Given Saudi cultural values, including the protection of women’s virtue, I find it pretty amazing that these men received only a sentence of six months. This level of invasion of privacy is pretty spectacular. The way their behavior darkens the names of hospitals and erodes trust in the medical system should have enhanced the penalty significantly. If they touched the women, there’s also the crime of battery.
Is there something I’m missing here? Like the names of the criminals, perhaps? Given the offense against the women’s dignity, I think a mention of names of the perpetrators would be only fair in the balancing of shame.
5 who posed as doctors to examine women jailed
Mohammad HaddadJEDDAH – Five young men who had posed as doctors to “examine” women patients, were sentenced to 6 months in prison and fined SR100,000 each. A medical violations committee handed down the sentence. The young men would wear white coats, hang a stethoscope around the neck and slip into different hospitals here during visiting hours, said Dr. Sami Badawood, director of the Jeddah Health Affairs. They got away with it a few times until security guards noticed no official badge on their coats, confronted them, and handed them over to the police – Okaz/SG
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January:12:2009 - 09:57
A despicable act that is deserving of punishment.
However, we must also examine our society that often treats women as pathogenic and thereby creates an unnatural allure among many men regarding women.
An unhealthy society may foster unhealthy behaviour such as this.
The libertinism in the West may be no less destructive than the quarantine attitude towards femininity in our nation.
January:12:2009 - 11:01
I tend not to completely believe this story for some strange reason.
January:13:2009 - 04:46
Saudi society is rather conflicted when it comes to the medical profession. Male doctors for women and female nurses for men are quite common. In the larger hospitals one gets the choice of a female dr for a female patient however in smaller clinics there is no such choice.
Considering the medical violations committee handed down the sentence rather than the regular courts maybe the fake drs were medical students?
January:13:2009 - 08:16
That’s entirely likely. As I said, I’d have expected a much harsher sentence were this ‘normal’.
If that’s the case, though, the newspaper article missed reporting on some very crucial details…
January:14:2009 - 01:24
Sparky, it was in the news before, they got one guy in Riyadh who posed as a doctor in female ward. Reading his story was entertaining because in his case he was asking the patients about their medical history.. he presented an act that even got the nurses and other medical staff fooled. From the article I read it sounded like he actually was playing the role for just being a doctor.. but I am not sure really.. there wasn’t any follow up about it.