A British hospital informed police, who contacted them about a woman who was raped, that the offence could not have happened, because no men were present at the time – the suspect was transgender.
During a debate on single sex wards in hospitals in the House of Lords, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne raised the story of a constituent who was raped last year in a hospital by a transgender woman, who was biologically male. When investigating the allegation, the hospital told the police “that there was no male in the hospital, therefore the rape could not have happened.”
According to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, rape is defined in the UK by the intentional penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person with a penis. The language is clearly gendered, with “his penis” being referred to in the legislation, meaning only a man can commit rape.
However, according to the NHS policy known as Annex B, patients are placed on single-sex wards in a hospital according to whatever gender they identify with at the time, meaning that the transgender person who allegedly raped the victim was put there deliberately.
In fact, as Baroness Winterbourne pointed out, if “a female patient or anyone complains” that there is a biological male in the single sex ward with them, “they must be told that it is not true – there is no male there,” something Dr Sinead Henalyr said in October last year amounted to “gaslighting” on an institutional level.
“I think it is completely wrong that the National Health Service should be instructing or allowing staff to mislead patients – to tell a straightforward lie,” Baroness Winterbourne said.
“It is not acceptable. The National Health Service is admired globally and the duty of candour makes it imperative that it should be frank, open and honest with the patients, yet trust after trust has informed its staff that they must say the opposite of the truth when this situation arises.”
She added that the victim had “come to the edge of a nervous breakdown, because being disbelieved about being raped in hospital has been such an appalling shock.” After “nearly a year” the hospital admitted that the victim was raped by the transgender individual, with the police now “changing their tune” on the case as a result. “They forgot that there was CCTV, nurses, and observers,” Winterbourne noted.
