“It’s a heavy and disproportionate sentence, they’ve been after me for eight years when I was just trying to protect a child. Eugénie Izard, a child psychiatrist from Toulouse, has just been again sentenced to a three-month ban on the practice of medicine, one of which is suspended, by the national disciplinary chamber of the national council of the Order of doctors “for interference in family affairs.
In 2014 and 2015, this practitioner had made reports, worrying about possible abuse against an 8-year-old girl she was following. She then contacted the public prosecutor and the children’s judge already in charge of the protection of the little girl. But also to the President of the departmental council in charge of collecting worrying information from the department.
The father of the child then initiated proceedings against the child psychiatrist, before withdrawing his complaint. But the Council of the Order of 31 continued to prosecute Eugénie Izard without complainant. The national disciplinary chamber had sentenced her in December 2021 before the Council of the Order for “interference” and “violation of professional secrecy” to a ban on practicing for three months.
A judgment overturned last May by the Council of State for which “the only circumstance that this report was sent to the juvenile judge (…) cannot, on its own, when the juvenile judge was already seized of the situation of this child, characterize a breach” of the Public Health Code.
Many supports for the “protective doctors”
Last November, alongside another child psychiatrist, the Toulouse doctor was again heard by the national disciplinary chamber of the Order, supported that day by numerous child protection associations. But also by the Syndicate of General Medicine, pleading that the two practitioners had “only done their job and responded to their obligations as doctors and citizens by reporting children whom they had assessed as being in danger”. Like the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Abuse of Children, the union advocates the protection of “doctor protectors” and that this measure be enshrined in law.
Despite this movement of support, the disciplinary chamber therefore pronounced a new conviction of Eugénie Izard at the end of January. The latter has already indicated that she will appeal. “Article 226-14 of the Penal Code states that reporting to the competent authorities cannot engage the civil, criminal or disciplinary liability of its author, unless it is established that he did not act in good faith. They cannot condemn me for interfering in family affairs for reporting a child in danger made to the administrative authorities defined by law. They are still making an error of law and I wonder when it will stop because they condemn me for new faults at each hearing…”, deplores the child psychiatrist who is an active member of the Network of professionals for the protection of children.