A Case Involving A Doctor and the Sexual Assault of a Surgical Patient

On Friday, July 21, 2023, when she was 33 years old, the victim Tiffany, who for her privacy in the media uses the pseudonym “Tiffany Pierce,” underwent surgery at OHSU Hillsboro Medical Center in Hillsboro, Oregon in the Portland metropolitan area. The hospital has a financial agreement with OHSU, which is owned by the Oregon State government. Tiffany was the last surgical patient of the day at the outpatient surgery center. It was a chaotic day at the hospital where surgeries at the hospital were running behind schedule and, according to this police report, there may have been no charge nurse on shift to coordinate the transfer of patients among teams. According to a text message conversation between Tiffany and her father the day prior, Tiffany’s surgery was scheduled from about 4:30 p.m to 5:00 p.m. and the hospital anticipated that Tiffany could be discharged after surgery at around 5:30 p.m. or 6 p.m. The surgery’s case information indicates the surgery was scheduled for 4:20 p.m., but that Tiffany’s surgery went from 5:34 p.m to 6:03 p.m. According to discharge information in her medical record, Tiffany wasn’t discharged until 8:08 p.m.

Tiffany arrived at the hospital at approximately 2:30 p.m. Before her surgery, she laughed with a nurse about how the nearby Cooper Mountain area where Tiffany grew up was so wealthy. This nurse dropped Tiffany off in a pre-operative holding room, where there were no other patients. This is where she met the anesthesiologist Dr. Nathan Hildebrant.

Dr. Hildebrant was 50 years old and had worked at the hospital for many years. He was charming, warm, and admired by his peers. According to this public record tax document, he made over $600,000 in 2023 from his job as an anesthesiologist alone. Dr. Hildebrant asked Tiffany to sign a consent form for anesthesia, which, according to a document, she signed at 4:13 p.m. Then Dr. Hildebrant remained in the holding room and asked Tiffany many questions about her life. He spent over an hour with Tiffany in the holding room. Various staff came in and out of the room during that time, and Dr. Hildebrant watched Tiffany laugh with other staff in his presence.

According to a police report, Dr. Hildebrant admitted to the hospital he spent more time with Tiffany than he normally would with a patient before surgery. He alleged it was because Tiffany was very nervous for her surgery.

When Tiffany and Dr. Hildebrant were alone in the holding room, he told her that he was tired of waiting for other staff to take her to the operating room, and that he would do it himself. According to a police report, the hospital acknowledges that he took her to the operating room alone. He wheeled her gurney out of the holding room and through hallways to the operating room. As they waited for a set of double doors to automatically open, Tiffany suddenly felt the effects of a very strong drug and was rendered limp and unconscious in seconds. Tiffany believes he pushed a drug into an IV port behind her as they waited for the double doors to open. Since her assault, Tiffany has had additional surgeries at other hospitals, and asked the anesthesiologists to state what drugs they were administering to her. Tiffany believes the drug Dr. Hildebrant administered to her in the hallway is called propofol because that is exactly what it felt like. Propofol can cause respiratory depression (and thus brain damage and/or death), and Tiffany’s oxygen saturation level wasn’t being being monitored in the hallway.

After Tiffany’s surgery, Dr. Hildebrant and a female circulator nurse brought Tiffany to a Phase 1 Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU). Upon arrival to the Phase 1 PACU, an anesthesiologist would normally provide a “PACU report,” as shown in this video, to transfer the patient to a PACU nurse. However, Dr. Hildebrant stayed with Tiffany after her surgery in the PACU.

At 6:17 p.m., the circulator nurse signed off on Tiffany’s transfer to the Phase 1 PACU. According to anesthesia records, one minute later, at 6:18 p.m., Dr. Hildebrant turned off Tiffany’s IV, which had been supplying water with electrolytes (lactated Ringers’ infusion) to Tiffany. Dr. Hildebrant may have turned off Tiffany’s IV to disconnect it, and prevent the IV line from getting in the way during the sexual assault and ripping the cannula out of Tiffany’s arm.

During the surgery, Tiffany had received a light form of anesthesia called “monitored anesthesia care” (MAC). Although Tiffany’s medical record states anesthesia (propofol) was stopped at 6:04 p.m., according to a nurse’s note, Tiffany was still non-responsive 18 minutes later at 6:22 p.m. This is a very unusual amount of time for a person to remain non-responsive after propofol has been stopped. Tiffany has recovered from propofol faster during other surgeries and believes that Dr. Hildebrant was drugging her in the PACU. For example, about 2 years later, on July 24, 2025, Tiffany had a medical procedure at a different hospital named Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center. On both July 24, 2025 and the date of her assault, Tiffany officially received propofol (a “lights out” medication) as anesthesia. On July 24, 2025, Tiffany quickly recovered from propofol as most people do:

For comparison, on July 24, 2025 at the Legacy hospital, according to anesthesia records, Tiffany first received propofol at 10:35 a.m. At 10:52 a.m., propofol was stopped. According to a note, at 11:00 a.m., 8 minutes after propofol was stopped, a nurse noted Tiffany was drowsy, verbal, and exhibited light stimulation to response. According to another note, at 11:01 a.m., 9 minutes after the propofol was stopped, an anesthesiologist noted that Tiffany had an “aware” level of consciousness. According to another note, at 11:07 a.m., 15 minutes after the propofol was stopped, an anesthesiologist noted that Tiffany was “awake, alert and oriented.” And according to discharge records, at 11:51 a.m., less than an hour after propofol was stopped, Tiffany was discharged and walked herself out of the Legacy hospital. In comparison, on the date of her assault, Tiffany was discharged in a wheelchair because she struggled to walk over 2 hours after her surgery ended.

