Darlington nurse case flying under the radar

Lawyers for the County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust said Prof Phoenix was "gender critical", meaning she believed sex was "immutable", which could colour her "independence".

How do these people stand up in court and say these utterly ridiculous things? I know lawyers are supposed to come up with whatever nonsense and lies they think will get their clients off but these people clearly have no shame or self reflection.

Sex IS immutable. No one in the history of mankind has ever changed their sex. EVER! To know that is to know a fact. How can knowing facts mean someone is not ‘independent’?

This is absolutely mind blowing.

How can the people that did this to Karen think they have an ounce of humanity??

They are clearly manifestly unsuited to any kind of role which involves the welfare of patients and should all be removed from their roles. Ideally to a role which involves no patient contact, management or responsibility that affects patients. Cleaner maybe. Or catering. No disrespect to cleaners and catering staff.

Like Sandy Peggie.

Hope these NHS bosses and their wokery is publicized to the max. Who gave these thick as mince virtue signallers the right to piss taxpayer cash on the wall to satisfy their ‘progressiveness’.

Just remember the next time you are told the NHS is underfunded, they are wasting your cash on this nonsense and the lawsuits they have to pay out on. The NHS is not underfunded. The people running it are incompetent and dangerous.

This could be saod about the entrie trans movement, tbh.

It's been going on for years. But the problem is that it just sounded so unbelievable to.most people that they just didn't believe the women who were talking about it and refused to look into it themselves on the basis that they weren't going to be like those nasty bigoted women and were going to 'be kind' instead.

Because what those nasty bigoted women were saying couldn't possibly be true. Except that it was.

Like the thread on FWR called something like This Never Happens which outlined all the things that everyone was saying would never happen but had, in fact, happened...

At least some if not all of the Darlington Nurses were members of Unison. When they approached Unison for support they were told that the Unison Rep was already supporting Rose/Tyler.

They were not advised that this did not mean that Unison would refuse to help them: it is normal practice in such situations for the Union to allocate a different Rep to the case or a Full Time Officer if none is available.

As they were not told this, they sought legal advice and have since set up their own union, which Sandie Peggie has joined.

Darlington Nursing Union
First of its kind trade union to protect the dignity of women in the workplace. Contact [email protected]
https://x.com/DarlingtonUnion
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566543745560

CONSTITUTION AND RULES
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kc_RJ-8Z-GPqNkKwChRbT0pYTm115Onn/view?usp=sharing

Rose/Tyler's sister appears to be a member of Unison too. She was marching with Unison at the 2025 Durham Miners' Gala. When she saw women with Banners supporting the Darlington Nurses she went apeshit and came over shouting, "TERFs!! There are TERFs here! Get the TERFs out!!"

Then head butted a woman standing with the women holding the Darlington Nurses Banners.

There were several members of Durham Constabulary standing very nearby who saw this happen. One of them had a "quiet word" with her and let her go back to the Unison contingent with their banners.

The woman who was head butted had to go to the local police station to report the assault. Photo and video evidence of the assault and injury have been given to the police.

I don't know the outcome or if Unison were informed that one of their number had launched an unprovoked physical assault on another woman.

The RCN called them bigots and refused to help.

The RCN were so horrible to Sandie Peggie that she is suing them to get 30 years of subs back

The RCN has also refused to help Jennifer Melle and in fact sided with the man who hurled racist abuse at her

This is why it is so important to give these cases the oxygen of publicity, so that the powers that be can be called to account for their actions. Especially when the national media (looking at you BBC!) are trying to suppress them.

I've googled now, which is what I should have done yesterday, it was Gerry Robinson, at Rotherham General Hospital.

This is an awful case, thanks @hardstareglare and for your subsequent messages. I agree about what you said about the missing women in China, globally that women are murdered (one every 10 minutes). It's because of our natal sex. Nothing to do with gender identity or feelings. Gender ideology is THE most sexist, misogynistic, women hating belief system. It's astounding to me that it has been embraced by those who should know better (academics, our public bodies, government, NHS). Yet also unsurprisingly really, because it prioritises the feelings of men over women's safety, dignity and privacy so that's just par for the course really.

The tribunal threads about this over on the feminism: s&g board on mumsnet are eye opening. "Rose" with his holey underwear exposing his MALE genitals to the nurses, he's the one that's protected and not them. Unbelievable. I see it as sexual assault and the NHS cheered it on by supporting him.

