The accusations against Patrick Pelloux had served as an electric shock. After testimonies of sexist and sexual violence at the hospital, the representative body of doctors in university hospital centers (CHU) committed on Friday to applying “zero tolerance” towards any guilty doctor, and promised to “ protect” victims and witnesses who “report”.
In a Paris Match investigation published last week, Karine Lacombe, head of the infectious diseases hospital department at Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris, accused emergency media physician Patrick Pelloux of “sexual and moral harassment”. The article quickly triggered a wave of reactions and other testimonies, on social networks or among certain unions and associations representing young health professionals, interns or students.
In addition to direct testimonies of attacks experienced in various establishments, many caregivers denounced a “rifle culture” (of medical students) and “patriarchal” established in the hospital and favorable to sexist and sexual violence. They also deplored a tradition of silence, in a very hierarchical world where victims fear for their careers.
“Do not leave any report unanswered”
“Through their role and the skills conferred on them”, the establishment medical commissions (CME) – bodies representing hospital doctors – “are required to know and deal with cases of sexual and gender-based violence which are reported to them”, wrote the conference of CME presidents of CHU in a press release on Friday. The conference of presidents “is committed to applying a principle of zero tolerance towards any member of the medical community who is proven guilty of such violence, in compliance with legal procedures,” she writes.
The body also calls on staff “to report cases of which they are victims or witnesses”, promises “not to leave any report unanswered, and undertakes to take all useful measures to protect the pursuit of their careers”. The presidents finally plead for “strengthening, in conjunction with the management of hospitals and those of medical faculties, the policy for the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence”.