Bielefeld (dpa / lnw) - In the case of a doctor who is said to have drugged and raped numerous patients in the Evangelisches Klinikum Bethel in Bielefeld, the Duisburg public prosecutor said he identified and informed 29 patients as victims. The agency announced this in a press release late Friday afternoon. The doctor took his own life in custody after his arrest in autumn 2020.
Because the Bielefeld public prosecutor's office had stopped the investigation after the suicide and numerous patients had not found out that they might also have been victims, the Duisburg public prosecutor's office took over the investigation in September 2021. It is about the question of whether employees of the clinic can be accused of aiding and abetting rape through omission. The doctor's superiors are said to have been informed by patients about abnormalities as early as 2019, but did not follow up on the information.
During the investigation, a list of 80 women was secured, with whom the doctor is said to have had sexual contact. According to this, there are video files for 16 women that were not created in the clinic. Consensual sex can also be seen on it, the prosecutor said. The evaluation of the data is still ongoing.
During the autopsy, the forensic pathologists discovered that the doctor had a bacterial sexually transmitted disease. It was not clear how long the assistant doctor had had the disease. "It is therefore unclear whether and which of the sexual partners were at risk of infection and were victims of at least negligent bodily harm," said the public prosecutor. In cooperation with the victim protection officer of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, all sexual contacts of the deceased, as far as known, were informed.
In contrast to the identification of the victims in the clinic in Bielefeld, however, it is difficult to identify the sexual partners from the private sphere. Some of the list of names only includes nicknames, job titles or compromising designations. Therefore, according to the public prosecutor's office, no exact number of possible further victims from crimes in the private sphere can be given at the moment. The investigations are ongoing.
