When Medical Staff Sexually Abuse Patients, the Consequences can be Devastating, Even Life Threatening
- Dignity 4Patients
- Jul 29
- 7 min read
By Beth Docherty- 29/07/2025- Yahoo News- [Pittsburgh, US]
It was the last place I wanted to be, but with a fever spiking 104 degrees Fahrenheit, I couldn’t avoid it. Unbearable pain shot through my body. Pins and needles pricked my almost numb legs. As a technician slid me into the MRI tube, I thought about leaving against medical advice.
I had been sick for weeks before going to the emergency room. Every day, I told myself it would be better in the morning, as I had done with every illness for years. But it didn’t get better this time. I didn’t know I was septic with an abscess on my spine — and literally fighting for my life.
The MRI technician, seeing my agony, gently removed my shoes. “Try not to move, but press this if you have any trouble,” she said, handing me a small button connected to a long cable. During the procedure, she occasionally stopped the test, asking if I was OK. I held my breath, praying the pain would recede, singing songs in my head to calm myself. Sixty minutes later, she walked me to the waiting room. Moments later, she returned with a gurney.
For decades, I’d lived as if my life were perfect: I had a best friend for a husband, a dream job, a wonderful support system of friends and family, and a life filled with music. On the outside, it was idyllic. On the inside, anxiety ripped me apart. I was terrified to see health care providers and compelled myself to stay well, often ignoring the lifelong complications from a birth defect.
At birth, doctors told my parents I would never walk because of my broken and dislocated hips due to bilateral hip dysplasia. They were wrong, but I walked with a severe limp, leaving me self-conscious and shame-filled. Every six months throughout my early teens, I underwent X-rays to monitor my condition. During one of those appointments, the technician sexually abused me.
I told no one, as he instructed, but carried the abuse in my bones. Three years after that incident, a music teacher raped me daily for over a year. My eventual disclosure led to his conviction and a 30-year prison term, but it didn’t erase the hell I’d lived through.
After the sentencing, I rebuilt my life, but the trauma continued to affect my long-term health. A clinical psychologist diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder. I experienced flashbacks and night terrors that woke me in the middle of the night as if I were being raped all over again. The experience was so overwhelming and disorienting that, at times, I didn’t know where I was. My anxiety was often highest in situations where I had little control, like a doctor’s office.
Any time a health concern or even a routine checkup approached, I wrestled with feelings of despair and often canceled the appointment. The thought of lying prone or hearing the whispery crackle of the examination table paper threw me into sheer panic.
By my mid-30s, the constant pain in my hips brought me to tears. Intense pain woke me at night. I recognized I needed to address my hip problem, but knowing I’d require X-rays stopped me dead in my tracks.
Witnessing my parents endure severe medical challenges, including a liver transplant, cancer and a life-threatening blood infection, intensified my anxieties. Hospitals and medical facilities, I learned, were scary places filled with suffering and death.
I didn’t know how to approach medical providers about what I was going through. Even when I tried to phone ahead and explain my fears, receptionists informed me I had to be an established patient to speak with the doctor.
So instead, I avoided medical care, like so many other trauma survivors. Pain in my side? I’m sure it will go away. Cut on my hand? I’ll suture it myself. Urinary tract infection? I’ll take my dog’s expired antibiotics. Anything to avoid the terror and loss of control.
Until I became septic.
Twelve hours after the MRI, the neurosurgeon admitted me to the hospital for emergency surgery to remove the abscess on my spine. Because I had waited so long, the infection had spread to my bloodstream and now my organs had begun to fail.
I had to decide: face my fears or die.
I found myself trapped in a traumatizing and impersonal system. I was a body, a number, an infection. Orderlies pushed me through the operating room doors without looking at me. A team of faceless people donning gowns and masks scurried around the room. I was simultaneously invisible and the center of attention.
They transferred me from the gurney to the operating room table while an anesthesiologist administered anesthesia. Medical staff asked me questions and moved my body around like a rag doll. Beeping instruments pierced any calm I struggled to maintain. As they covered me with a warm blanket, the surgeon told me to count backward from 10. I fought to stay awake, to stay in control.
Four hours later, I opened my eyes.
