Public Assistance - Paris Hospitals (AP-HP) is the subject of an investigation after a complaint for failure to assist a person in danger: the mother of a patient accuses it of having failed to protect her daughter from another patient whom she accuses of rape, AFP learned on Friday from a source close to the case.
The AP-HP assures for its part that following these suspicions of rape within the Sainte-Périne geriatric hospital, it
“exchanged”
with the mother and took
“precautionary measures”
.
The complaint against the AP-HP, filed on December 5 in a police station, resulted in
"a procedure under the direction of the public health section of the Paris prosecutor's office"
, indicated the public prosecutor, confirming information from Le Parisien.
The mother says she was warned at the end of July by Paris hospital staff that a naked patient had been found, lying against her daughter, whose diaper had been removed.
“The hospital had promised me in August to take measures to protect my daughter but nothing was done,”
she expressed emotion to the police, legal guardian of her daughter with Down syndrome, who is suffering, at the age 50, neurocognitive disorders.
The management of the establishment
“did not report this tragic event to the courts, even though it had a legal obligation to do so
,” lamented the family’s lawyer, Me Alexandre Lobry.
The suspect interned for many years
The AP-HP for its part contests this version and assures that following suspicions of rape,
“the patient's mother was received on several occasions”
and
“invited to file a complaint”
.
“The precautionary measures taken immediately for the patient's safety were also the subject of discussions with her mother, who notably rejected a proposal to transfer her daughter to another department
,” continues the AP- HP.
The idea of a report was
“taken into account”
but it
“was not transmitted due to the filing of a complaint”
, adds the AP-HP.
On October 24, the mother decided to file a first complaint, consulted by AFP, for rape of a vulnerable person.
In it, she expresses her feeling that the head of department tried to make her
"compassionate"
about the suspect, repeating to her that he was
"sick"
and could, if excluded, find himself
"at the Street"
.
An investigation is entrusted to the judicial police, for
“gestures of a sexual nature suffered within the hospital”
, the prosecution confirmed on Friday.
The objective is to
“specify the materiality and qualification”
of these
“gestures”
, indicated the public prosecutor, but the suspect has not yet been heard
“due to his
psychiatric state
”
.
“Unknown to the services”
, he has
“himself been interned in psychiatry for many years”
.
The mother claims to have
“continued to encounter”
the suspect when she visited the girl.
“He is always on the same floor as her
,” she lamented at the beginning of December when filing a complaint for failure to assist a person in danger by a legal entity.