Well this was totally predictable

Did they make a public statement on that?

I know they were forced to relink any historic rulings to the new name and number which was a basic obvious safeguarding fail and likely a failure of their legal obligations on record keeping.

Problem is that removing someones livelyhood is a high bar.

So bringing the profession into disrepute is a lesser concern to an actual assault.

But his statements under oath raise concerns about his fitness be allowed pratice medicine on the general public on ethical grounds.

However the test would be if a woman (or man) in Fife was forced to accept that male doctor when she asked for a female doctor had made a complaint.

But I agree that activism has won when their legal duties are ignored.

The hospital is not on trial in this case no.

But it could be used as a partial defence by the men and open the door to future court cases about this incident.

It certainly is relevant and certainly will be something that will be hard not to look at if the two men do walk.

I think we are probably looking at Wilful Neglect with individuals in the trust liable.

Mental Health Act 1983 section 127
Ill-treatment of patients.
(1)It shall be an offence for any person who is an officer on the staff of or otherwise employed in, or who is one of the managers of, a hospital [F1, independent hospital or care home]—
(a)to ill-treat or wilfully to neglect a patient for the time being receiving treatment for mental disorder as an in-patient in that hospital or home; or
(b)to ill-treat or wilfully to neglect, on the premises of which the hospital or home forms part, a patient for the time being receiving such treatment there as an out-patient.

(2)It shall be an offence for any individual to ill-treat or wilfully to neglect a mentally disordered patient who is for the time being subject to his guardianship under this Act or otherwise in his custody or care (whether by virtue of any legal or moral obligation or otherwise).

(3)Any person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—
(a)on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both;
(b)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding [five years] or to a fine of any amount, or to both.
(4)No proceedings shall be instituted for an offence

Mental Capacity Act 2005 section 44
Ill-treatment or neglect
(1)Subsection (2) applies if a person (“D”)—
(a)has the care of a person (“P”) who lacks, or whom D reasonably believes to lack, capacity,
(b)is the donee of a lasting power of attorney, or an enduring power of attorney (within the meaning of Schedule 4), created by P, or
(c)is a deputy appointed by the court for P.

(2)D is guilty of an offence if he ill-treats or wilfully neglects P.

(3)A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a)on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding [the general limit in a magistrates’ court] or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both;
(b)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or a fine or both.

What the legal definition of Wilful Neglect?
I'm struggling to find a definitive answer to this but it's basically a deliberate or reckless act which is a conscious failure to provide necessary care or a reckless disregard for the patient's well-being or an extreme failure to meet the expected standard of care with the exclusion of genuine errors and accidents. One of the key phrases seems to be
Wilful neglect involves deliberately not doing something that the person knew they ought to have done. Which in the context of the title of this thread, seems to be pretty on the money...

Liability is both individual and institutional (and would include managers setting policy)

With this in mind, the Darlington ruling really really should be a wake up call for NHS lawyers and liability managers...

In the criminal case the issue will (should) be with if the CPS can prove that the two men knew there was no consent and forced the sex act anyway. Working out the "knew" bit is working out if they has capacity or not

What the hospital policy was or what staff did or did not do were covered by the "hospital is not on trial" ststements.

I was thinking the exact same thing. If the men/accused have good lawyers they’ll get off - they e been detained under the MHA so the State has taken over responsibility because they can’t keep themselves safe…. Including safe from causing themselves harm or others…. As the state put them into a situation where they did harm others then it’s the NHS Policy which is responsible. This could potentially be a horrible process for the victim - it’s going to be a very long road. Whats the mechanism for criminal corporate charges against the NHS Trust?

Holy fuck. Psychiatric intensive care unit.

That’s what you might think but the Dr’s registration body the GMC don’t see it like that. They wouldn’t act on Dr Upton’s testimony that he’d treat a woman who had asked for single sex care and ignore her wishes. It’s so shocking how all these people who are supposed to protect us have gone completely LaLa

The Darlington case raises liability issues. There a section in the ruling about whether Rose harassed the nurses....

