"I was screaming"

Carer detained: Four acquittals in Tyrol

(Bild: APA/Helmut Fohringer)

Four acquittals were handed down on Thursday at Innsbruck Regional Court in the trial against four nurses who allegedly restrained a female colleague on an operating table at Hall Regional Hospital in Tyrol at the end of February 2023 and held her there for around 15 minutes. Judge Paul Menardi said that in case of doubt, the decision was made in favor of the defendants. 

They had been charged with deprivation of liberty, aggravated coercion and grievous bodily harm. The exercise in question, including the restraint, made sense in itself, Menardi explained in his ruling. The victim had also voluntarily gone to the operating table. The defendants were therefore right to assume the woman's consent at the beginning.

"It was a mess"
Although she subsequently revoked this consent, it was not clear how she did so. "It cannot be established with a probability bordering on certainty that she said from the outset that she did not want it," said the judge. "It was a mess, but not every mess is criminally relevant," Menardi concluded.

"Complex operation"
The nurses and their defense lawyers had already pleaded "not guilty" on the first day of the trial at the beginning of June. At the time, the lawyers for the four defendants stated that it had been discussed in advance that they would have to "practice a complex operation and the associated positioning". There could therefore be no question of a "deliberate, planned collaboration" or even a criminally relevant act. In any case, the woman had known "that this operation had to be practiced", the first defendant also stated in his interrogation at the time.

The exercise at Hall Regional Hospital escalated completely.

(Bild: Christof Birbaumer / Kronenzeitung)

There was also a "cheerful, exuberant atmosphere", which only changed when photos were taken of the alleged victim in the kneeling position. One defendant admitted that the situation had escalated and that the action could have been "excessive".

Victim suffers from anxiety disorders
The public prosecutor, on the other hand, emphasized that the woman had said several times that she should be untied. The psychiatric expert Gabriele Wörgötter also attested that she had an "adjustment disorder" and stated: "The fact is that the woman was previously healthy enough to cope with her everyday life and job without any problems". Now she is "unable to work for the time being", is anxious and suffers from a depressive disorder.

I was screaming and at a certain point I just wanted to leave.

Opfer vor Gericht

The fact that the relationship between the four defendants and the alleged victim had previously been collegial and in some cases very relaxed, as had already been discussed in June, also came up again on the second day of the trial. "They often made jokes with each other," explained a cleaner who was questioned as a witness and who had initially observed the events in the operating theater through a window.

Mood changed in the operating room
"I first heard loud laughter from everyone involved," the witness told Judge Menardi. However, the mood then changed in the operating room, where she later found herself: "She stopped laughing and finally wanted to undo the hip belt." These attempts were accompanied by her saying "I can't, I can't". Nevertheless, she did not think that the woman was really in distress: "She didn't scream or call for help".

Victim describes the situation differently
The woman vehemently contradicted this in her contradictory interrogation. "I was screaming and at a certain point I just wanted to get away", she explained. For her, it had also "never been fun at any point". Originally, she had climbed onto the operating table "quite voluntarily" because she believed her ex-colleagues that she actually "had to practice" the special positioning for an upcoming operation, but then quickly realized that they were "taking the piss out of me".

"So degrading"
The situation finally came to a head when photos were taken of her and her trousers were "painted". "It was all just so degrading", the alleged victim said in tears. The "combination of fixation, photos and painting of the trousers" was particularly bad and stressful for her. Such an exercise in this form is also not usual: "Of course you practise positions and positioning, but then there is no restraint and there are superiors with you".

When asked about the sometimes "overly cheerful interaction" with her colleagues and any "rough and coarse humor" on her part, she explained that there had only been harmless jokes and innocent teasing. There had never been any "crude jokes" and there was no question of her grabbing a colleague's crotch or offering him a massage, as one of them had claimed.

Victim tied to operating table
According to the public prosecutor, the four defendants, aged 48, 45, 50 and 31, allegedly tied their colleague to an operating table with Velcro straps, kneeling on her stomach with her legs spread apart, under the pretext of practising positioning for an operation. Despite her repeated requests to untie her, she was allegedly only untied after the third defendant had drawn an anus and a vagina on her work trousers with a sharpie pen.

The second and fourth defendants are also said to have taken photos of the woman in this position. The four employees suspended after the incident had originally stated that it had been a "joke".