"We were asked to perform a vaginal touch on a patient who was asleep"
In the documentary "Des blouses pas si blanches", a former Miss France, now a general practitioner, looks back at the scandalous and terrifying highlights of her internship. It's a journey littered with slip-ups, abuse and sexual assaults on patients.
The documentary was broadcast on the French television station M6 on Sunday, 5 May. "Des blouses pas si blanches" investigates sexist and sexual violence in hospitals. Marine Lorphelin witnessed this first-hand during her medical studies. "The clichés I heard about what could go on in operating theatres, I actually experienced", she explains in her interview. The former Miss France describes an unhealthy and misogynistic world, with inappropriate behaviour, "dirty jokes" and assaults. "I was one of the only women. I was very young, I had already been elected Miss France and I was subjected to dozens and dozens of dirty jokes, questions about my intimacy, wandering hands and really inappropriate behaviour".
Women as objects
"There's also a lack of respect for women's bodies in the operating theatres I've seen", she continues, pointing out that the operating theatre is an exclusively (or almost exclusively) male environment "run by men". In particular, she deplores the lack of female surgeons. It was in this context that she witnessed a traumatic event: "We found ourselves in the operating theatre with several students. We were asked to perform a vaginal touch on a patient who was asleep, to teach us how to do it". She regrets not having been able to react: "I wasn't able to defend this patient. I couldn't speak up for her, because she hadn't given her consent at all."
For her, there was no doubt that it was "clearly a gratuitous sexual assault, offered to students".
(AsD - Source : CNews - Picture : Marine Lorphelin au festival de Cannes mai 2014 by Georges Biard via Wikicommons under license Creative commons CC-BY-SA-3.0)
