A radiological technologist who falsified more than 1,000 mammograms in a small town in Georgia got off far too easy, say women who were horrified to learn of the deception. Rachael Rapraeger, 33, was sentenced to six months in a detention center earlier this month for assuming the identities of physicians in a hospital computer system to sign off on nearly 1,300 reports stating patients were free from cancer or other abnormalities, the AP reports. Ten of the women were later found to have lumps or cancerous tumors growing inside them, and two of them are now dead, reports CNN. Rapraeger pleaded guilty to reckless conduct and computer forgery and will be banned from working in health care during the 10 years she is on probation.
Women given false negatives complain that Rapraeger, who told police that she faked the records after personal issues caused her to fall far behind on paperwork, didn't even apologize at her sentencing. "If she had gotten up and at least said, 'I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorry these women had to go through this,' that, to me, would have meant that she was truly sorry for what we went through," says one woman who had to go through chemotherapy that would have been unnecessary if her mammogram had been properly examined by a doctor. "You played Russian roulette with the lives of essentially a thousand women in this community," the judge said at Rapraeger's sentencing. (More Rachael Rapraeger stories.)
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