By Julia Medew
A trainee paramedic has told a court how he watched a superior sexually assault a drug-affected patient in the back of an ambulance last year.
Ambulance officer Anthony Foundling told the Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday that he saw Simon Paul Howe, who was his clinical instructor, rubbing a woman’s groin under a blanket while she was being taken to hospital for a suspected drug overdose on November 5.
In a statement to the court, Mr Foundling said he observed the actions on five or six occasions when he looked in the rear-vision mirror of the ambulance he was driving.
“I could see that Simon had his right arm under the blanket and it appeared that he was rubbing her groin area. I thought that surely this could not be happening and kept looking in the mirror to see what he was doing,” he said.
“At one point … we had eye contact though the rear-vision mirror, but I convinced myself that surely he was not actually playing with her.”
Mr Foundling said that shortly before pulling into the Royal Melbourne Hospital, he saw Howe’s head a couple of centimetres from the patient’s face, as though “he had kissed her or was about to kiss her”.
He later noticed Howe talking to the woman alone in the emergency department after the woman’s case had been handed over to hospital staff.
The court heard that the woman, who admitted taking “ice” but claimed her drink had been spiked, had been masturbating and making “orgasmic” noises before, during and after the alleged assault.
The evidence came as Howe, 32, of Werribee, was committed to stand trial in the County Court on three charges, including digital rape, indecent assault and unlawful assault. He has pleaded not guilty.
Howe told police during a record of interview that he tried to stop the woman from masturbating in the back of the ambulance and, in doing so, may have accidentally touched her.
His lawyer, Peter Morrissey, said it was inconceivable that a jury, properly instructed, could convict Howe based on the woman’s complaints.
He said she had used amphetamines, cannabis and other drugs before the alleged assault, making her recollection of the incident unreliable.
But magistrate Peter Reardon said the woman’s version of events had been partly corroborated by Mr Foundling and that any questions about the allegations were best put to a jury.
Howe, who was controversially sacked by the Metropolitan Ambulance Service over the allegations, sparking industrial action last year, will appear in the County Court for a directions hearing next month.