A major investigation has gotten underway after an 87-year-old was allegedly sexually assaulted as she lay in her hospital bed in an all-male ward in South Tipperary General Hospital.
It has been reported that the distraught victim, was held down on her bed by a man in his 70s who horrifyingly whispered in her ear saying: ‘stay still, this won’t take long’. Reports suggest that the elderly woman was placed on the all male ward because there was a shortage of beds in the hospital at time the victim was admitted.
The news came to light after the pensioner’s son told the Irish Daily Mirror newspaper the details of the horrific incident, the pensioners son told the paper: “The guy got into the bed, took off his pyjamas and took off his underpants, he got into the bed and he said to my mother, ‘Don’t move now, this won’t take long.” “It was dark and my mother because she had a chest infection – wasn’t able to shout out. “She was shrieking and one of the guys in the ward heard and pressed the alarm bell – and that brought the team down there at that stage.”
However the hospital claim that the reported incident was apparently halted after a number of staff at the hospital managed to intervene before the man was able to get under the bed sheets. The whole ordeal has left the vulnerable pensioner in some distress, with her son also telling the paper that his mother can’t sleep following the “shameful” and “disgusting” incident. The clearly upset and angry man went onto say: “It’s shameful, absolutely shameful what he did, it’s disgusting.” “My sister and my wife were with her yesterday and has the shakes, she usually doesn’t have the shakes. “She said to a garda, ‘I can’t sleep in case he’ll come back at me, he’s still here.”
He further explained: “Our biggest gripe is that they put a vulnerable old lady in a room with five men. “When she got up to go to the toilet she had five men looking at her. That’s wrong. “I said, ‘You would have been better putting my mother on a hospital trolley and leaving her on a corridor rather than put her in a room with five men’. “They said to me they were absolutely 100% guilty, they shouldn’t have done it.”
Meanwhile the Gardai have confirmed they are in the process of investigating an alleged assault at the hospital.