After Dr. Hildebrant turned off Tiffany’s IV, Dr. Hildebrant performed a post-anesthesia evaluation, after his “Anesthesia End” timestamp and while he was no longer billing for his time. (In the Epic electronic health record system, the “Anesthesia End” timestamp marks the moment the anesthesia provider is no longer in personal attendance of the patient and stops billing for their time.) Tiffany had surgery at Hillsboro Medical Center twice - once months before her sexual assault, and once on the day of her sexual assault. On the date where Tiffany was not sexually assaulted, Tiffany’s anesthesia records state an anesthesiologist completed a post-anesthesia evaluation the same minute as the “Anesthesia End” timestamp.

Normally the Phase 1 PACU at OHSU Hillsboro Medical Center closes at 5:00pm. Eventually, according to Tiffany’s medication records, the PACU nurse “released” medication orders for Tiffany at 6:28 p.m. to transfer Tiffany. Then, Tiffany was left alone in the care of Dr. Hildebrant in the Phase 1 PACU.

Tiffany had undergone surgery on her posterior fourchette (the part of the vulva closest to the anus). According to clinical notes in Tiffany’s medical record, her surgeon advised her to abstain from vaginal intercourse for 6 weeks following the surgery. However, after she was woke up alone with Dr. Hildebrant, he anally raped her. During the assault, she was awake and spoke to Dr. Hildebrant, but was under the effects of a strong amnestic drug that inhibited the formation of long-term memories.

After the assault, Dr. Hildebrant brought Tiffany to an operating room, where he rendered her unconscious with a gas anesthetic.

As Tiffany came to, she experienced a medical phenomenon involving thrashing called “emergence agitation,” which was caught on surveillance video footage. Emergence agitation is caused by gas anesthetics. Since Dr. Hildebrant only gave Tiffany a gas anesthetic to facilitate his sexual assault, her medical record did not list a gas anesthetic.

As Tiffany came to and became alert in the care of female nurse Dawn Marie in the Phase 2 PACU (which is in a building connected via skybridge to the building Tiffany was raped in), she did not remember the sexual assault due to the strong amnestic drug. However, Tiffany was alarmed that she woke up in severe emotional distress and with extreme pain in her rectum. While the pain at her surgical site was a 3 out of 10, her pain in her rectum, which extended to about 5 inches internally, was an 8 out of 10. She thought of a news article she had read years earlier about a woman who sued a local hospital after the woman woke up from a colonoscopy with sexual assault injuries. Within the first couple minutes of being alert, Tiffany realized she had been sexually assaulted. When nurse Dawn Marie took Tiffany to a restroom at the hospital, the nurse noticed a significant amount of blood on Tiffany’s lower back and wiped it off.

Tiffany did not regain any fragmented memories of her assault until about 3 weeks later, while she was doing Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy using a self-administered EMDR video for PTSD. While doing self-administered EMDR therapy, she recalled fragmented memories from the assault. To learn more information about how some people who undergo traumatic experiences recall fragmented memories, watch this presentation by a psychologist. During the entire time that Dr. Hildebrant and Tiffany interacted before she was rendered unconscious in the hallway, he wore a face mask. Tiffany remembered during EMDR therapy that Dr. Hildebrant’s chin hair had a large, perfectly circular spot of grey hair. At the time Tiffany recalled this memory, Tiffany assumed that her memory of Dr. Hildebrant’s facial hair couldn’t be real because the facial hair was so unusual. Emotionally, the memories all felt real, but Tiffany wasn’t sure which memories were real or not. However, the therapy notes for Tiffany’s first therapy session indicate she told her therapist that the rape occurred after the surgery as Tiffany remembered.

About 3 months after her assault, the hospital posted on social media a photo of Dr. Hildebrant holding an award for “new models of clinical care and interdisciplinary teams.” In this photo, he had a large spot of grey hair in his beard that was perfectly circular.

Tiffany developed PTSD, depression, catatonia, and an eating disorder immediately after she was assaulted, and struggled to do basic tasks such as walking to the bathroom, showering, and brushing her hair. Within 4 months, Tiffany, who was already lean at the time of her assault, dropped over 20 pounds to a BMI of 16.

As a result of injuries Tiffany sustained during the rape, a surgeon told Tiffany she needed a surgical operation that had about a 1% mortality rate and about a 4% risk she would need an ostomy bag.