Doctors at Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston, Texas

An American woman has told a heart rending story of how she was raped in a Houston, Texas  hospital by a medical doctor, while lying unconscious.

Laura Perilla-Vargas went to Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston, Texas, on Halloween two years ago to be treated for shortness of breath. Two days later, a stranger’s semen, and blood were found on her body.

The  series of sexual assaults inflicted on her by the doctor has now been  detailed in a civil lawsuit against the hospital and the doctor, identified as Shefeeq Sheikh.

The police have charged  Sheikh, then a resident at the hospital, with sexual assault. Now, attorneys for Perilla-Vargas, a 27-year-old mother of two, are suing Sheikh for damages along with the hospital and its associated medical school.

According to a petition filed Monday in Harris County District Court, Perilla-Vargas arrived at the Ben Taub emergency room on Oct. 31, 2013, complaining of shortness of breath and wheezing. She stayed for overnight observation, and then developed worrisome new symptoms: spasms, a racing heart rate, fast breathing.

In the early morning of Nov. 2, while Perilla-Vargas was “heavily sedated to the point where she was in and out of consciousness and in a weakened state,” an unknown man entered her room, her attorneys say. She believed the man was a doctor but did not recognize him at the time.

“During the first two visits, the male physician entered the room and placed his mouth on her breast and inserted his fingers into her vagina,” the attorneys allege. “He also attempted to place his penis in her mouth.”

The third time he came in the room, the stranger “pulled her to the edge of the bed, stood on a chair,” and vaginally penetrated her. As these alleged assaults took place, Perilla-Vargas is said to have tried in vain to call nurses for help with the button by her bed but, the next morning, it was discovered that “the nurses’ call button was not working properly and/or it had been unplugged.”

“It’s the feeling that you can’t do anything,” she later told the Houston Chronicle. “You can’t do anything to save yourself.”

Read more at the Daily Beast: Doctor-patient sexual abuse has recently become a topic of heated discussion within the medical world