IMC worker charged with sexual abuse of transgender patient

A patient care technician at Intermountain Medical Center, 34-year-old Jonathon Paul Jankowski, has been charged with sexually assaulting a transgender patient.

Jankowski, of Saratoga Springs, was charged June 10 in 3rd District Court with object rape, a first-degree felony.

According to charging documents, an IMC patient needed to use the restroom and requested a bedpan and assistance due to an injury. “Jankowski threw the bedpan on the floor and left it there stating it was not his job,” the charges state. The patient retrieved the bedpan and asked for assistance after using it. Jankowski refused, saying it was “disgusting,” according to the charges.

The documents say Jankowski eventually helped, getting fecal matter “all over” the patient and then yelling at them, “blaming him for the mess.”

Later, as the patient tried to sleep, Jankowski allegedly sat on the patient’s bed and asked if he could show them a small note. He then taped a pen to the patient’s leg, kissed the patient on the mouth, and inappropriately touched the patient’s genitals, according to charging documents. IMC released a statement: “Intermountain is committed to patient safety and this type of allegation is taken very seriously. Upon learning of these allegations, Mr. Jankowski was immediately suspended and then terminated at the conclusion of our investigation. We are fully cooperating with law enforcement. We have zero tolerance for any kind of inappropriate contact.”

“It is scary and it’s alarming and it’s something we deal with way too often in our community,” Sue Robbins with the Transgender Advisory Council for Equality Utah said. “In a medical and healthcare environment, we shouldn’t be worrying about our safety when we are at our weakest. And we worry about our safety every day, so we need to change that.”

“According to the 2015 NTCE Transgender Survey, 47 percent of the respondents stated they had been victims of sexual assault at one time in their life, Robbins said.

“Based on what we were presented, we filed one count of object rape as a first-degree felony, which is a very serious allegation, and we feel very comfortable with the charges we filed,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said. “We will continue to gather information and we will continue to look at to see if there are any other allegations or anything in addition to that”

“This should not happen to anyone, especially to a person who is transgender, and we want them to know that we will do our very best to hold the offender accountable,” Gill said.