Allegations of necrophilia surface in Paris clinic

Staff at a clinic in the Paris suburbs who are alleged to have practised systematic euthanasia often committed sexual assaults on dying patients and on corpses, according to their colleagues.

Staff at a clinic in the Paris suburbs who are alleged to have practised systematic euthanasia often committed sexual assaults on dying patients and on corpses, according to their colleagues.

Investigators are treating the allegations with caution but they have established proof that one of the administrators of the hospice for the seriously ill and dying had sex with nurses in the clinic's morgue.

The chief public prosecutor in Evry, south of Paris, has started a criminal investigation for murder, "assault on vulnerable persons", failing to assist people in danger and theft.

A crisis meeting was being held at the Martiniÿre clinic in Saclay, near Evry, yesterday after scores of relatives of patients besieged the building demanding reassurances about their loved ones. The authorities decided not to shut the clinic for the time being.

The investigation centres on at least 40 suspicious deaths since the clinic opened in 1995, mostly to treat ex-servicemen and women and their families. Employees and former employees have alleged that a doctor and other staff at the clinic regularly gave lethal "cocktails" of painkillers to dying or difficult patients, often before their illnesses had reached a terminal stage.

Police are also investigating allegations that patients were physically and verbally abused and robbed. Some serving and former employees have claimed that patients were subjected to "sexual tortures", before and after their deaths.

Investigators said they were treating those allegations with great caution. "This type of case always generates a certain amount of fantasies," one source close to the investigation told Le Monde newspaper. But the source said proof had emerged that an administrator had sexual relations with nurses in the clinic's morgue.

A former employee, interviewed anonymously on France-Info radio, said the lethal "cocktail" was an "institution" at the clinic. "At first, we didn't really know what it was and then we realised it was being given to people who were not in a coma, and not in great pain," she said. "It was shocking to find that someone who was walking the previous day, someone you had spoken to, was put under the cocktail just because they had been a bit unsettled during the night."