This endometriosis specialist, former head of the gynecological-obstetrics and reproductive medicine department at Tenon hospital, was indicted on Wednesday and placed under judicial control with a ban on contact with the victims and holding consultations. deprived of gynecology, according to a judicial source on Thursday, confirming information from Franceinfo.

His lawyer was not in a position to react immediately.

Following a first complaint, the Paris prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation on September 28, 2021 for rape by a person having authority over a minor over the age of 15, later extended to gang rape.

On January 3, a judicial investigation was finally opened for violence by a person charged with a public service mission, a sign of the difficulty in qualifying facts which associate an act of penetration and an alleged agreement between doctor and patient.

"Advanced"

"My clients see progress in the investigation, they have been waiting for this for a year for some. On the qualification, some are disappointed, but in any case we are only at the stage of the judicial information", reacted , requested by AFP, My-Kim Yang-Paya, lawyer for fifteen plaintiffs who denounced aggravated violence or rape.

"My clients have filed a complaint so that there are no other victims, thinking of their daughter or granddaughter," she said, also seeing in the ban on holding private consultations " breakthrough".

In December, a report of the internal investigation, launched by the AP-HP and Sorbonne University, had concluded that "the obligation to inform these patients, the relief of their pain, the respect of their wishes do not ( had) not been complied with".

This document added, however, that "the commission (of inquiry) does not retain any sexual connotation while certain shortcomings have been noted in the collection of consent to certain gestures".

The commission also considered that the situation was “the result of individual but also collective and systemic dysfunctions”.

Emile Daraï has since been permanently withdrawn from his responsibilities as head of department and head of education.

However, he continued to consult.

In May, faced with the controversy, Professor Daraï had given up speaking at a congress of gynecologists, where the feminist collective Collectif Stop aux violences obstetricales (StopVOG) - at the origin of the revelation in September 2021 of the complaints for rape targeting the practitioner - called for demonstrations against his presence.

His case echoes that of Secretary of State Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, a gynecologist who is also a recognized specialist in endometriosis, who has been the subject of an investigation in Paris since the spring after two complaints for rape and a third for violence.

In the wake of the Daraï affair, the learned societies of gynecology have enacted a "consultation charter", which recalls in particular that "the oral agreement of the woman is obtained before any clinical examination" and that the act "must be able to be interrupted as soon as the patient expresses the will".

© 2022 AFP