Patient Says Transvestite Nurse Molested Him

CINCINNATI (CN) - A gunshot victim says he was sexually molested by a transvestite male nurse while he lay helpless in a hospital bed, and adds that the University of Cincinnati Hospital allowed his assailant to work dressed as a woman.

Dereco Evans says he was shot in the leg by an unknown assailant on Feb. 11, 2009, and taken to the UC Hospital. He had emergency surgery that day, and two more surgeries, on Feb. 13 and 19, then was transferred to the UC Hospital ICU Trauma Center, Evans says in his complaint in Hamilton County Court.

On the day of his third surgery, Evans says, Chad Thrasher sexually molested him in a restricted ward, as Evans lay "incapacitated and confined" to his bed.

Evans says he was in a restricted ward, and not listed under his own name, because the man who shot him presumably was still at large.

Evans says that the hospital "falsely represented defendant Chad Thrasher as a female member of the nursing and/or phlebotomy staff."

He says the hospital and a long list of individual defendants "knowingly and/or intentionally and/or negligently allowed defendant Chad Thrasher to dress and present himself to patients and the general public as a female members of defendants' nursing and/or phlebotomy staff."

Evans claims Thrasher "repeatedly made explicitly sexual advances and remarks to plaintiff even after plaintiff repeatedly requested defendant to stop."

He says he did not know Thrasher was a man until two defendant police officers told him so, and he adds that one or both of the officers told him "that he was making a fuss over nothing because he had not been raped."

Evans adds that the two officers "attempted to intimidate plaintiff by threatening to arrest plaintiff for making a complaint," and then "tried to intimidate plaintiff into withdrawing his complaint."

Evans says he "was not offered any counseling for the sexual assault," and that Thrasher "was eventually charged and convicted of gross sexual imposition," and is serving 18 months in state prison.

Evans demands punitive damages for sexual assault, assault, battery, malpractice, negligence, emotional distress, and other charges. He is represented by Nadia Blaine of Wyoming, Ohio, and Leonard Williamson of Cincinnati.

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