PHILIPSBURG--A male nurse is facing 54 months in prison for allegedly drugging two young female patients at St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) and touching them inappropriately while they were in a semi-conscious state.
R.I.J.P. (37) stood trial in the Court of First Instance on Wednesday charged with three counts of sexual assault involving female patients at SMMC between July 2022 and April 2024.
In addition to the two who were allegedly given the powerful sedative Midazolam, the third count on the defendant’s indictment stems from a young woman who told investigators that she had waken up in the middle of the night to P. touching her private parts. She was 17 years old at the time and had been admitted to hospital following a suicide attempt.
A box of Midazolam vials had been found in a search of P.’s home in early May. This drug – often used to sedate people in intensive care units or as a precursor to surgical anaesthesia – causes sleepiness, muscle weakness and memory loss.
Midazolam can start working in as little as five minutes when administered via an intravenous drip and, according to the prosecutor, a “therapeutic” dose can only be detected in blood or urine for six to 12 hours.
“I have never touched any patient,” P. told the court on Wednesday, saying he did not know why the women had accused him of sexual assault. He also claimed that one of them had been hallucinating.
P.’s lawyer Shaira Bommel argued that there was not enough evidence for a conviction and pleaded for her client’s full acquittal.
However, the prosecutor considered P. guilty as charged and demanded 4½ years in prison and a 9½-year ban from working in the healthcare sector.
The judge will render a verdict on September 24.
Sick and appalling
The prosecutor argued that the “striking similarities” of the victims’ statements painted a clear and consistent picture of how P. “violated the faith and trust of these women” in a “sick and appalling manner.”
Two victims testified that P. had come into their hospital rooms to change their intravenous drips sometime after 9:00pm and they soon had begun to feel dizzy, sleepy and strange.
Both claim P. then had tried to kiss them and touch their private parts with his hands and mouth. One victim, who said she had been in and out of sleep, told investigators that she even had witnessed P. satisfying himself during a moment of consciousness.
One said she had told P. “no,” while the other said she had been unable to move and could not push him off.
The prosecutor argued that these “detailed and authentic” statements are supported by other witnesses who attest to the women being upset shortly after the sexual assault. For example, a victim had called her father around 1:00am and he had told police that his daughter was crying hysterically and wanted to be taken home. Another victim had called her mother the morning after and told her about the sexual assault through tears.
P. also confirmed parts of the victims’ statements during his police interrogations, according to the prosecutor.
Although P. denies violating the women, he did confirm that he had changed their intravenous drips, the prosecutor told the court, adding that one of his co-workers also had seen him attending to one of the women on the night of the alleged attack.
A victim’s urine had been tested for drugs a day after the alleged sexual assault, but the results came back negative. However, the prosecutor argued that this did not prove she had not been drugged, pointing to a report from a toxicology expert at the Dutch Forensic Institute, who said Midazolam can only be detected in the first 12 hours after being given.
As for the Midazolam found in P.’s home, the prosecutor noted that P.’s ex-girlfriend had testified that she had found the box while clearing out his belongings from her home in February and had returned it to him in early April. The ex-girlfriend told investigators that P. had previously been living with her for years.
“He took advantage of these women at a time when they were most vulnerable, in an environment where they should have been safe,” the prosecutor told the court. “How can these victims ever go back to a hospital, a doctor, or any other setting where they are subjected to the care of others without doubting or mistrusting the persons working there?”
P. has been working as a nurse in St. Maarten for the last five years. In 2016, a court in his native Suriname sentenced him to 12 months in prison, of which seven were conditional, for lewd acts involving a patient.
Insufficient evidence
Unlike the prosecutor, lawyer Bommel argued that there was not enough evidence outside of the victim statements to convict her client.
Bommel pointed out that one of the victims had said she first had told her boyfriend about the alleged sexual assault, but “surprisingly he was not heard as a witness.” The defence lawyer also argued that P.’s co-workers who also had attended to one of the victims that night had not testified that they found the woman to be sleepy or drowsy.
Bommel disputed the prosecutor’s claim that Midazolam cannot be detected after 12 hours, pointing out that some laboratories assert that the drug can be found in urine for up to two days. She also argued that the evidence cannot concretely prove that the women were drugged at all, much less by her client.
P. was arrested on May 6 on suspicion of having sexually abused only one of his patients, but at the time police and the Prosecutor’s Office issued a call for more victims to come forward. According to Bommel, a social media group of nearly 1,000 people had also formed around this time, which had named P. and circulated his photo.
“With this, my client was already convicted of the crime,” Bommel told the court. She said these factors had influenced the testimony of the earliest victim, who, she noted, only gave a statement on May 7 despite her allegation stemming from almost two years before.
Earlier in the trial, P. told the court that he had accidentally taken the box of Midazolam home from work one day.
He said he had had the drug in his pocket because they had a patient on the ward suffering from severe seizures and he had to be ready at a moment’s notice to inject the person. He claimed that he had returned the box to the hospital shortly after his ex-girlfriend had handed it over.
No amount enough
One of the victims submitted a claim of US $14,000 for material and immaterial damages during Wednesday’s trial. But “no amount would be enough to make up for her pain and fear,” her lawyer Sjamira Roseburg told the court.
The woman was seated next to Roseburg and two family members and, with a cracking voice and tears in her eyes, said a few words to the judge.
“It’s really been hard,” she said. “I try to put a smile on my face, but this showed me how easy it is for someone to do that to you.”
