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WARNING: This article may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
A man has been charged with sexual assault after a Winnipeg hospital nurse was attacked in a St. Boniface Hospital parkade, police say.
The nurse got out of her vehicle in the parkade around 11 p.m. on Nov. 8 and was confronted by a man she didn't know, Winnipeg police said in a news release on Thursday.
The man asked her for the time, police said, before she was "trapped between two vehicles" and sexually assaulted.
The man fled after the woman screamed. She alerted hospital security, who contacted police.
The woman did not need medical attention.
Around 3:30 a.m. the next morning, hospital security noticed the suspected attacker and held him until police arrived.
A 27-year-old man has been charged with sexual assault, police say. He has been detained in custody.
St. Boniface Hospital president Nicole Aminot said in a memo to staff Thursday that the hospital has introduced several measures over the last two years in order to boost safety.
That includes overnight roving security officers who patrol the parkade, the introduction of key-card access to the parkade's stairwell on Taché Avenue, improved lighting, more mirrors, and upgraded quality and resolution of the security camera monitoring system, Aminot says in the memo, which the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority shared with CBC News.
"We are discussing the issue with WRHA, and are already in talks with Winnipeg police to discuss neighbourhood safety and to arrange some safety presentations for staff," Aminot said in the memo.
Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, says violence and abuse against staff has become commonplace in hospitals across Manitoba. (Prabhjot Singh Lotey/CBC)Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, said the employee who was assaulted is a nurse.
The safety enhancements mentioned in Aminot's memo are "not even close" to enough, Jackson said.
"You've been upgrading your security et cetera for the last two years, but clearly what you've done is not enough," she told CBC News on Thursday.
"I just feel as if we're going to have to grey list every hospital in this province in order to get employers to take safety of front-line workers [and] of visitors and patients seriously, because that could have been a visitor, that could have been a patient — it could have been anyone."
Nurses voted to grey list Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre in August, which discourages front-line workers from taking jobs there, amid safety concerns.
The vote followed a string of crimes around the central Winnipeg hospital, including sexual assaults of five people — two of them nurses — in early July.
The province stationed two Winnipeg police officers at the hospital — Manitoba's largest — around the clock earlier this month.
Nurses at Thompson General Hospital in northern Manitoba are currently voting on whether to grey list that facility due to staff vacancies, violence and what they say is inaction from management.
Jackson says violence and abuse against staff has become commonplace in hospitals across Manitoba.
"There is not a corner of this province where there isn't violence and abuse happening to front-line workers daily, on every shift, every day, and it is absolutely not acceptable, and nurses are not going to accept it," she said.
"I am just fed up."
It's up to the nurses at St. Boniface Hospital to decide whether they want to vote to grey list the facility.
"I'm saying it's an option for every facility in this province if employers do not step up on safety."
The attack on the nurse took place just four days after the man charged pleaded guilty to robbery in connection with a July incident, court records show.
He's pleaded guilty to theft under $5,000 five times since March. He was also charged with robbery in most of those incidents, but was only convicted on the charge in the most recent case.
He was charged with sexual assault in June 2023 after a woman told downtown foot patrols that a man had approached her to sell chocolate, but sexually assaulted her after she declined, according to a Winnipeg police news release at the time.
Court records show that he pleaded guilty to sexual assault in that incident.
He's also pleaded guilty to assault in January 2024, and to assault with a weapon the following September, according to court records.
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. For support in your area, you can look for crisis lines and local services via the Ending Sexual Violence Association of Canada database.