Nurse Alleges Shocking Racism and Harassment at French Hospital, Sparking Outrage

The young woman recounts that she joined this hospital in 2023 for an internship in the cardiac intensive care unit. She will then be hired on a study allowance contract (CAE). At the time, "everything was going well, the atmosphere was very good," details the nurse to Parisien. But the work environment becomes unlivable for the mother in February 2024, upon her return from maternity leave where she finds Vincent (pseudonym), a new nursing colleague. "Given his experience, I asked him for help with my work, but he would brush me off, tell me I was useless. I wondered what he had against me," she explains.

Clauriane says she suffered racist remarks from this new colleague and harassment from other colleagues in the same department. Feeling "harassed," she decides to complain to her supervisor. But the latter takes no action. The nurse is further exposed to the hurtful and demeaning remarks of Vincent: "He called me fragile, a snitch, a rat. It was starting to be a lot." In the summer of 2024, while she was lying down in the rest room, she suffered a humiliation. "Suddenly, I felt a drop on me. I thought it was a leak. Then I had several and I heard snickering behind me." It was again Vincent who, dressed in a white cape, was spraying the young woman, declaring: "I, Vincent, order you to watch your scope (heart rate monitor)."

The video of the scene will later be shared within the hospital. "After that, I didn’t talk to the management about it, I kept it to myself," Clauriane confides. But the climax comes at the end of November 2024. Vincent "is (again) unpleasant." "He started calling me a traitor after my denunciation of the harassment to my boss. There, I ask him bluntly: But why don’t you like me? He answered me: I don’t like you, you’re black. Then he burst out laughing," the young woman explains. It was the insult too much. On November 27, Clauriane filed a complaint at the police station for "public insult on the grounds of her race."

A few weeks later, the nurse and her colleague Vincent are summoned before the directors of the Cartier hospital. At the end of this conclave, Vincent decided to resign to avoid a possible sanction. Colleagues attribute the nurse’s departure to Clauriane and isolate her. The mother ends up taking sick leave in February 2025. She denounces the "inaction" of her management which "did not live up to the facts," as well as the lack of support from the rest of the department. "If I speak out, it’s also for all those who have experienced this, and are still experiencing it, without being able to talk about it," she concluded. Clauriane has been followed psychiatrically and psychologically since her departure from the hospital. For the moment, no follow-up has been given to her complaint.