This post is a cut & pasted message to me from a friend who was vocationally a retired lawyer, avocationally a very active play doc. We were discussing an ear, nose & throat Doc's highly publicized sex abuse & mockery of anesthetized male patients in New Mexico, -- getting less than a slap in the wrist from her licensing board.
Here's what the anonymous play doc tangentially contributed to this conversation, & I think it's shareworthy for discussion here:
"Things were very different in the old days.
It was common for Drs to let medical students practice pelvic exams and breast exams on sedated females and rectal exams on sedated females and males.
Apparently it was common for heads of juvenile reformatories to make extra money by lending out volunteers for nursing, med and chiropractic school students to practice on, while the teachers observed. The patients weren't really "volunteers," actually, but the schools got as many patients as they needed for whatever exams the students needed to do, the reformatory directors got some extra income, the students got a field trip to the school---- a nice break from routine and often some fresh air outside----, the reformatory guards got a break from their routine and could watch if they liked, the inmates got free physicals of every sort far more often than they needed---- so except for some transient discomfort and acute embarrassment for the patients, it was win-win all around. And if some of the exams required cleansing prep enemas given by clumsy students, the attitude then was "no harm, and probably good for the patients." And if the poor patients each got a dozen or two pelvic exams or rectal exams from clumsy students, again the attitude was "so what?" If a volunteer decided they didn't really want to volunteer, there was the strap or paddle..."