The infectious disease doctor, a towering man with a gentle face, softly said, “You are a very sick woman, but we are going to figure this out.” While these words were so kind, the experience still felt nightmarish as the medical team worked to treat the infection coursing through me. I had to submit myself to and rely on medical providers who barely introduced themselves while drawing blood, placing IVs, asking questions, and taking me for scans.
The health care system is challenging to navigate. This model — a labyrinth of complexities, rules, regulations and constraints — often overlooks the whole patient. For people dealing with serious illnesses or who have suffered significant trauma, such as sexual violence or medical trauma, it can be even more harrowing.
Managing appointments, choosing doctors, scheduling and undergoing invasive tests, and engaging insurance are stressful and exhausting experiences for most people. But when someone is suffering from PTSD, the anxiety is heightened.
What I needed and didn’t know until years later, was a trauma-informed health care provider.
Trauma-informed health care providers understand the high prevalence of trauma. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) specifies that a trauma-informed system includes providers who realize the impact of and the potential for healing from trauma, recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in their patients and systems, respond by integrating that knowledge into their practices, and resist traumatizing already traumatized individuals.
A fear of doctors is quite common. Research suggests that about “one third of adults avoided doctor visits they had deemed necessary.” Although “less than 3%” have an actual diagnosis of iatrophobia (fear of physicians, medical care, or the medical care system), many people “never seek a diagnosis for their condition and instead engage in avoidance behaviors.” This doesn’t surprise me. I have dozens of firsthand narratives of people avoiding care.
Some of them have died because of this fear.
Trauma-informed providers could mean the difference between life and death for treatment-adverse patients by simply creating a safe space for everyone. Many people equate being trauma-informed with being compassionate. While compassion is important, it isn’t enough. Re-traumatization is usually unintentional and sometimes built into systems. For example, the use of restraints or cutting off someone’s clothing during an emergency.
Providers can combat this by implementing SAMHSA’s six principles of trauma-informed care, including Safety, Trustworthiness and Transparency, Collaboration, and Empowerment as a scaffolding to create safe environments.
Patients may feel more comfortable sharing concerns when they know a provider is trauma-informed, and practitioners may feel less frustrated when they look at patient behaviors through a trauma-informed lens.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find trauma-informed health care providers. Medical programs don’t embed it in their curriculums; if they do, it’s typically a single lecture or a brief four-week course for those specializing in child maltreatment.
Many people are working to educate health care providers on becoming trauma-informed, but the progress is slow. Until there is a more established curriculum, patients must advocate for themselves. Calling local rape crisis centers or trauma-informed therapists is a great first step. They often have a list of providers who are good with trauma survivors. Next would be to interview your doctors. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, use notes at an appointment, or speak openly about your concerns. Health care providers should be a partner in your health care journey.
The sepsis was my breaking point, and although it almost killed me, the experience saved my life.
The recovery took an entire year. I endured eight weeks of daily intravenous antibiotics, sustained nerve damage, and underwent months of physical therapy. But during my treatment, I learned what trauma-informed care looked like. For example, the compassion shown by the infectious disease doctor and neurosurgeon, along with the providers who fostered a safe space by introducing themselves and seeking my permission before touching me, helped me understand what I needed to feel safe.
As I built trust with my providers, I took a chance and shared my fears with a therapist. To my surprise, I learned that many sexual abuse survivors develop a health care aversion and avoid doctors.
After working through my trauma, I found an orthopedic surgeon who replaced both of my hips, something I never imagined doing. He practiced trauma-informed principles and helped me feel safe, empowered, and like we were collaborating in my health care. When I shared my trauma history and fears about being catheterized for surgery, he looked at me and said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you. Thank you for telling me.” He changed my life. Now, I can walk and dance pain-free. His positive, nonjudgmental response gave me the courage to seek my next trauma-informed provider.
Beth Docherty is the principal of The TRUST Project, a research and outreach initiative dedicated to educating medical professionals and students on the links between trauma, health and well-being. She lectures and speaks nationally at universities, conferences, medical facilities and public events about trauma-informed care. She is a member of the Physical and Behavioral Health Action Team of the HEAL PA initiative to implement trauma-informed care across the state of Pennsylvania.
Dignity4Patients Commentary: The importance of trauma informed healthcare cannot be underestimated. Healing starts with understanding- trauma informed healthcare providers don't just treat illness, but the person behind the symptoms.
