Another journalist about her experience with Cimicky: I told him he was a pig

Vlaďka is, after Czech TV presenter Martina Hynková, the second woman working in the media for many years whom Cimický allegedly sexually harassed, according to the indictment. The editors know her full name, but due to the sensitivity of the case, have requested at least partial anonymity.

Like Hynková, she was questioned on Tuesday before the District Court for Prague 8 without the presence of the public, but also of the psychiatrist himself, who only attended the opening of the main trial in January. There he denied any guilt. According to the indictment, between 1979 and 2019, he committed four rapes and 35 acts of extortion with sexual overtones.

I don’t feel guilty, Cimický said in court

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One of the injured women is Vlaďka, who, like Hynková, worked with Cimický as a journalist. In the nineties, she worked in the magazine Vlasta and was in contact with Cimický at work. After that, she moved to a tabloid magazine and the collaboration with the psychiatrist continued.

Acupuncture expert

In 1997, she began to deal with long-term sleep problems and heard that acupuncture helped. At that time, according to her words, Cimický “matched” an expert on this traditional Chinese medicine who could help her.

He therefore invited Vladika to his then newly opened private clinic Modrá laguna in Prague 6. When she arrived there on the fateful day, she was surprised to find that the psychiatrist was all alone in the building, without any staff. The room he led her to was said to have lit incense sticks and shaded windows, making it feel too intimate.

“Then he immediately started asking me how often I had sex, whether I had a lover, even though he knew I was married. I didn’t understand his questions and asked him how it was related to acupuncture. He answered something to the effect that there is a need to release the tension,” Vlaďka told Novinka.

According to her words, she had the feeling that Cimický wanted to become something more than just her acquaintance. Even that surprised her considering that the editor was in her forties at the time and that they had been in personal professional contact for many years.

“At the same time, after the publication of this case, I found out that, unlike me, many of the injured girls were only nineteen years old, or even younger, and most of them were his patients, while I was not,” Vlaďka was shocked.

Breast touching

She zoomed in after what happened further in Cimický’s surgery. “He told me to strip down to my underwear. I stated that it was kind of weird that I had already had acupuncture and didn’t have to undress that much, so why should I do it now. He told me that it would be better and easier,” said the editor.

The unpleasant surprise, from which she said it took her a long time to recover, came right after. “When I lay down on the bed, he started touching my breast and got excited while doing it. I told him he was a pig, and since I’m a woman with a wound, I had to do something not to give him one. But I collected my things and ran out of the room. I only got dressed outside,” explained the journalist.

For a long time, she remained silent about her experience with Cimicky, because she considered what he allowed to her to be her weakness and failure. She decided to speak only after she talked about her experience in a spa in Jeseník with a psychologist, who mentioned that the police were solving the Cimický case. She advised her to tell everything to the criminal investigators, her partner also supported Vladika in this.

“I have to say that the moment I told everything to the lawyer and then to the police, I felt relieved. I felt relieved. Now at the court, on the contrary, it was difficult, unpleasant,” outlined the experienced editor.

She admitted that she was very nervous before and during her testimony on Tuesday. “Even after all these years, I was torn about it. He asked me (the defense attorney) why I didn’t report it. I was ashamed and I was also embarrassed that I was a journalist and that we had known each other for many years,” explained Vlaďka, who could not hold back tears even after many years.

In addition to her, on Tuesday, the court heard five other injured women, including Hynková. They were the first of a total of 39 that Judge Petr Novák wants to interview in the coming weeks. The plaintiff wants a three-year prison sentence for Cimický for sexual assaults against them.