consent and to “
please
” a resident described by the defense as “
very flirtatious and feminine
”?
According to the victim's lawyer - "
who no longer has a family and is placed under guardianship
" provided by an association - this was "
imposed
" on him. "
It is shocking
", explains Me Pierre-Jean Gribouva, while stressing that it is an "
isolated act
", and that the supervisory keeps "
confidence
" in this establishment. "
There are no intentional elements to humiliate
", assures Sarah Bensaber, counsel to the experienced nursing assistant, who has known the victim since "
the 2000s
". His client "
expressed regret
".
According to defense lawyers, lingerie did not have a sexual connotation. "
There was a lightness on the part of my client but absolutely nothing humiliating, malicious,
" says Me Alban Deberdt, lawyer for the young caregiver who also made "
honorable amends
". “
It was to brighten up his life (..) It is not because we are disabled that we cannot have moments of joy and the freedom to dress as we wish. She chooses her clothes saying yes or no. There, she did not say no
”, affirms Me Alban Deberdt. The two lawyers plan to appeal, seeing in the ban on exercising a "
social death
".