A Haunting Doctor’s Appointment

Sometime in July 2023, Natalie* had her worst fears confirmed. At around 8:30 p.m., she arrived at a family-trusted hospital for the first phase of her fibroadenoma removal surgery. Given the procedure’s minor nature, the operating room was sparsely staffed. 

Natalie did not feel safe around men, having survived a sexual assault incident at 9, the vulnerability of being nude in the surgery room was distressing. Her discomfort escalated when the doctor dismissed the only present nurse. “He asked her to bring something, I couldn’t hear what it was.” As Natalie attempted to cover herself, she saw the doctor smirk, he said “Is it not what all of us have seen?” As if that wasn’t enough, he put his lips on her breast. During the second phase of the surgery in September, the doctor tried to kiss Natalie and while she protested, there wasn’t much she could do once sedated. Later, Natalie would develop a fear of returning for the necessary post-operative care or going anywhere near her family hospital.

In 2016, BBC shed light on a disturbing trend; sexual abuse of women by their own physicians. Many victims struggled to process these violations, often experiencing confusion and disbelief. In the same year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution launched its groundbreaking “Doctors & Sex Abuse” series, conducting the most extensive investigation into physician sexual misconduct in U.S. history. The findings were shocking, uncovering over 3,500 cases of sexual misconduct by doctors nationwide since 1999. This issue, however, is not new. Cases of medical practitioners exploiting their position to abuse female patients date back to at least 1990. While precise statistics are unavailable in Nigeria due to inadequate data collection, personal accounts from survivors like Natalie provide compelling evidence of the problem’s existence. Sadly, many victims remain silent, convinced that reporting their experiences will yield no results—a belief that, all too often, proves correct.

On Sunday, June 30th, 2024, students of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos (CMUL) took a stand against sexual harassment from their colleagues. Using the hashtag #EndSACultureInCMUL, they organized online protests targeting male students accused of serial offenses against their female counterparts. Initially, the demonstration gained traction and promised change. However, eight days later, the situation took a disturbing turn. Instead of fulfilling their commitment to hold the accused accountable, the CMUL administration shifted focus toward the victims who reported these offenses. Today, Unilag students still await the verdict while the accused go about their normal academic lives. If left unchecked, these accused students would complete their studies and enter into the medical profession, potentially continuing an abuse cycle. Such practitioners already exist, haunting women seeking care in hospitals. 

“He offered to have sex with me to relieve my painful menstrual periods and hormonal imbalance,” Inioluwa* says, describing an encounter with a doctor she had paid for his professional services. 

Not only must women endure potentially uncomfortable procedures like pap smears, they’re also forced to be hypervigilant to avoid sexual assault by the very professionals who should care for them. For Natalie, she has learned that the shame is not hers to bear. Yet, her rage remains, fueled by a system that fails to adequately address such abuses. In many countries, doctors who commit these crimes face imprisonment. But in Nigeria, we have barely begun to acknowledge this as a systemic problem, let alone punish the offenders. The cruelty of these acts is compounded by a bitter irony: the perpetrators are medical professionals who understand the devastating psychological and physiological consequences of their actions. Their willingness to inflict such harm suggests a deeply rooted pattern of behavior, one that likely took hold during their medical training or even childhood. 

Regulatory bodies in the Nigerian medical sector urgently require comprehensive reform to address the issue of sexual misconduct that is rife within it. A robust accountability system must be implemented, where doctors who abuse their position face severe legal consequences, including permanently revoking their medical licenses. This shift must begin in medical schools,  so they aren’t even given the chance to advance into the world and cause more damage as doctors. Natalie believes that if many guilty doctors are jailed, then the rest of them will stop. Already, the rape culture is pervasive within schools, homes, places of worship, and workplaces. It is unconscionable that hospitals, where individuals seek healing and pay for professional care, have become another arena for such violations. 

“Doctors need to see their patients as patients, not slabs of flesh they can paw at or sexual objects they can harass,” Inioluwa adds. 

*names have been changed to protect the identity of the victims.