Dear Editor,
Medical practice is about legitimately making the body an object of diagnostic intervention; doctors who are sex offenders can`t do this without transgressing the mental and symbolic barrier (ie via threats) surrounding the body. The issue of sociogenic fears would undoubtedly emerge with particular salience whenever a patient is touched by a professional who has a sex conviction. Fear is central to the placement of boundaries around the body.
Employing someone who is a sex offender in a hospital, of all places, moreso someone who has offended against children, is wholly out of keeping with the sensibilities of modern, civilized human beings. In this context I use the word civilized in a neutral, non-evaluative and analytical sense to describe a particular configuration of sensibilities and attitudes. Throughout the civilized world, this boundary line has an unspoken, barely visible character of something which everyone has taken for granted. It becomes visible and obvious, only when an outrageous and objectionable decision as that of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation crosses the line, or else when evidence from other times or other places shows how differently that line has been drawn elsewhere.
In all Western countries, there is a statutory bar on those who have sex offences in their antecedent history of offending from working in social care professions, ie, medicine, nursing, dentistry, social work and so on. The reason for this, especially in the social care disciplines of medicine and nursing where there is enhanced propinquity to the point of tactility between practitioner and patient, is that many who are touched by a sex offender professional in the process of ‘legitimate’ intimate examinations may interpret and construe such touch as being negative and nefarious. Hence the practitioner would be touching unwilling and objecting individuals, thereby transgressing the patient’s right to bodily inviolability. In such a context, touching would be construed as an assault. Assault in such a context is less a matter of consent than a matter of objection. For this reason, and obvious reasons of potential risks to patients, hospitals in ultra-litigious countries such as the UK and USA strictly avoid employing medical doctors and other social care workers who have sexual offending convictions.
Had the doctor’s conviction been, let’s say, in shoplifting or in public order offending, ie, causing harassment, alarm and distress, surely I wouldn’t be writing this letter, not because these offences are trivial, which they are not, but because they are unrelated offences to this context and hence they would not elicit a firestorm of protest in Guyana because the doctor would still be practising in the USA. The doctor’s offences are related offences to the context of his proficiency as a medical practitioner. Medical practice is intricately bound up with the integrity attached to the inviolability of bodily territoriality, hence because of his sex conviction the doctor in question has forfeited his statutory authority to undemarcate mental, symbolic and physical boundaries placed around the body, and this makes him ineligible to ever practise medicine in any part of the world.
Some contributors to this subject have called for a ‘second chance’ for the doctor while others have either blithely disregarded or inadvertently omitted the fact that there is a young vulnerable victim caught up in this squalid and sordid affair. There is always the risk of re-offending and of serious harm to children, likely to be exacerbated if the doctor is allowed to work within a context which gives him access to children. Therefore I am requesting that the Medical Council of Guyana and the Georgetown Public Hospital in line with international conventions relieve this practitioner of his duties immediately.
This is indeed a human tragedy and I am well aware of the lucubrations involved in qualifying as a medical practitioner, but my concern will never ever be for an adult who has committed the most egregious breach of trust. Many children who have been sexually abused will as a consequence exhibit disturbed behaviour, ie, self-harm, sexually abusive behaviour, inappropriate sexualized behaviour, depression and loss of self-esteem. These adverse effects of the brutality of being sexually abused may endure well beyond adulthood. It is therefore incumbent on all, professionals and non-professionals alike, to safeguard children from a minority who don’t care a damn about the feelings of others.
Yours faithfully,
Joseph B Collins
Manager
Children`s and Families Department
Manchester City Council
Manchester, UK
