Sexual assault, abuse and stalking are commonplace in healthcare. A thorough investigation sheds light on the sad reality of the British NHS.
Regardless whether you go there as a patient or as part of your daily working life, you want the hospital to be a safe place. Unfortunately, as we all know, that’s not always the case. But we are not talking about workplace safety here: Healthcare has a problem with sexual violence. Given the congregation of vulnerable people and power imbalances it’s not altogether surprising – the system lends itself to abuse and makes it easy for victims to be forced into silence.
The situation is disheartening, to say the very least, and unfortunately, it’s far from a few isolated cases here and there – sexual abuse is epidemic. At least for the United Kingdom, an investigation by The Guardian and The BMJ now reveals the true scope of the problem: Between 2017 and 2022 British NHS trusts recorded more than 35,000 sexual safety incidents. These include everything from abusive remarks over harassment and stalking to sexual assault and rape.
The BMJ and The Guardian collected data from 212 NHS trusts, which reveal a total of 35,606 incidents on NHS premises. At least 20 % of these incidents involved rape, sexual assault and kissing and touching without consent – though the actual numbers remain unclear, as not all trusts provided a detailed breakdown of the type of recorded incidents. The investigation also included reports from 37 police forces, who recorded 11,880 alleged sexual crimes on NHS premises – including 5,164 sexual assaults and at least 3,084 rapes. 180 cases of rape of children under the age of 16 are particularly concerning.
The numbers paint a clear picture: the main perpetrators of abuse in hospitals are the patients themselves. Of the 22,143 occasions where staff members experienced sexual abuse 95 % (20,928) involved patients abusing staff – that’s 58 % of all recorded incidents. Patient-on-patient-cases made up another 20 % (7,464).
That doesn’t mean that the staff is free from blame: Of the 12,234 patients targeted, 3,218 were abused by staff. On top, 902 staff members reported sexual abuse by colleagues. That adds up to more than 4,000 NHS workers who were accused of rape, harassment, sexual assault, stalking and abusive remarks – yet only 576 of them have faced any kind of disciplinary action, the investigation found. This might be tied to the general workforce crisis the NHS has been facing for years. Deeba Syed, a senior legal officer for Rights of Women, a helpline providing support for women who have been assaulted or harassed at work, says that women calling the helpline claim that NHS trusts show “reluctance to suspend perpetrators due to overall staff shortages” whenever complaints are brought forward against colleagues.
It certainly isn’t helpful that the majority of trusts has no dedicated policy on how to deal with sexual assault and harassment. Fewer than 1 in 10 trusts reported having such a policy and clear guidelines. Instead, the different trusts have widely varying criteria for when a case is actually reported. This doesn’t make it easier to hold perpetrators accountable or for victims to come forward and report the incidences.
While the grand majority of trusts (193 out of 212) reported only ten or fewer staff-on-staff-incidents, this isn’t necessarily good news: Experts argue that – given the sheer number of employees – this seems implausible and that the actual numbers might be higher. Simon Fleming, orthopedic registrar and author of a paper on sexual violence in surgery, comments: “I know hundreds of female doctors who’ve been assaulted, thousand who’ve been harassed and a decent number who’ve been raped within the NHS.”
One reason for this might be the reluctance of victims to actually report incidents – the intimate nature of the crime, fear of torpedoing their own careers and lacking consequences for perpetrators do not exactly encourage coming forward with an allegation. Furthermore, it might be possible that some trusts are “sitting on a huge number of unreported incidents”, as Latifa Patel, workforce and equalities lead of the British Medical Association, puts it. Why? Because trusts are no longer obliged to officially report abuse of staff to a central database.
In light of these disturbing findings, several leading organizations including the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the Hospital Doctors Union and the GMB Union, as well as the Liberal Democrats have called for an independent inquiry into the epidemic of sexual assault within the NHS.
Everyone agrees that action is needed and it’s needed fast: “Employers must ensure that victims are supported and feel empowered to report sexual harm and resolve to take appropriate action”, Patel says. “It is heartbreaking to see the extent to which the NHS has failed to provide this safety to patients and healthcare staff.” Health Secretary Steve Barclay already stated that the government is working closely with NHS England to prevent and reduce violence against staff; the maximum sentence for those convicted of assaulting healthcare workers has already been doubled.
Experts suggest the implementation of NHS-wide policies on how to deal with allegations, including when to suspend staff and when to report individuals to the police, as a start. But tackling this problem is not only a matter of policy, as Fleming points out in an opinion article: In fact, it is everyone’s responsibility to hold sexual predators in the NHS accountable. “Criminal behavior should be dealt with seriously, regardless of who has committed the crime”, he writes. “Failure to challenge, individually or organizationally, these attitudes is akin to accepting them as ‘just how things are’.”
Image source: Chris Bayer, Unsplash