The paragraph below is a big deal.

It says that the Trust not Rose were ultimately reasonable for his conduct in the changing because their unlawful policy meant they had liability for his presence there.

If you turn this on it's head for this situation. The woman in question should not have been in a male only unit - it was unlawful - therefore they take on liability and this may have the effect of removing responsibility from men who were already deemed to have diminished ability to function within society due to their mental health.

It strikes me as if this ruling gives good grounds for the rapists to get off but liability to be found to that of the Trusts.

It's an interesting prospect...

We don’t know if the men in this case were acting with capacity or ‘knew what they were doing’ (they were in a secure psychiatric facility to protect themselves and others from the consequences of the behaviour) and I was referencing those without capacity. They were certainly lacking in critical thinking skills if they thought it was simple to get away with it when both they and the victim were locked in together and there were witnesses. But regardless of whether they had full capacity or not, the state still has a duty to protect them from harm when under its care.

In one of the worst policies I saw (I want to say it was Doncaster but I may be wrong) the policy said that if a patient or their family member refused care from a trans HCP they should be made to apologise and comply; if they still refused they could be discharged and refused further care.

That ^ is a criminal act of assault and each and every HCP who engaged in that act could (should along with the board who signed it off) end up with a criminal record and loss of professional registration.

I will bet it breached the Trusts own :
• policy on informed consent and
• policy on managaging threatening behavior and violence.

I don't have any sympathy or empathy for any rapists whether mentally ill or not.
These two men knew what they were doing and did it for the same reason most rapists do, because they thought they could get away with it.

I have a lot of frustration at mumsnetters for dehumanising and disrespecting trans kids, because it has very real effects.

Another trans boy has died by suicide because of bullying - and the misogynistic effects of rape culture.

When minorities are dehumanised, there is never any shortage of violent boys and men who will consider them fair game for all kinds of violence. They're usually sexualised as well - even children.

This is what's currently happening in schools. Trans children are targeted for sexual and physical violence, and told they deserve it. That it doesn't count. Their transitions framed as sexually-motivated, even though about half of trans kids are same-gender attracted.

My family endured this for years. Entire classes who would shout abuse at my kid, who hasn't had any hormones or surgery, just lives as himself. He was threatened on an almost daily basis with sexual.assault, forcibly touched and abused. Thank God for the gay teachers in particular who looked out for him. I still don't know how he survived.

I do know what it did to his exam chances. And his mental health.

Yet he's still trans. Even after all that, having walked through fire every day, he survived and is living as himself.

Terf propaganda enabled that abuse. It provided a justification for the violence - he was told so.

Fighting rape culture involves fighting for trans people too. They are on the front line of misogynistic violence. Especially school children.

With another trans child having died, I fully expect any terf sympathy to be accompanied by misgendering, horrible remarks about his parents, point-scoring and victim-blaming. Every. Single. Time.

You can't change mental health wards in the sense that you are going to have a bunch of people in them who are immediately going to identify your sex.

Even is you have sufficient staff to prevent rape or sexual assault, or if the patients are not physically capable of it, you still have a bunch of vulnerable mentally ill men who have identified your sex. What happens then? Do you gaslight them and tell these mentally ill men that what they see with their own eyes is not true? Tell them they must lie about your sex, and remember to do so despite possible memory issues? And what if they refuse? Do you punish them? Discharge them? What if they are incapable of remembering or lying like that? Discharge them too? Remove them to a less optimum ward? Do you ignore the protected characteristics of their belief? And what of their privacy and dignity? Should that be ignored? It certainly sounds like a very dangerous situation for mentally ill men.

Very late to this so inevitably repeating something already said, but... I work in mental health. Eden ward is a male PICU. A PICU. You are only admitted to a PICU when your risks to self/others are really high and cannot be managed in another setting. To put a female patient on a male PICU is organisational abuse. What a fucking heinous decision. This really shames our sector.

"We need to take the mentally ill patients out of mental health care because they are too dangerous..."

