Well this was totally predictable

Its just a way to force a extra review via the courts. If your relative has a solicitor involved they could explore if there are grounds (fair provess etc) plus if the decision has to be ratified by the courts as some professions require that but Im not sure on the GMC rules

Tell me more.... a relative is going through the process now. Hopefully they will have no case to answer but what is involved in stopping publication by a regulator? Sounds a bit fishy to me?!

Ta

Problem is that removing someones livelyhood is a high bar. 👀
Very poor wording 🤪

I know they dont have to be struck off but in general any publication of the notice of findings by a Reg body is normally seen as a restraint of livehood and open to challange via a court injunction.

No public statements but those of us who wrote to them at the time got well and truly stone walled/Stonewalled.

A Fitness to Practice process is often about training and education. Someone needn’t be struck off due to a complaint. It’s not meant to be punitive

I've discussed this on here before. This isn't a new thing. When I was working on secure MH wards 10 years ago we had a transman admitted to an all male ward.

Staff absolutely raised a number of concerns around safety, searches, dignity - worries for both themselves and the patient.

The results were confused policies that referred only to gender, compromises where we could get away with them and high stress levels all round. We couldn't just put the person on 1:1 because that would be restrictive to their liberty, dignity and rights and effectively we were being told to treat them like any other man as that's how they viewed themselves and to do so otherwise would be discrimination. We were allowed to have female staff do pat down searches, so male staff didn't have to touch the person's breasts but mostly because this was the person's preference. If they had insisted on being searched by male staff like others we'd have been really stuck. We made sure they ended up in a room close to the office and not off down a corridor but I don't think we could have justified that if someone had started asking questions.

We were all very aware of the risks and none of us were happy about it but the decision to admit did not sit with ward staff. I also couldn't say if it got mentioned every hand over (so a bank or agency staff member there for 1 shift might not have been told - they would have known when they met them).

This case is sad, but not in any way surprising, I'd be more surprised if this is the only time that something similar has happened.

Hopefully the clarification around the Equality Act will mean this can stop and we can actually have single sex wards for all the very good reasons we are supposed to.

I am not a health and safety expert but something went very badly wrong when the victim was admitted to that ward in the hospital. Is this a HSE matter or more CQC?

I can’t even read the whole DM article, it’s horrible.

The relevant legislation is the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

§1 defines rape: A's penis into B's mouth, anus, or vagina; B doesn't consent; A should have reasonably known that B didn't consent.

§2 defines sexual assault by penetration, colloquially known as "serious sexual assault" as that was the name of a similar offence in earlier legislation: A inserts any object or body part other than a penis into B's vagina or anus in a way that a reasonable person would deem sexual; B doesn't consent; A should have reasonably known that B didn't consent.

The sentencing options for the two offences are exactly the same. The law does not treat SABP less seriously than rape.

The advantages of having the two offences separately named and defined:

• No need for a "reasonable person" test to decide in court whether penile penetration is sexual, because there's a penis involved so of course it is.
• A "reasonable person" test can be applied for SABP because there are non-sexual reasons for penetrating someone (e.g. medical procedures) and rare circumstances in which such a penetration might be carried out without express consent (e.g. medical emergency of unconscious person). A medic shouldn't fear criminal charges because he checked a patient delerious with septicemia for a forgotten tampon.
• The law matches British everyday language, in which we understand that rape carries an STI risk, and a pregnancy risk for women, that SABP doesn't carry.
• Likewise, we have everyday language that matches the law when talking about how SABP comes with an increased risk of internal injury compared to rape.

There's nothing "modern" about eliding the two offences at all. Women don't benefit from eliding the two offences, but men might.

Quite.

We are in the uk talking about the UK ambulance services and the nhs psychiatric services.

We are simply more specific in charging, there is no difference in the relevant sentencing guidelines.

And this is why I love the NHS.

Absolutely the hospital is responsible. This crime should result in individual trials against the rapists- sure they might get a hospital order instead of prison- if they were too mentally unwell to be fully criminally responsible. But the hospital staff and management may also be criminally responsible and if not- not sure if your NHS hospitals have some kind of immunity like our State mental hospitals, there is still possibility of civil cases for compensation, having staff getting licenses to practice removed, being fired from their posts, and so on.

Not always, in the US it is more often the police than an ambulance. This is because under privatised healthcare an ambulance ride costs the patient upwards of $1k which someone in mental health crisis generally cannot pay. So ambulances refuse to attend, which leaves the police who are funded by the state (small s state, like Oklahoma)

They do. In the US and other countries this is also legally considered rape. The UK is a bit of an outlier requiring that rape can only be done with a flesh and blood pénis attached to a man.

The individuals who admitted the female victim were following hospital policy determined far above their pay grade.

It's worth recalling that in 2015 the govt created a specific offence so that abusive & willfully neglectful frontline care workers could be punished with up to 5 years in prison but conveniently omitted to create any matching offence for members of the professional managerial class who dream up abusive policies that willfully embed & require neglect.

Edited for dyslexia, some may remain

The hospital should be on trial.
This is wilful neglect.

Someone had to check this woman into the ward.
That person failed utterly and should be investigated.

There are different rules for criminal and civil matters. You can't escape a criminal charge on the grounds that your employer or someone in authority over you said it was fine (otherwise it would be impossible to prosecute almost everyone involved in organised crime 'Yes your honour, I did rob a bank and use the proceeds to by 50kg of heroin. But Knuckles said it was in my job description'.)

Capacity is a separate matter.

THIS. The hospital should be on trial (and managers within it) AHEAD of these men.

The men were detained as was the female person who identified as male because they were a risk to themselves and others. Presumably none of these had any say over where they were placed. It wasn't their decision. It took less than an hour, if reports are to be believed, before the rape happened. Anyone who's spent 5 mins on here could tell you that was a massive safeguarding failure and a disaster waiting to happen.

Just to add, I don’t genuinely think modern psychiatric facilities are like that, but just that being in a secure unit is very different from freedom

I think that its a bit of both and also the fear of being sued by both TRAs and the female victims.
The TRAs would sue for not validating their new identity and the victims for enabling men to sexually assault them by lieing about their sex.
Then ofcourse there's the reputational damage to the GMC of being sued too

Plus I think the hospital should be on trial

If they are found not to have capacity they might not walk - they might still be retained in a secure psychiatric facility. Such hospitals might seem nicer than prison but your stay is potentially open ended. Plus see ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’. No lobotomies anymore thank goodness (though I always feel the history of lobotomies is not too dissimilar to ‘gender affirming care’) but it detention in a secure psychiatric unit is definitely not just walking from court.

Humm..... are they afraid that the SC would rule that a doctor can assault a patient so saying that is not a professional ethics problem???

Or hoping that people who contacted them to investigate will forget ....