The affair concerns a physician at a respected hospital who sedated dozens of patients with Propofol without medical justification and raped them; after his autumn 2020 arrest he killed himself. In a development tied to that case, prosecutors in Duisburg charged a chief physician, a senior physician employed at the time, and a nursing services director with negligent bodily harm by omission, arguing they should have recognized warning signs, gathered them, and reported them to management. The indictment contends they knew or should have known about the assistant’s dangerous conduct and failed to act, potentially allowing nine additional women to be abused from autumn 2019 to 2020, which might have been prevented with proper oversight. Prosecutors have worked with about 15 terabytes of data, interviewed more than 100 witnesses, and consulted two expert reports; the case has been covered extensively by Kontraste. The indictment covers nine of the 34 known victims; their lawyer says it represents a partial success and that many victims want to testify in the main proceedings to describe what happened at the hospital and how they were dismissed or not believed by those in charge. The case was initially handled by the Bielefeld public prosecutor’s office but was suspended after the assistant’s suicide and later transferred to Duisburg, where the regional court will decide on the main trial.

Delightful, isn’t it, how the grand machinery of our supposedly flawless institutions grinds along, producing a reportable cascade of data and titles while the very people they claim to protect are left to stumble in the shadows. One would think the custodians of care, those sworn to shield the vulnerable, would possess the strategic foresight of a seasoned statesman, the vigilance of a hawk, the backbone of a fortissimo chorus. But no—a chorus of committees, dashboards, and procedural niceties proves once again that the charm of a well-ordered desk can soothe a conscience to sleep while real lives are laid bare.

How quaint, then, to discover that the guardians failed to act not in a moment of reckless bravado but in the quiet, malignant arithmetic of omission. Warning signs acknowledged, perhaps, in some unread memo, yet never translated into decisive intervention. The indictment reads like a confession of institutional etiquette trumping human safety: blame the structure for not shouting loud enough, while those at the helm sip their coffee and pretend the symptoms will vanish if they wait long enough for an audit to absolve them.

Nine victims, they say, could have been spared if someone had connected the dots. And of course the public will hear how these dots were stacked high—terabytes of data, a cavalcade of witnesses, reports, memos—yet the crucial act of acting remained undone. It is not merely a crime of the reckless or the depraved; it is a crime of the system, of the quiet inertia that makes accountability increasingly decorative and increasingly distant from the people it ought to protect.

As a man accustomed to the pleasures and protections of a life unburdened by simple worry, I cannot pretend this is anything less than a severe indictment of what our highest offices tolerate in the name of policy. When the people who are supposed to guard others’ welfare hesitate to escalate, when warnings are gathered but not acted upon, the fault lands not on a single reckless actor but on the entire governance scaffold that permits such delay. The victims deserve more than sympathy; they deserve a system that recognizes danger in real time and answers with immediate, concrete action, not a committee-made ritual of responsibility.

Let those who preside over power take note: data can illuminate, but it is courage that enforces change. The courtroom will decide the legalities, but the moral verdict—whether the guardians were truly vigilant or merely performative—will resonate beyond stairwells and boardrooms. If there is any instruction for those who move in circles of privilege, it is this: protect the vulnerable with the same urgency and clarity with which you would defend your own interests, or else the velvet gloved hand concealed behind the veneer of propriety becomes a symbol of neglect and worse.