This shows just how much bollocks you spout and how little understanding of the world you have.

I'm sure transmen don't want to acknowledge they are female. The trouble is they are female and it's integral to their mental health, partly because hormone imbalances can send you crackers (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt), because being in a state of constantly pretending to be something you are not is straining on your mental health and because a constant desire to be something you are not or achieve something impossible will send you mental. In terms of pathological avoidant type behaviour - which this is - a form of extreme anxiety you can't get better without dealing with it head on. That means exposure to being told you are female and coming to peace with it. This is the treatment for other types of extreme phobia which have become so problematic they effect everyday functioning. Yet this is the one thing that isn't 'allowed' if trans. This attitude basically keeps deeply unwell women in a permanent state of mental illness.

It's akin to wanting to have treatment for cancer but not wishing to have invasive surgery because it upsets you to admit you have a tumour. Saying you don't want surgery doesn't help. No one wants surgery, but they just have to suck it up.

This is the same. They may not want to be referred to as female and treated as female, but unfortunately this isn't optional and I want shouldn't be getting.

Not only does it place the women in question at risk, but you have a myriad of other people directly and indirectly affected by her saying I'm a man and those who have responsibility nodding along like Muppets going 'yes of course'.

We have staff who no doubt saw this coming and felt unable to challenge who are deeply upset and traumatised. You have other patients who may have witnessed this who are deeply affected - you know mentally ill vulnerable patients. You have the men themselves who are responsible - who were mentally ill at the time but still had some capacity who really should have been put somewhere else because they were dangerous. They have the paradox of being vulnerable at the same time to acting on their unacceptable behaviours because they were enabled by fuckwits. You have all the patients affected by this court case and how it impacts on costs and staff out of the ward. You have everyone here deeply affected and numerous women who will avoid mental health care because they don't trust it and are concerned they may come across men - it means their mental health is more likely to hit crisis before getting help against their will when early intervention would have been better. The trust in HCP generally is a huge harm.

There are times when 'i want' shouldn't get. When there is no way to avoid the reality of a situation and it has to be confronted head on.

If you have bowel cancer, you almost certainly will face the indignity of having something shoved up your arse at some point. There are some issues which can not protect your dignity at all times.

You can't change mental health wards in the sense that you are going to have a bunch of people in them who are immediately going to identify your sex. Yes they should be more staffed. But ultimately you still have to identify the female patient. You can't protect them unless you do. You have to treat them differently.

How viable is it to protect a female patient in a male mental health ward with the best will in the world? These are men who don't have inhibitions and often display sexualised behaviour due to their condition. Is it reasonable to expect one to one protection for all transpatients? Is that equality of care for all patients? Maybe many of the other patients would benefit from one to one. We don't put mental health patients in isolation unless there's very good reason as there's an inherent danger to isolation for their own well being. Given that staffing ratios are appalling as it is, where are you going to take a member of staff from in order to enable one to one protection for a transperson? And how does this stop the comments of other patients or inappropriate flashing behaviour of other patients which still presents a risk to the patient b

So we have to put patients somewhere. We should be putting them in sexed wards because this is reflective of the levels of risks to and presented by males and females.

It's tough shit if you don't like it.

Women in Intensive care can't get single sex provision for good reason - they by nature need high staffing ratios. Why should women who want to be men get inappropriate care and be put at risk (and put others in positions where harm is likely) because they don't like it. It's not a good enough reason to allow it.

There are times where not only is it appropriate to say no we can't accommodate that, but actually we have good reason why it's harmful to you to say no because you need to deal with it or it will cause even more harm.

This is one.

The fact staff aren't doing this is awful. They are failing transpatients. It is one thing to want to be called male at certain times but at others you HAVE to acknowledge reality when it's appropriate. This isn't kind to fail to do. It's actively cruel and harmful.

The clearest thing here is you have zero experience of the mental health system nor had serious mental health issues yourself. It's totally speaking out of arse.

It's like saying we should stop murderers being in nasty because it makes prison dangerous.

