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In a Bielefeld hospital, an assistant doctor raped many patients in 2019 and 2020. According to new research, there may be other victims – but the public prosecutor’s office has not yet recognized them as such.
Even more than three years after the Bielefeld rape scandal became public, not all women may still know that they have been victims of a sexual crime. This is shown by joint research by ARD-Politics magazine Contrasts with the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” and the “Westfalen-Blatt”.
Philipp G. filmed many of his actions
The Duisburg public prosecutor’s office has so far only counted the 30 patients at the Evangelical Bethel Clinic as victims of whom there are videos. The assistant doctor Philipp G. anesthetized her and filmed many of his actions. G. is also said to have drugged four other patients – it is unclear whether he also raped them.
One of them is Britta Schulte (name changed). “I am treated as a second-class victim,” she says. “I’m really angry now.” Schulte’s name is on a list of women’s roommates who were raped.
At the order of the public prosecutor, the clinic granted access to patient administration data at the end of 2022. In February 2023, the Bielefeld police contacted Schulte. The investigators wanted to speak to her – as a possible witness.
Between February 2019 and April 2020, the assistant doctor Philipp G. drugged and raped numerous patients. After his arrest in autumn 2020, he committed suicide. In his apartment, the police found hard drives with videos of his crimes, as well as a list of 80 names of women.
Affected women were not initially informed
Nevertheless, the Bielefeld public prosecutor’s office initially decided not to inform the women affected. She stopped the investigation, as did the Hamm Public Prosecutor’s Office. The Duisburg public prosecutor’s office later reopened the proceedings and had those affected informed by the police in January 2022.
Schulte spent six days in the hospital’s neurological ward in the summer of 2019. For one night she shared a room with one of the women of whom there is video evidence showing that Philipp G. drugged and sexually assaulted her.
Today, Schulte says she was surprised to be treated as a witness during the interrogation in February 2023. “I was asked again and again if I noticed anything about my bedmate.” A doctor gave her access himself and didn’t want to answer questions about it in a comprehensible way.
Philipp G. identified
Schulte identified this doctor as Philipp G. in a police photo. After Schulte’s first interrogation, the investigators assumed that she had been drugged so that G. could assault her roommate, the public prosecutor wrote Contrasts, “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” and “Westfalen-Blatt”. However, no video material from Schulte was found at G.’s home.
Schulte now assumes that she was the victim of a sexual offense committed by Philipp G. at the Bethel Clinic. After her stay in the hospital, she suddenly reacted differently to her long-term partner. “When he hugged me from behind while I was sleeping, I would sweat and my heart would pound.” At the time she couldn’t explain it, but today she suspects rape was the cause. Because of this, their relationship fell apart.
Accesses laid
In November 2023, she therefore turned to lawyer Stefanie Höke, who represents Philipp G.’s other victims. Accompanied by them, Schulte testified again to the police in December. In the meantime, Schulte had remembered something: Philipp G. had only given her access after she had already been moved to another room. Schulte therefore rules out any connection with the sexual assault of her first roommate.
The public prosecutor writes that according to the roster, Philipp G. was on vacation from the second day of Schulte’s hospital stay. However, G. is also said to have been seen in the clinic outside of his working hours in other cases – including in connection with accesses made to patients. “I have a bad feeling that many people don’t even know what happened to them,” says Schulte. “Because they weren’t surprised that an entrance was made to them.”
“This sedation was wrongly done”
The fact that Schulte was given access is also acknowledged by the v. Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel. She is the main shareholder of the clinic. Its chairman asked Schulte to apologize in a letter in August 2023. He wrote that she had received “an anesthetic that was neither prescribed nor necessary.” “This sedation was done wrongly.”
The Bethel Clinic and the foundation have set up a support fund for the victims of sexual abuse by Philipp G.. The foundation said Schulte could also access it – although not in the same form as the 30 women known to the police who were raped as Philipp G.’s patients, but “in a somewhat modified form,” as stated in a letter from the foundation at Schulte is called.
She would have up to 10,000 euros available for therapy. The rape victims identified by the investigators also received high compensation payments. “The public prosecutor’s office is investigating the victims of sexual abuse,” the clinic and the foundation said upon request.
Investigators are looking for more witnesses
The investigators are now trying to find an older woman with whom Schulte shared her second room in the clinic. This woman, says Schulte, said to her one morning: “You had visitors late!” At the time she couldn’t do anything with it. Today she suspects that this is a reference to a nighttime attack by Philipp G.
During her first interrogation in February 2023, Schulte says, the police officer put a piece of paper in her hand. The sexually transmitted diseases of Philipp G. that were discovered during the autopsy were listed.
When asked, the public prosecutor wrote that this “information sheet” was handed over “as a precautionary measure”. “Since the witness was given access, a sexual offense cannot ultimately be ruled out with absolute certainty, even if there are no images or video recordings.”