Oregon Legal Research Blog
The Friday, 3/28/08, Oregonian story by Anne Saker, “Oregon patient sues over sexual abuse.” According to this story, Oregon “does not require medical professionals to report sexual abuse of sedated patients”:
‘A woman who was sexually abused while sedated for surgery shed her public anonymity Thursday to file a civil suit and to promise she would fight to require medical professionals to report sexual crimes against patients under anesthesia.
“I’m dedicated to seeing some change happen, doing whatever I can, because I think it’s necessary. Something has to change,” Katherine Edson said….
…. Edson said she also was stunned to learn that Oregon does not require medical professionals to report sexual abuse of sedated patients. She has asked Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, to pursue legislation that would include that class of victims.
“I don’t want anyone else to be sitting in my position right now,” she said.
Greenlick said Thursday, “If there’s that big a hole, we will definitely work on it….”’ (Read full story.)
(The next legislative session does not begin until January 2009.)
My previous OLR post about State v. Burleson with links to the Oregon Supreme Court case.
(Note about finding old news stories: If a link to a news story doesn’t work, it may be that the news source does not maintain free archives of its back issues. Most public libraries, however, have newspaper databases that can be searched free of charge, often remotely (i.e. from any computer, with your library card). I try to provide enough bibliographic data to enable you to search those newspaper databases successfully.)