Prosecuted for the sexual assaults of six patients – military personnel – which occurred between May and August 2021, a 47-year-old chief dental surgeon, stationed at the Legouest Armed Forces Training Hospital, in Metz, will be judged Friday, January 21, before the court of military criminal cases in Metz, revealed, Monday, January 17, BFM TV.
It was a gendarme from Thionville who reported the facts on August 20, 2021. Complaining of having been sexually touched during consultations with the chief dental surgeon of the Legouest Armed Forces Hospital. She did not wish to file a complaint but her testimony gave rise to a preliminary investigation and the filing of a complaint by five other women, all soldiers, denouncing similar facts.
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“Identical process”
The facts would have taken place between the months of May and August 2021 during aptitude visits or dental care. According to the young women, the dentist would have, on several occasions, affixed his hands to the chest, the stomach, the thighs, even, for some, the sex, of his patients. “My clients are all the more shocked that they suffered these acts when they were just going to have a simple visit to the dentist”, declared Me Élodie Maumont, civil party lawyer, adding that for each of them , “the process was identical”.
The research section of the national gendarmerie of Metz carried out the investigation. The 40-year-old was taken into custody on October 13, 2021.
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Opinion of the Ministry of the Armed Forces
“These facts deserve an exemplary criminal response both in view of their intrinsic gravity and the resulting damage to the institution and its personnel”, declared the Ministry of the Armed Forces in its opinion delivered on December 27, 2021, considering that it “There are grounds for criminal proceedings against the chief dental surgeon”. Two military personnel from the medical service of Legouest hospital had already reported similar acts in 2019.
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Right hand pain
The hearing was originally scheduled for November 19. She was postponed to January 21.
The defendant denies any sexual connotation to his touching and invokes “chronic and intermittent pain in the right hand” to justify palpations performed on patients.
He faces a 5-year prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros.
This case recalls, in many respects, that of the Dr Christian Frey, ex-doctor of the Grand Est police, sentenced by the Metz court last November to 18 months suspended imprisonment for sexual assaults on sixteen people. He had been convicted of touching and insistent and inappropriate pat-downs during the medical examinations he gave to young police recruits.
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