Victims of a former Sturgeon Community Hospital nurse said during the man's sentencing hearing the sexual assault left them emotionally scarred after they had been violated in a place where they expected care.
Eric Christiansen pleaded guilty Monday to four counts of sexual assault and was given six months of house arrest followed by three years of probation.
All three women who Christiansen assaulted told the court they were horrified to have been assaulted in a hospital.
"I was victimized in a place where someone goes to seek help," one of the women told the court.
Christiansen was a licensed practical nurse in the hospital emergency department when the women, whose identities are protected under a publication ban, came in seeking treatment.
All three women, one of whom was assaulted twice, had similar accounts of their interactions with Christiansen in the hospital.
The first incident occurred in late March last year. Christiansen lead the woman into a treatment area, asked her to change into a gown, but then came back a minute later as she was still changing. He asked the woman if she needed a hug, put his arm around her and cupped and fondled her breasts.
He also asked if he could see and touch her breasts.
When the same woman came back into the department a week later, he came out and lead her back into a treatment area and again made comments and touched her inappropriately.
Two other victims experienced similar incidents in July and August. In one case Christiansen asked the woman if her breasts were real, before touching them inappropriately.
After a complaint came forward, hospital staff confronted Christiansen and he gave a full account of his actions. Crown prosecutor Karen Thorsrud told the court Christiansen also gave a full account to the police when he was interviewed.
The victim impact statements also detailed long-lasting emotional scars all the women felt they continued to suffer from following the incident.
"I feel like a shell of the person I once was," said one woman choking back tears as she read in her statement.
Another of the women told the court it had affected her relationships with other people.
"This made me not trust people as easily as I used to do."
Sentencing
Thorsrud and defence lawyer Simon Renouf jointly brought the house arrest term forward to Judge Bruce Garriock.
Renouf presented Garriock with a psychologist's report on Christiansen that suggested he had deep-seated issues that had contributed to his offences. Among the issues the report identified was a head injury he suffered as a teenager that left him socially awkward and isolated.
Renouf said that Christiansen left his job with the hospital shortly after the charges were laid and will lose his nursing license. He said Christiansen was already training in the culinary arts and would not be returning to healthcare.
Renouf said Christiansen, who began to cry while the victims read their impact statements, could not bring himself to address the court directly, but he was deeply sorry for what he had done and what his actions had done to his victims.
Garriock accepted the plea and the sentence proposal. He gave Christiansen credit for pleading guilty and sparing the victims the emotional turmoil of a trial.
He said it was also apparent Christiansen's action had an enormous and far reaching impact on the victims.
"Clearly that came through loud and clear when they read their victim impact statements," said Garriock.
Christiansen's house arrest will require him to be home at all hours, only being allowed out for work, school and a small number of other exceptions. While he is on probation he will have to take any counselling he is directed to and will be prohibited from having any contact with the victims.
Garriock also ordered him to provide a DNA sample and register with the national sex offender registry.