Honestly all you do is show the unbelievable level of privilege and entitlement trans ideology is built upon.

Calling women "females" is a bit of a giveaway there mate.

If you cared about this poor guy, you'd respect his identity. Full stop.

No one chooses to be trans, and every supportive parent of a trans person wishes they weren't trans - not because they don't respect & love them, but because they don't want them to be harassed, raped or killed.

Trans men know how vulnerable coming out makes them. It paints an immediate target. Yet they do it - because living openly as themselves is more important than that.

Trans people live with a degree of risk even I - a c!s woman of near 50, with a lifetime of coping with sexual harassment - can fathom. It certainly can't be understood by c!s men.

Trans people also live with a constant, exhausting hypervigilance. It makes trans kids collapse from sheer physical stress. No one chooses that. They are normal human beings who deserve understanding and respect. Misgendering is lame as hell, and says far more about the person doing it

We need safer MH spaces, a functioning justice system - and a far greater understanding of the impact dehumanisation of minorities has on society.

The early Tavistock records suggested that a substantial proportion of the children they saw had a parent who was a sex offender. Its fairly obvious why those poor children thought the way out of their horrific situation was to change sex to the one that was not preferred by the SO parent.

Predators go after the easiest prey.
That's why disabled children and women are the demographic most likely to be sexually assaulted and that is why (imho) so many trans "men" are tiny women.
I'm not referring to the dedicated followers of fashion for whom it is just a fad that will pass without any ill effect, I'm referring to the most vulnerable children and women in society who are targetted by predatory men.

I think many of them believe that if they just get rid of their breasts and grow facial hair, they will no longer be targetted by the sick bastards.
Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Instead they are walking around as if with a sign telling everyone who sees them that they are vulnerable.

You can't change mental health wards in the sense that you are going to have a bunch of people in them who are immediately going to identify your sex.

Even is you have sufficient staff to prevent rape or sexual assault, or if the patients are not physically capable of it, you still have a bunch of vulnerable mentally ill men who have identified your sex. What happens then? Do you gaslight them and tell these mentally ill men that what they see with their own eyes is not true? Tell them they must lie about your sex, and remember to do so despite possible memory issues? And what if they refuse? Do you punish them? Discharge them? What if they are incapable of remembering or lying like that? Discharge them too? Remove them to a less optimum ward? Do you ignore the protected characteristics of their belief? And what of their privacy and dignity? Should that be ignored? It certainly sounds like a very dangerous situation for mentally ill men.

From my very limited observations i noticed that the trans men I’d seen were all well below average height. As though being a small woman was something to escape

I did whistleblow, 4 times, the first time pre Forstater (which was terrifying). The result each time was that the policy had been discussed and agreed with relevant stakeholders (i.e. Stonewall and the staff LGBTQI+ group) and that I needed to go on the trans training to better understand the needs of transpeople.

The last time when I asked why they'd put a trans IDing teenage girl in an adult male ward but not a non trans IDing teenage girl, the Head of Safeguarding ( yes really ) said it would be up to 'him' to choose. Management are utterly captured, and so are a lot of doctors and senior nurses, blinded to the reality of their 'kindness' and far removed from the nitty gritty of how this plays out at ward level, or of having to look the patients who are affected in the eye. Front line staff are not listened to.

I did whistleblow, 4 times, the first time pre Forstater (which was terrifying). The result each time was that the policy had been discussed and agreed with relevant stakeholders (i.e. Stonewall and the staff LGBTQI+ group) and that I needed to go on the trans training to better understand the needs of transpeople.

The last time when I asked why they'd put a trans IDing teenage girl in an adult male ward but not a non trans IDing teenage girl, the Head of Safeguarding ( yes really ) said it would be up to 'him' to choose. Management are utterly captured, and so are a lot of doctors and senior nurses, blinded to the reality of their 'kindness' and far removed from the nitty gritty of how this plays out at ward level, or of having to look the patients who are affected in the eye. Front line staff are not listened to.