A doctor from Sarthe was sentenced to 10 months in prison for non-assistance to a person in danger in the context of mistreatment of the elderly.
It is a court decision that risks becoming a landmark, as reported by the Medical Press Agency (APM). A doctor was indeed definitively sentenced to 10 months suspended imprisonment for non-assistance to a person in danger, towards residents of the local hospital of Bonnétable (Sarthe) victims of mistreatment, in a decree of October 23 of the Court of Cassation.
In 2004, an investigation was opened into the ill-treatment of dependent elderly people in the long-stay department of Bonnétable hospital. Five years later, the Criminal Court of Le Mans condemns 7 people in this case. 2 nursing assistants and 2 hospital service agents are sentenced to one year in prison, including three months with a ban on exercising an activity (professional or voluntary) in contact with elderly, sick and disabled people for three years. A health officer, the deputy director of the establishment and the attached doctor are sentenced to one year in prison suspended for not reporting ill-treatment. The investigation had indeed shown that residents were victims of numerous forms of violence: insults, brutal meals, cold showers, etc. Others were ruthlessly manipulated, even beaten.
The judgment concerning the doctor was nevertheless annulled by the Court of Cassation in 2011, due to medical confidentiality: the Court then validated the doctor’s defense stipulating that he would have had to ask each patient for the lifting of medical confidentiality so that ‘he can denounce the ill-treatment. After having reclassified the facts as “non-assistance to a person in danger”, the prosecution finally obtained the final conviction of the doctor on October 23. This means that if medical confidentiality effectively prevents doctors from denouncing facts of mistreatment, it does not exonerate them from acting in order to put an end to it.
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