“Suspend disciplinary proceedings against protective doctors. This recommendation from the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Abuse of Children (Ciivise) is included in the report it released on Thursday. And the recommendation finds an immediate echo in the news since it is also this Thursday that the Council of State looked into the case of a Toulouse child psychiatrist, suspended by his council of the order after having made a report of mistreatment presumed.
Eugénie Izard had expressed her concerns in the case of an 8-year-old girl she was following. Doctors can indeed make an exception to medical secrecy if they have suspicions that a child is being abused and make a report to the public prosecutor, who can trigger an investigation.
Except that in this specific case, the child psychiatrist addressed the children’s judge already in charge of the protection of the little girl, and not the public prosecutor. The father of the child who accused him of “interfering in family affairs without professional reason” initiated proceedings against Eugénie Izard before the bar association. The disciplinary chamber sentenced her to a three-month ban on practicing.
“It’s the only way to protect children”
“Doctors need to be able to report abuse while being protected from prosecution. This is the only way to protect children, ”explained Eugénie Izard on Thursday. His case illustrates the legal uncertainty in which doctors find themselves, who can be sued before the council of the order by the parent suspected of aggression.
Some 160,000 children are victims of sexual violence, mainly incest, each year in France. Subject to medical secrecy, risking disciplinary proceedings, doctors are at the origin of only 5% of reports of mistreatment of minors.