Dentist of Horror<\/p>\n
As she sat in her dentist\u2019s office, eight of her teeth newly yanked from her jaw, dentures painfully affixed to a mouth still gushing blood, Sylviane Boulesteix tried to figure out what had just happened to her.<\/p>\n
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Just a few hours earlier she\u2019d gotten a call from the dentist\u2019s office, letting her know that Doctor Jacobus Van Nierop was ready for her in the operating room. That surprised Boulesteix, the older woman told the French daily Le Journal du Centre and Agence France-Presse, because as far as she was aware there wasn\u2019t anything wrong with her teeth \u2014 she just needed to have her braces fitted.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Confused but not yet concerned, she settled into the exam chair and waited for the only dentist in Ch\u00e2teau-Chinon, France, to tell her what was wrong.<\/p>\n
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Then, without warning, he made seven or eight injections into her gums, she recalled, then painfully pulled out eight teeth in one go.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that I bled for three days,\u201d she said, touching her cheek at the recollection. But when she went back to Van Nierop\u2019s office, he refused to relieve her pain.<\/p>\n
Dentist of Horror<\/p>\n
Van Nierop, a charismatic Dutch dentist who seemed the savior of Ch\u00e2teau-Chinon\u2019s teeth when he arrived in the rural French village, turned out to be a \u201cbutcher,\u201d residents claim. Now he\u2019s on trial for the alleged mutilations of Boulesteix and some six dozen other patients over the course of four years, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n
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The list of complaints against Van Nierop is long: unnecessarily pulling teeth, misuse of anesthetic, overcharging patients, abscesses, procedures that left patients with infections or bits of tools remaining in their mouths.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s unthinkable, right?\u201d Therese Zbinden, another plaintiff, told Le Journal du Centre. \u201cWe were mutilated and then that\u2019s it. We live the consequences. Even if we are compensated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dentist of Horror<\/p>\n
The man the French media have dubbed \u201cthe dentist of horror\u201d says he remembers only one of the 75 patients who say they suffered \u201cmutilations\u201d or \u201cpermanent disabilities\u201d at his hands, according to the AP. He faces charges of international violence and fraud and could see 10 years in prison and a 375,000 euro ($413,000) fine if convicted<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e2teau-Chinon, a village of about 2,000 people 200 miles southeast of Paris in the Burgundy region of France, is located in what officials term a \u201cmedical desert,\u201d according to the AP. Residents had to travel long distances for teeth cleanings, root canals, braces fittings, and the like. So when Van Nierop was bought in by a head hunter for the regional council in 2008, residents cheered his arrival.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nothing in his credentials or his demeanor seemed to indicate that anything about him might be awry.<\/p>\n
\u201cNice copper plaque, modern practice\u201d the French daily La D\u00e9p\u00eache described his offices.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Van Nierop himself was impressive, Nicole Martin told Le Journal du Centre. He had a rugby player\u2019s solid build and an athlete\u2019s outsized personality. A neighbor who declined to be named told La D\u00e9p\u00eache that he recalled the dentist \u201cwith huge things: a big 4X4, a large dog, a big cigar,\u201d not to mention a large, luxurious house outside of town.<\/p>\n
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But Van Nierop\u2019s smile was \u201cmean,\u201d said Martin, who says she lost two teeth and several hundred Euros to the unscrupulous dentist and is president of his victims\u2019 association.<\/p>\n
Dentist of Horror<\/p>\n
Speaking to AFP, Martin recalled how Van Nierop would knock patients out with what he claimed was just a \u201ctiny prick\u201d of anesthetic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it was over, we would find a Post-it note saying to come back for an appointment the next day or the day after,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What none of his patients knew was that Van Nierop was the subject of disciplinary proceedings in his own country, and had provided falsified documents to be allowed to practice dentistry in France, investigators told the AP.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But by 2013, French authorities had become suspicious of the Dutch dentist, as were his patients. With the help of one of Van Nierop\u2019s assistants, scores of victims formed a group to help press charges. Van Nierop was arrested and then released pending trial.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Instead he skipped bail, fleeing to Canada, where he hid out in the village of Nackawic, News Brunswick. No one in the tiny community knew that their new neighbor was a wanted man, France\u2019s English-language new site the Local reported.<\/p>\n
Dentist of Horror<\/p>\n
He was eventually tracked down and extradited to the Netherlands and then to France.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Van Nierop has tried to block his prosecution on psychological grounds, the AP reported; the dentist claims he suffers from a borderline personality disorder that is complicated by the fact that he is transgender. He also says he has attempted suicide multiple times. During his imprisonment in France, Van Nierop has staged hunger strikes and once, before he was to be questioned by an investigating judge, swallowed several razor blades.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m totally blocked from the inside and I don\u2019t want to explain it all,\u201d he told the investigating judge, according to court documents cited by the AP \u201cYou can lock me up for years \u2026 it will not change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dentist of Horror As she sat in her dentist\u2019s office, eight of her teeth newly yanked from her jaw, dentures painfully affixed to a mouth still gushing blood, Sylviane Boulesteix tried to figure out what had just happened to her. Just a few hours earlier she\u2019d gotten a call from the dentist\u2019s office, letting […]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Dentist of Horror. He's accused of mutilating some six dozen patients over the course of four years.","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,48,62,83,87,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosplexus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}