Psychologist returns license in protest at Zsanett case

The woman who performed the medico-legal examination of alleged police rape victim Zsanett E., has returned her medico-legal expert license as a protest against the authorities' treatment of the case, reports hirszerzo.hu. The investigation against the five policemen accused of rape was dropped in December.

Emőke Bagdy, founder of the first Hungarian clinical psychology faculty and other accredited psychological education programs, examined Zsanett at the request of her lawyer Péter Tuza, after the first medico-legal opinion in May 2007 found the young woman's report too confused.

However, as psychologist Mihály Racsmány pointed out a few days after the original medico-legal report was made public, people who have undergone a trauma cannot talk about it coherently. Medical evidence has shown they attempt to detach themselves from what has happened, and many of their memories return in flashbacks that do not fit into a continuous narrative.

The second opinion, provided by Bagdy, reinforced this view, stating that Zsanett was suffering post traumatic stress disorder, and that she was telling the truth about the rape. Bagdy used seven different evaluation methods to diagnose PTSD, and the overall results of these showed a 96% correlation, writes index.hu.

Bagdy, commenting on a blog launched recently, wrote that she returned her license as a medico-legal expert because the authorities did not take her professional opinion into account. The blog, launched on Monday evening as an attempt to draw attention to violence against women and collect signatures to initiate a new investigation, has already collected more than 1,500 signatures.

The site refers to the recent Amnesty International study stating that rape victims have poor chances to find justice and face indifference and prejudice.

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