How are potential victims of sexual assault treated in Germany? Part 2

Some basic instructions I learned about dealing with victims or potential victims of crime include: being supportive, helping to develop a safety plan, letting the victim know you care about their safety and not shaming them, and definitely not blaming the victim. This should be common knowledge and not a bullet point list in an office.

That Saturday, our first day at the Kinderklinik/Uniklinikum we were interviewed by the two doctors on duty (doctor 3 and doctor 4). I was surprised to witness how angry they were at me! or at least they seemed. The first question they asked was whether the mother knew that I was in the clinic, to which I answered no, that she was on vacation abroad. The doctors forced me to call her and tell her what was going on almost like hinting that if the mother wanted to come pick up the baby she could, even without further investigation or testing.

That was pretty much all that happened on the weekend, just dealing with nurses checking the baby's temperature from time to time and asking if he was sleeping well. Of course he slept well! he woke up crying and then I had to move him to my very small and uncomfortable folding hospital bed, so he could sleep in my arms, safe and secure.

After hours of trying, I finally got through to the mother; She came to the clinic in the afternoon and didn't say anything, instead of being worried about the situation, she was angry. However, she was kind enough to leave the baby there with me at the clinic.

The crisis however could not last forever and as we survived the weekend and the arrogance of doctors, finally Monday came. We wait anxiously for specialists and “authorities” in the field of abuse. Hours passed and no one updated me or even said anything, instead they put two more patients with their caregivers in the same room. Can you imagine a small hospital room with 4 beds and 7 people inside? oh and let's not forget, it's summer and there's no air conditioning, what a good combination right?

The doctor on duty that day reconfirmed that the specialists would examine the baby, only that we had to wait because they were very busy. We are going to call her “doctor 5” , a doctor who according to her profile on the Kinderklinik/Uniklinikum Würzburg’s webpage, “is not a tenured doctor but a substitute doctor”.

At around two in the afternoon, doctor 5 came and took us to a small room where she began to check on the baby. Once again, they asked me to undress him and it goes without saying that the little one was terrified and crying uncontrollably, it was a very stressful situation for him followed by a massive anxiety attack. There was another doctor in the room (doctor 6?), she looked more like a med student than a doctor.

Doctor 5 checked the baby's breathing, also vital signs such as pulse and temperature, and that was basically it. At the end of the examination, another female doctor (doctor 7), whom I would classify as elderly, came into the room and did not say a word to me or my baby, and did not examine the baby. The checkup did not take more than 10 minutes, and more than half of this time consisted of looking for a little toy to make the baby stop crying.

By this time, the baby's mother was back at the hospital. After I finished dressing the baby, I went to the crowded room where the mother of the baby was waiting and asked her if she could stay in the clinic that night if the baby needed to stay because it was late and we had not yet seen the promised specialists, those very serious and busy professionals that we were promised to meet. To this question the mother sarcastically replied that the baby would not stay one more night, that doctor 5 had already told her that the baby would be discharged.

I cannot find words to explain my frustration about everything that happened next! I don’t even know where to start… while I was with the baby in the checkup room, doctor 5 decided that the little one would go home. Doctor 5 completely ignored me and instead went to the mother to tell her the decision of discharging the baby. When I found out about this, I went to knock on doctor 5’s door; it took a while but she opened the door.

When confronted, her answer was yes, the baby was going “home” after she finished writing a report. That was it, no specialists or any further tests/examination, just a report given to the mother and me in the same room. This was not only unprofessional, but also unethical and negligent (where is the privacy, it was me taking the baby to the hospital because of my concerns, and doctor 5 thought it was a good idea to deliver the report to both parents together?). By the way, another doctor physically threatened me and closed the door in my face. I asked for his name to make a report but no one gave me an answer.

To add insult to injury, the report (one paragraph consisting of three lines) mentions nothing about swelling or blood in his private parts, his anxiety, or continuous pain in the crotch area, or anything of value whatsoever, just that we were in the hospital from 06.24 to 06.26. This was the “report” that Doctor 5 took more than two hours to type. How could I take such a report to the police, or to the Jugendamt; Who do these doctors protect, the possible victim of sexual assault or the possible aggressor?

If this still doesn't make someone's blood boil, wait until you read what happened next at the Kinderklinik/Uniklinikum in Würzburg.