I don't have the time to read the last 6 pages in the thread, so forgive me if someone already said this:
I'm surprised there wasn't one health care worker, be it a nurse or a medical assistant that didn't have the experience or courage to speak up, it is not acceptable medical practice for male doctors to do any kind of intimate exam on a female patient without another female in the room.
Any women in this forum who have had male doctors do pap smears or pelvic exams should have had a female assistant in the room. IIRC, even my OBGYN had a female assistant in the room during pregnancy pelvic exams.
Someone didn't have experience or didn't speak up about that procedure, regardless of the girls reporting and not being believed.
It's unfortunate. We need to do a better job training medical assistants and educating nurses.
It turns out, some did.
I read a story yesterday about the title IX investigation conducted by the university. There were two versions of the final report made. One was given to the complainants. The other to university officials, and Dr. Nassar himself.
The one given to complainants basically said that their finding was that Nassar's acts were legitimate medicine.
The one given to officials said the same thing, but also said that basically what you said above. it said there should be other people present in the room. It said that any treatments should be conducted clothed if possible. It said that there were a variety of safeguards that ought to have been in place, and referred specifically to this being important in the case of treatment involving the "pelvic floor".
Allow me to digress momentarily. Is treatment of the "pelvic floor" for sports injuries really a thing? I mean, would you be able to find another doctor who said, "Oh yes. Any time I do pelvic floor treatment for muscle injuries on a female patient, I always ensure that there is a female assistant present." It sure sounds to me like something the guy made up.
Anyway, it seems very clear to me that the people who wrote that report knew exactly where Dr. Nassar was putting his fingers, and the tone of the report suggested that there was at least some sense that maybe something wasn't right here, and yet they seemed to have bought into the idea that it was legitimate medical practice. I'm pretty sure that if the same testimony about what happened in private exam rooms had been presented to a less educated audience, the less educated would have immediately drawn the correct inference about Dr. Nassar's motives. As it was, the people charged with writing that report, even after hearing what was going on, concluded that he was just practicing medicine in a different way than what they were familiar with, but because people might not understand it, maybe there should be some nurses present during "treatment".
It looks a lot like a case of The Emperor's New Clothes. No one wanted to say the obvious, and be thought a fool. The unfortunate difference between that story and the real story of Dr. Nassar is that several young people did call attention to what was obvious before their eyes when Dr Nassar was "treating" them. Unlike in the story, the wise people in the crowd did not admit that the child who spoke up was correct after all.
Did he really have such a good reputation for treating sports injuries that people would buy his explanation of why he did what he did, even though there was a perfectly obvious explanation that was familiar to many more people?
