A 32-year-old Brazilian doctor accused of allegedly raping a heavily sedated pregnant woman during a C-section operation has been arrested and is set to face a string of charges.
Anaesthesiologist Giovanni Quintella Bezerra was arrested at a Women’s Hospital in Sao Joao de Meriti, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, in the early hours on Monday 11 July 2022.
Staff at the hospital are reported to have secretly filmed him allegedly sexually assaulting a patient whose C-section surgery he was participating in. His medical colleagues became suspicious of the doctor’s behaviour, especially the high doses of sedatives he allegedly gave to pregnant woman.
They decided to change the room where one delivery was set to take place in a last-minute bid to secretly film the doctor and confirm what they had been suspecting.
Days after Doctor Bezerra was arrested on rape charges, it was learned that two other female patients may have also been sexually assaulted by him. The staff members who recorded him claimed that he carried out two similar procedures on the same day, which Brazilian police are now investigating.
In one of the C-section procedures, the staff members said, “Dr Bezerra wore an open cloak on himself, widening his silhouette, and positioned himself in a way that also prevented anyone from seeing the patient from the neck up.”
During C-section operations women are usually not entirely drugged up, but Dr Bezerra’s patients claim they were completely unconscious.
“The only thing I remember from the surgery is his voice. He kept talking softly in my ear, it bothered me. He asked if I was okay,” said one patient.