Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Three time flash is not just an accident?

181 replies

TheQueef · 05/12/2018 08:39

Currently discussing with adult DS.

Yesterday I had some day surgery. The only two people in the DS recovery were myself and a man approx 50.
First time I was in bed across and had a full uninterrupted view but we had both had anus and bum surgery so I assumed it was inadvertent.
I got up and dressed so I could sit up and not be in bed opposite.
Two minutes afterwards he wanted up and moving to the arm chairs where I sat.
This is where the three come from.
First he sat with his gown rucked up and knob out. The sister brought a blanket.
Second time leg over the chair arm, balls out (how he was moving his legs after a fissure repair I don't know) Again staff covered him up.
Third time he actually laid it on his leg, like a balding water vole in a satsuma net. Sad

I moved and was discharged.
I was so angry on the was home that DS and me are still butting heads.
He said it must be an accidental flash but IMO it was all deliberate.
Oppressive, sinister and deliberate.

Have I had too much mumsnet or is DS wrong?

OP posts:
EtVoilaBrexit · 06/12/2018 18:53

We don't know, and nor does the OP, whether this man was a person with full capacity/in control of his behaviour or not. She saw his dick. Seeing it didn't kill her. It was just a bit distasteful.

If that was the case, then flashing would be allowed under the law.
As it happens, it isn’t because deliberate flashing of your genitals isn’t acceptable in your society. For what we know the Op could have been a vulnerable adult or someone who had been raped or abused and this would have been just too much to deal with rather than just even ‘distasteful’.
Laws are there for a reason.

I have to say, the more it goes, the more I’m thinking I would have been very vocal about (t wondedering im not making the nurses much harder too :()

IcedPurple · 06/12/2018 19:02

Go with your gut feeling.

If you think it is deliberate, 9 times out of 10 it is. At the very least.

Original poster
TheQueef · 06/12/2018 19:03

Just to be clear, I have complained but about the mixed sex recovery area.
I didn't speak out or accuse anyone of anything because the nurses were already dealing with him.
Shouting the nurse to cover him up while she was covering him up wouldn't have helped.

And Pash hopefully my complaint will add to many and help stop mixed sex wards. Maybe so your Mam or Daughter doesn't wake up staring straight down the barrel of some greasy fucker who was getting his kicks despite being numb.

OP posts:
wrenika · 06/12/2018 19:06

I don't understand why you couldn't just look elsewhere. If he was deliberately flashing, he was doing it for a reaction, so just ignore him. It's just a dick.

MsLexic · 06/12/2018 19:08

Bastard. Sorry you had to see all that.

RaspberryRipple1963 · 06/12/2018 19:13

I had something similar happen when I was in hospital quite a few years back (1993). I was in a room by myself,but had to walk past a small male ward with 4 beds,if I wanted to go to the day room or the nurses station. The man in the bed nearest this ward's entrance would lift the bedclothes off his bottom half,revealing that he was naked from the waist down,every time I walked past. Quite frankly,I just thought he was a pathetic attention seeker,and didn't give him the satisfaction of letting him see that I'd noticed. But I knew that it may well bother other women,so I had a word with the ward sister. Her response? There was nothing they could do 'because he was old'. He was in his early 60s,so hardly ancient. Looking back on it now,I just put it down to being a sign of the times. I doubt that it would have been dismissed so quickly nowadays,neither would I have allowed it to have been.

HestiaParthenos · 06/12/2018 19:23

I don't understand why you couldn't just look elsewhere.

Looking elsewhere while a man is doing his best to sexually molest you. Yeah, sounds like a clever idea.

After all, no man who started with exhibitionism has ever escalated his sexual harrassment and started to yell obscenities or touch women.

Are you serious?

"Look elsewhere" is something you can say to men who feel offended by a woman who breastfeeds and clearly doesn't want to be looked at.

Not something you say to women who are very probably being sexually harrassed.

lottiegarbanzo · 06/12/2018 19:26

Why didn't your son believe you? That is so very odd.

Why would he feel the need to make excuses for a dirty flasher? Feel more loyalty to same than to his own mother?

Does he really identify and sympathise more strongly with naked vole man than with his own mother? Food for thought there, OP's DS.

bertielab · 06/12/2018 19:35

I hate mixed sex wards. Once I was on one and literally couldn't move -bed bound and some bloke kept get out of his bed and leering at me / trying to talk to me (I was on morphine) and wriggling his bum with the back hanging open etc. I couldn't move - I had just come round from surgery.

He was told to get back into bed by a furious nurse. Later two nurses and he was very suggestive with them, and then turned him over and got out the biggest needle and rammed in his bum hard. He screamed like a baby.
He was then fitted with a catheter so he didn't need to get out of bed and in no uncertain terms that he needed to play ball else -he would be in serious trouble, Was a long time ago now -but yuck I remember it like it was yesterday.

Reallybadidea · 06/12/2018 19:51

Was this the recovery unit immediately following surgery? Post anaesthetic care (ie recovery) is, I believe, counted as a critical care area and therefore generally exempt from the NHS single sex policy. Certainly I've never come across a single sex post anaesthetic care unit. If this was the area that you stayed in until discharge ie while waiting to be discharged from the hospital, then it's more of a grey area I think.

I think the real issue is that staff should have maintained your (and his) dignity by ensuring that he wasn't able to expose himself by drawing the curtains around etc.