When I read about Karen's experience, I cried. How she must have felt at the time, and since...the futility, the frustration, the anger, the unfairness of her situation...she probably felt she'd entered a parallel universe 😳
How the theatre manager could out and out LIE like that, just so that she could be seen as 'inclusive' to the poor maligned hurty menz feelz.

It is an outrage that the BBC haven't regularly reported on this (when they do, their headlines are at worse, hate-filled towards women to the more ambiguous). The Maxine Croxhall 'eye roll' ( which was a thing of beauty) debacle just highlights that the corporation are so caught up in DEI still, just like the NHS but it makes me horrified to think how many other business', large, small, nationwide, world-wide have been sucked into the world of #bekind (ah but dont forget, that only applies to women!!) and as a result women are having to live with this on a daily basis without a voice.

I'm mad as hell about it all. 🤬

I'm astounded the NHS spend so much money defending these cases. Has the decision about the Sandie Peggie case been made yet?

I think it's normally policy to not allow people to talk about complaints against them. Rose probably wasn't allowed to talk about the nurse's complaint against him. I don't know that I think it's a reasonable policy generally. It curtails people's access to information and support, but it is fairly common and it probably helps workplaces stop complaints becoming workplace dramas.

I was listening with one ear so that may well be the case. It would still have been unreasonable of HR not to allow discussion of a complaint against them all though!

From my reading of Tribunal Tweets' transcription, this is a slight misunderstanding. The nurses were allowed to talk amongst themselves about their complaint about RH's behaviour and the admittance of men into the female changing room. What the weren't allowed to talk about was Rose Henderson's counter complaint against them. (Which is currently on pause. Some might think so it can be held against them and used at the end of this tribunal, but I can't possibly comment.)

It is a Doctor in the NHS Fife case but the person in the Darlington case is an Operating Dept Practitioner (ODP) rather than a Doctor (see photo). Probably still on the same NHS Pay Band as the Darlington Nurses (Band 5).

NHS Health Careers - Operating department practitioner
https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/allied-health-professionals/roles-allied-health-professions/operating-department-practitioner

National Careers Service - Operating department practitioner
https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/operating-department-practitioner

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) regulates ODPs and most other clinical staff groups employed in the NHS (but not Doctors and Nurses).

In March 2023 the HCPC published ODP Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) information held by the HCPC with regards to the nine protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010.

Diversity data: operating department practitioners - March 2023

Gender Reassignment

Question asked:
"Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?"

Accompanying note in portal:
Your gender identity may be the same as your assigned sex, but it may be different. You may identify as the opposite gender to your assigned sex, you may identify with neither, or with a self-described gender identity.

5: Not recorded
14,575: Recorded

40: Yes to Gender Reassignment (0.3%)
5: Prefer to self-describe (0.03%)
455: Prefer not to say (3%)

See full data in screenshot. Data on Sex is reported separately so it is not reported how many of the above are male and how many are female.

Sex

Question asked:
"What is your Sex?"

Accompanying note in portal:
This is the sex you were assigned at birth and we asked you to provide this information when you registered with the HCPC. For births registered in the UK, this will either be male or female. However, some other countries may include 'intersex' as an option. We also ask if your gender identity is different from the sex you were assigned at birth. Your gender identity may be the same as your assigned sex, but it may be different. You may identify as the opposite gender to your assigned sex, you may identify with neither, or with a self-described gender identity.

9,670: Female (62%)
5,420: Male (35%)
5: Intersex (0.03%)
430: Prefer not to say (3%)

See full data in screenshot.

NOTE: Not all Registrants complete EDI questions in part or at all. This leads to anomalies such as Sex data being recorded for 1,000 more Registrants than for Gender Reassignment.

The page linked below contains tables showing ODP Diversity Data for all nine protected characteristics. Each table also shows the number and percentage of responses for total HCPC registrants for comparison with ODPs.

https://mrs.hcpc-uk.org/resources/data/2023/diversity-data-operating-department-practitioners-2023/

In case anyone is interested . . .

Diversity factsheets and reports for all professions regulated by the HCPC
https://www.hcpc-uk.org/about-us/insights-and-data/diversity/

Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Equality and diversity reports
These are spreadsheets you have to download
https://www.nmc.org.uk/about-us/reports-and-accounts/equality-and-diversity-reports/

The NMC register 1 April 2024 – 31 March 2025

Gender split of the register:

88.8% Woman
11.2% Man

(It is safe to assume that some "women" are male and some "men" are female)
https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/data-reports/march-2025/annual-data-report-march-2025.pdf

For quick comparison, ODPs are three times as likely to be men (35%) than nurses are likely to be men (11.2%).