Could this be the beginnings of #MeToo Hospital? Anne Jouan’s article, published Wednesday in Paris Match, reveals that infectious disease specialist Karine Lacombe implicates the famous emergency physician Patrick Pelloux for acts of “sexual and moral harassment”. Karine Lacombe mentioned the facts in her book Women will save the hospital without directly quoting Patrick Pelloux. In her investigation, journalist Anne Jouan identified the emergency physician and Karine Lacombe did not confirm his identity.
Florie Sullerot, 27 years old, the president of the autonomous national inter-union representative of general medicine interns (Isnar-IMG) reacts to 20 minutes. This union has 24 local sections and 6,000 members.
To your knowledge, has gender-based and sexual violence been taking place in hospitals for a long time? And why ?
Rifle culture, that is to say the set of customs and humor to create cohesion between health students, is imbued with what sociologists call rape culture. It refers to a set of attitudes and behaviors shared within a society which minimizes, normalizes and even encourages both gender-based and sexual violence and rape. It’s ingrained, it’s unacceptable and it starts in our studies.
In our sector, there is a very marked hierarchy, which presupposes power and domination and it is quite easy to understand what happens next… Most of the sexist and sexual violence committed in hospitals is the work of hierarchical superiors. This domination will create opportunities for aggressors and limit the victims’ speech. And, we will be more subject to these questions of pressure when we are internal. For example, if an intern is planning a career in a university hospital, she will have more difficulty reporting her future employer-head of department.
Do you hope that Karine Lacombe’s public speaking can free people to speak out, creating this #MeToo Hospital?
It’s very good that well-known people like Karine Lacombe are speaking out, but we must not forget that it has a cost. There are broken careers, like in cinema, even when we see big waves of solidarity like this. We truly hope that with the feminization of our profession and the #MeToo context, this will help women to speak out to denounce this violence. But it should also be noted that despite this feminization, positions of power remain in the hands of men and deans, for example, are in the minority.
How do you support interns who contact you about gender-based and sexual violence?
There is no national standardization of procedures for dealing with gender-based and sexual violence: in some faculties they are very protective and in others not at all. It is at the discretion of the general medicine departments, deans and department heads. Even if complaints ultimately increase, sanctions remain few.
So, when testimonies reach our local unions, we advise them to file a triple complaint: before the courts, before the medical association and before the administration to request disciplinary action. We have a lot of attackers who will be protected by the head of department, sometimes it is himself, the head of department, who is the aggressor and who will therefore know “the big shots” of the administration. This will lead to a sort of trivialization of what the victim undergoes. We absolutely want to avoid her finding herself alone and, if in support we have to go back to the deans, we do it.
Are the structural problems of public hospitals also obstacles to getting victims of sexist and sexual violence to speak out?
There has been an overall weakening of the health system by politicians in recent years, and this does not help to free up speech. If I speak and then the head of department is no longer there the department can flow and we can have the feeling of a spiral. But we must get rid of it, these women are not responsible for this weakening. Shame must change sides. We hope that in a few years, it will become normal to be able to complain about sexist and sexual violence in hospitals and that there will no longer be taboo or fear.