AnoukSpirit · 06/12/2018 20:16

If I've read this right, the staff took active steps to effectively protect themselves by transferring the female staff away from this patient...

... but neglected to ensure their vulnerable female patient received the same level of protection?

Interesting all the excuses offered as to why male patients should be allowed to behave despicably and intimidate female patients. Nice little "well what can the staff do?" shrug.

When I was on a ward and became distressed by the environment (trauma history) I was threatened with restraint if I didn't stop crying (I was sitting in a chair crying - my distress was too inconvenient apparently, and treating me like a human being was too impossibly extravagant).

But male patients can sexually harass female patients and we're supposed to just quietly put up with that and feel sorry for the "overworked staff" failing to intervene? Even though they weren't too ferociously overworked to pause to protect themselves.

I'm sorry, but fuck that. I got threatened with restraint for crying, and men are allowed to do whatever the fuck they like even though it's actually harmful - deliberately harmful - to the people around them? "The poor little men just can't help themselves..."

If we don't have the resources to treat people humanely, then fucking fight for better resourcing - don't tell people they have to be grateful for inhumane treatment. They don't.

TigerTooth · 06/12/2018 20:24

Poor you - amazing how it could even enter his head after surgery!

mumto2babyboys · 06/12/2018 21:08

He could have dementia, this is exactly the sort of thing Dementia patients do because they no longer recognise boundaries sadly

Ljlsmum · 06/12/2018 21:21

Sorry you had to deal with that but you are being unreasonable to expect mixed sex recovery rooms. Hospitals can’t just magic up extra rooms to split the sexes or the staff to split into two seperate rooms. Recovery rooms require a minimum of two staff to be present in each recovery if one patient in, then one staff for each patient thereafter, so if only one patient is in the room there must be two staff at that time. By splitting the rooms into seperate sexes, there would need to be four staff for two patients. He should have been curtained though so he couldn’t show anything to anyone once the staff were aware he was flashing whether deliberate or not. If they felt it looked deliberate he should have been warned, and if he wouldn’t behave then police involved and a warning put on his medical notes that he can’t be nursed by lone females and extra measures put in place at each visit.

acegod · 06/12/2018 22:22

you should have got a sissor and cut it off.

manicmij · 06/12/2018 23:44

Had he had a general anaesthetic? If so he may have been suffering the affects as this can make people behave in strange ways. If not a general he either has dementia or he needs reporting. Staff seemed to try to manage his behaviour but perhaps there was somewhere he could have been placed by himself.

IrmaFayLear · 07/12/2018 10:50

Why do people keep spouting about dementia as an excuse? It may be a reason , but it does not excuse placing someone exposing themselves to a vulnerable fellow patient.

My cousin, a nurse, was badly assaulted by a (female) patient with dementia. She was pushed to the ground and the woman dug her nail's into cousin's face. Unfortunately dementia is not a bit of dotty behaviour; a demented person can be in good physical shape and able to attack others.

A hospital should be aware and have a duty to protect all their patients. An "issue" is not a free pass to be allowed to behave in an inappropriate or dangerous manner.

IsSpringSprangedYet · 07/12/2018 11:39

I haven't been able to read past 3 pages, but... if you were perfectly able and capable of keeping your privates private, then I'm sure he would have been able to. I wouldve said "unless he had MH issues" - but he honestly sounds like a complete arsehole. My mum was an alcoholic and sometimes a boob would escape over her top and she wouldn't be in a fit state to realise.

Sorry you had to experience that Sad Hope your surgery went well Flowers

MadMadaMim · 07/12/2018 12:59

YANBU

I'd report it to the police. If he was that blatant, he's done it before and he'll do it again.

IMO, it has nothing to do with mixed wards - it's to do with a sexual pervert deliberately exposing himself to a person multiple times.

He's dangerous

BatF1nk · 07/12/2018 16:32

@PumpkinKitty82 'What a vile old bastard!'

Don't use age as an insult please

BertrandRussell · 07/12/2018 16:43

"Don't use age as an insult please"

Particularly when the "vile old bastard" concerned is 50. Only on Mumsnet is 50 an age where dementia is a likely explanation for sexual harrassment.

PumpkinKitty82 · 07/12/2018 17:35

Calm down , didn’t see an age when I read the OP .
Ok ,” vile bastard” then ..better ?

BertrandRussell · 07/12/2018 18:53

Doesn't matter whether you saw the age or not. Can you not see that "old" does not belong with "vile" and "bastard"? Category error.

Bochym · 07/12/2018 22:18

Were you feeling drugged/drowsy/couldn't much care less about covering everything. May be he felt awful and still doped and couldn't care less.

That said, him displaying said offensive weapon on his leg sounds like he knew what he was doing. Best time to complain was at the time and have done it loudly to him and staff and throw in with threats of police involvement.

Flashers are in another world as they imagine those whom the exhibit themselves to be are pleased to see but, if they're not, in their minds it was all an accident so they're absolved - Bat-poo crazy but harmless and probably had issues with their parents!

Lizzie48 · 08/12/2018 11:53

*It wouldn’t bother me. It’s just another body part.

He might have dementia or he might be doing it for the thrills...meh. Best just ignored really*

That's impossible for a lot of us to do. It would completely freak me out because of stuff that has happened in the past.

Women are constantly told to ignore blatant sexual harassment, it makes me so cross.

Swipe left for the next trending thread