Mar. 11--The 34-year-old woman said she couldn't believe it when a nurse anesthetist grabbed her breast twice shortly after she gave birth by Caesarean section.
Then the nurse anesthetist at Mount Carmel East hospital gave her a syringe of fluids that made her drift off to sleep, she testified yesterday.
"I woke up to him sucking on my breast," Christine Black told a Franklin County jury. "I remember saying, 'What are you doing?' and he replied, 'I just like you, that's all.'"
Black reported the incident to another nurse, and an internal investigation was begun. Columbus police filed criminal charges two weeks later.
The anesthetist, Daniel Maldovan, 46, of Basil Road N.W. near Baltimore in Fairfield County, went on trial yesterday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court on three felony counts of gross sexual imposition. He's accused of sexually assaulting Black at Mount Carmel on Dec. 31, 2008, as she recovered from the birth of her second child.
The Dispatch typically does not name victims of sexual assault, but Black, of Fountain Lane on the East Side, agreed to be identified. She has reached a financial settlement out of court with Maldovan's employer after the company suspended him from all patient care, according to testimony.
Maldovan was not an employee of Mount Carmel but worked for a company that contracted with the hospital. Details of the settlement weren't released.
Maldovan and his attorney, Douglas Funkhouser, have denied the allegations, saying Black is either lying or confused.
Funkhouser said he will show that Maldovan touched the woman only within a medical context.
Black testified that he had delivered pain medication during her delivery, then sat with her for two hours as she recovered. Her husband had returned to work when the incident occurred, she said.
"I was in disbelief. You go to a hospital and put your trust in these people," she said. She said she asked nurses and police detectives to swab her breast for DNA.
Testimony in the trial before Judge Patrick E. Sheeran will include information from a police detective and police criminalist who found Maldovan's saliva on the woman's breast, Assistant County Prosecutor Megan Jewett said.
Jewett called three senior nurses who said there is no medical procedure in which a nurse's mouth would come into contact with a patient's skin, even in most CPR situations.
Nurse Jennifer Hilamen, who first heard Black's complaint and reported it, said she was so upset by the allegations that she went into a side room and cried.
"I knew an accusation like this could ruin a man's life, whether it was true or not," Hilamen testified. "He's one of the good ones."
bcadwallader@dispatch.com
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