A Cedar Falls man is headed to jail after he was accused of groping a paramedic who was treating him inside an ambulance, and a judge has extended a restraining order barring him from contacting the medic for another five years.
According to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, the man pleaded to a reduced charge after being accused of groping the paramedic while she worked on him in the back of the ambulance.
The case began with his arrest after the alleged groping took place while the ambulance worker was treating him, the Courier reported in earlier coverage. That report states plainly: “A Cedar Falls man has been arrested for allegedly groping an ambulance worker who was treating him.” The same report says a judge extended a no-contact order to keep him away from the medic for five years, though the details of the arrest date and the ambulance service involved were not included in that account.
Protecting the Medic Going Forward
The five-year restraining order is meant to shield the paramedic from any further contact with the man, per the earlier report from the same outlet.
A Pattern Seen Beyond Cedar Falls
Assaults on paramedics and other EMS workers are not an isolated problem nationally. Systematic literature reviews spanning 1978 to 2016, cited by PubMed Central, found that between 57% and 93% of EMS responders reported experiencing some form of workplace violence at least once during their careers. Separate data from the CDC/NIOSH notes that most injuries among EMS clinicians treated in emergency departments involved other people or the worker's own bodily motion, though the agency cautions that some of those figures carry more statistical variance than others.
Cases involving sexual misconduct against patients by ambulance crew members, and against medics by patients, have also drawn scrutiny elsewhere. An Associated Press investigation, reported by EMS1, found that at least 129 ambulance attendants across the United States had been accused of sex-related crimes on or off duty over an 18-month span. Overseas, the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust reported a case in which a man who pleaded guilty to harassing a paramedic was sentenced to three months in prison and ordered to pay a £150 fine.
Back in Cedar Falls, the Courier's reporting leaves several questions unanswered, including the exact length of the jail sentence and the specifics of the reduced charge the man pleaded to. What is established is that the case ended with jail time for the defendant and a five-year order meant to keep him away from the paramedic he was accused of groping while she tried to help him.
