Almost everyone who contacts us about this begins the same way: "I might be wrong about this." Patients are conditioned to defer to clinical judgment, and abuse in a medical setting is designed — deliberately or otherwise — to be indistinguishable from care.
You do not have to resolve that question before you call. Working out whether what happened had any clinical justification is exactly what an independent review does, and it is done from records rather than from your certainty.
The chaperone question
Facilities have policies about intimate examinations: when a chaperone should be offered, when one should be present, and how that is recorded. Those policies exist precisely because of this risk, and they are documentary.
- Was a chaperone offered, and is that recorded? An absent entry is itself evidence.
- Was one present? Who, and what did they document?
- Was the examination clinically indicated at all, given the reason for the visit?
- Did the documentation match what happened, including whether an intimate examination was recorded as performed?
- Were you asked to undress beyond what the examination required, or examined without explanation or consent?
A provider who routinely saw patients alone where policy required otherwise establishes a pattern, and the facility knew or should have known about the practice.
What the hospital or practice knew
The institutional claim usually turns on what was already in the building:
- Credentialing and privileging files, which record what a facility checked before granting privileges and what it knew when it renewed them
- Prior patient complaints, including ones that never reached a formal investigation
- Internal reviews and risk management records
- Supervision and policy compliance, particularly around chaperones and unaccompanied patients
- Scheduling and EMR access logs, which show patterns — appointments arranged outside normal hours, or records accessed without a clinical reason
Negligent credentialing and a failure to act on earlier complaints are claims against the institution in their own right, separate from the conduct itself.
The public record most people never check
Healthcare providers in Maryland are licensed by state boards, and disciplinary actions against them are generally public. So are, in many cases, the grounds for that discipline.
That matters twice over. It can reveal that others reported the same provider, sometimes years earlier. And a complaint to the board is a route that exists separately from any civil claim — it can be made whether or not you ever bring one, and whether or not you go to the police.
A board investigation is not a court and cannot compensate you. But what it finds, and what a facility did once it knew, frequently becomes part of a civil claim.
When you cannot be sure what happened
Assaults during sedation, anesthesia, imaging or recovery raise a particular difficulty: the patient may have fragmentary memory, and may have been told afterwards that they were confused or dreaming.
Those cases are built from the surrounding record rather than from recall alone — who was present and when, sedation and monitoring documentation, staffing and access logs, timings, and whether anyone else raised a concern. Incomplete memory is a feature of sedation, not a reason to disbelieve someone.
One procedural question we will not guess at
Maryland has a special procedure for claims of medical injury: a certificate from a qualifying expert, and filing with the state health care dispute office before the case proceeds in court, as described on our medical malpractice page.
Whether a claim arising from assault by a provider falls inside that procedure, or is treated as an intentional tort outside it, affects the steps, the timing and which insurance responds. We will tell you how it applies to your situation rather than publishing a general answer here, because getting that wrong costs a claim.
How these claims are handled
We deal with the facility, its insurer and its lawyers, and we obtain the records — you are not the one requesting your own chaperone documentation from the practice that employs the person involved.
We do not name individuals on this website and we do not publish clients' stories. Courts can protect a survivor's identity in some circumstances, and we explain what is realistic before anything is filed.
If you need ongoing care from the same institution, say so at the first conversation. That is a practical problem we can help manage, and it stops people seeking help at all.
Deadlines
Timing here turns on age. If you were a minor when a provider abused you, Maryland has had no statute of limitations for the civil claim since October 1, 2023, under the Child Victims Act. If you were an adult, ordinary limitation rules apply, and the procedural question above can affect which period governs.
Ask us and we will tell you what applies. Adult patients assume they are out of time more often than they actually are, but the answer depends on dates we would need to see.
Support, whether or not you call us
If you would rather speak to someone who is not a lawyer, the national sexual assault hotline is 800-656-4673, at any hour.
