A healthcare worker sexually assaulted a teenage girl and a woman while taking their blood samples in an accident and emergency department in the midlands, a court has heard.
Eldhose Yohannan (38), originally from India but with an address at Milltown, Drumcliff, Co Sligo, initially denied the sexual assaults on the two patients on separate dates in 2022 at Mullingar Regional Hospital in Co Westmeath.
However, after the trial commenced before a jury, he changed his plea and admitted the offences before the victims faced cross-examination.
Judge Keenan Johnson described the offences, which involved touching the girl’s bare breasts and the woman’s vagina area outside her clothing, as a gross intrusion of privacy, an attack on their bodily integrity, and he added that there was an element of premeditation.
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Sentencing was adjourned.
Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court heard on Thursday that the accused was a phlebotomist, a medical professional trained to take blood samples.
Detective Garda Aidan Hynes agreed with prosecutor Cathal Ó Braonáin BL that one complainant, then aged 15, attended the emergency department with her mother on August 8th, 2022, after she had a breast infection.
The teen was seen by a triage nurse and was in the waiting area with her mother when the accused called her name.
He told them he had to take the girl’s blood and that the mother could “sit back down” and led her daughter to another room.
Detective Garda Hynes said the girl lay on a bed, and Yohannan, who has no prior convictions, explained that he was going to draw blood from her arm to do tests.
He asked her if she had an abscess, but she told him it was on the inside.
The court heard Yohannan, who was wearing gloves, instructed her to lift her top, and he “pushed down on her breasts”. The girl thought he was a doctor.
Detective Garda Hynes said the accused then went out, put some paper in a bin, and returned with his gloves off. At this point, the teenager was sitting up, thinking the procedure was complete, but “Mr Yohannan asked her to lie down again and asked if he could see her breasts.”
She lifted her top, and Yohannan, who had taken off his gloves, “squeezed both her breasts” and asked if it was sore.
The girl answered that it was sore, but he told her it was not, and she replied, “I just told you it is”.
She pulled down her top and left, and a mother immediately noticed a “confused look on her face”. Her daughter told her what happened, and they informed a nurse.
A staff manager spoke to the accused and told him his only role was to take blood and not to carry out examinations, and he should only have touched patients’ hands or elbows.
He was asked if he knew about the Children First policy whereby a parent must chaperone under-16s, “but he did not really reply”.
He was dismissed from his job that day and has not worked since.
The court heard he qualified in India and previously worked as an ambulance nurse in Kuwait but was not a registered nurse in Ireland.
He married his wife in 2018 and later came to Ireland, starting work with an agency in January 2022.
The second incident involved a woman in her early 20s who came to the department because she had stomach pains and the accused brought her to a room and asked her for her phone number. She thought he was flirting, and he told her he was joking and that he could get her number from her file. His leg was close to her body, and it felt awkward.
The court heard as she lay down, he put his “pinky” finger on her vagina outside her clothing with enough pressure for her to realise it was not inadvertent. It lasted a minute to 90 seconds but felt like forever to the woman.
The teenage victim addressed the court to deliver a victim impact statement and outlined how she did not leave her room for weeks afterwards.
Judge Johnson told her she could be proud of how she dealt with it and that she had created a pathway and prevented other victims from being assaulted.
The second complainant said the incident left her in fear and made her afraid to go to hospitals.
In court, the accused wept and the judge heard he brought €10,500 to court to demonstrate his remorse.
The court heard his and his wife’s family were tenant farmers in Kerala, India, and depended on their support: his wife told the court she had no one else.
Judge Johnson adjourned sentencing Yohannan, who is on bail, until March for reports from the Probation Service and his counselling service to address his risk of reoffending. He directed that the money brought to court go to the victims, with €8,000 going to the younger complainant.
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