Serious life ending Sexual assault on a stroke ward

[mrshoho]

Stroke 'played no part' in Blackpool hospital patient's death - BBC News https://share.google/E1kG2EjcGHJWiPXvA

Omfg. This is just horrendous. This poor woman. Bled to death on a stroke ward following a sexual assault on the ward. What on earth?

Is there single sex care offered though?

Also men with dementia exhibit inappropriate sexual behaviour yet all the wards in nursing homes are mixed sex.

On the NHS? I can categorically say no, there is currently no genuinely single-sex care.

Source: the NHS single-sex spaces audit.

It could be additive. Just as safeguarding children means caregivers shouldn't be alone with a child, and a police search requires a same sex officer.

No male should be alone with a female patient at any time.

This would require extra staff, but that's a wider problem.

Also I expect and hope cctv video storage and retention has advanced so that it is held for longer than a week or whatever it was. That could play a crucial role in identifying who would be accessing rooms on the ward.

The whole design of hospital wards needs reviewing too. So many have an entry point system where visitors are buzzed in without question or simply walk in as another leaves and the reception desk is placed half way down the corridor. Unauthorised people have access to side rooms before being noticed by staff members. Desks should be placed immediately next to the entrance.

It's everywhere.
https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2024/1203/1484521-circuit-criminal-court/
Disturbing case of CAMH'S psychiatrist grooming patients, forcing this vulnerable teenager into degrading sex acts, she is still hospitalised in a psychiatric hospital, the damage is horrendous, her parents thought that he was helping.

www.rte.ie/news/2025/0131/1494110-radiographer-guilty-teen-x-ray/
Radiologist making a teenager sit half naked. Using her personal contact details to text her after the appointment for a date.

That’s absolutely horrific, the poor woman and family. It also horrifying that nobody seems to have noticed at the time or subsequently. It’s so depressing.

93 year old Eileen Dean was murdered by a dementia patient in care home who'd been discharged from a psych ward

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-63598953

I remember this horrific murder. Poor Eileen suffering at his hands. The nonchalant statement from the Maudsley with the usual we will learn from it. Why in the hell did he get released to a carehome without disclosing his violent history? People should have been prosecuted for these decisions. As usual women are the collateral damage.

I do think that ‘we will learn from it’ should always been accompanied by a commitment to publish the new guidelines/training etc put in place. With regulators then asking questions, again published, after a specific time if nothing emerges.

I'm referring to the younger one that was in charge that night and didn't alert anyone to the excessive bleeding etc.

And also was later imprisoned for drunk driving and stealing drugs from the hospital.

Yes, I know. That’s why I pointed out that the man they arrested and bailed repeatedly but were unable to charge is older than that.

Sorry, I misread your post, my apologies.

No worries.

I agree. You would think this would make national news.

Staff must have suspicions about this. I wonder if it was a member of the public though?

You think you have heard it all and women have been subjected to everything possible and then this.

What is as shocking as the assault is the way the staff were not actually looking after her. What sort of hospital is it? How do people take wages then do nothing but the minimum they can get away with?

The following comments may be disturbing for some people.

There are some individuals who like the idea of sexual activity with someone who does not reject or object..

It's called necrophilia.

Such people work in areas where there is access to deceased persons eg Undertakers premises, hospitals, cemeteries, or coma patients in hospitals.

I cannot find any record for anyone being prosecuted for it in UK

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/nurse-who-sexually-assaulted-woman-25606460

How could 85% have got on planes with no documents? It would appear simple to require all transport carriers to take copies of documents and references and contacts, and to photograph and take fingerprints and/or cheek swabs from each one, as a condition of taking the journey, and give each an identifying wrist stamp, before boarding, which could be re-checked during the journey and prior to arrival. Full details could have been sent ahead to the destination, prior to the journey, so if everything was in order, their exit through the terminal would be expedited. It would presumably help everyone to keep each batch of arrivals segregated, and to keep each carrier's wrist-stamp colours and numbering/lettering distinctive.

Definitely agree with writing to Wes Streeting to ask for action on this. And this should be a Mumsnet Campaign to raise visibility.

So many factors here- NHS underfunding, understaffing leading to unsafe working practices, the drive for mixed sex everything in health care, lack of safeguarding practices, probably links to accessing extreme online pornographic content, definitely culturally we have a UK problem with the way women especially older and disabled women and girls are made vulnerable by the misogynistic, ageist, ableist threads embedded in our social fabric.

This issue needs a lead organisation or individual to progress it politically and legally towards workable policies to protect women and girls in hospitals and care homes from sexual abuse, rape and murder. It wil be very challenging because the idea is so scary lots of people won’t want to accept it happens, and I’d imagine that NHS trusts will be very unwilling to touch it because of the risk of legal cases that this issue could attract. I can’t find any charities or campaign groups working on this exact area for women.

I’m wondering if it could be taken on by either of these women-focused excellent campaigning charities?

https://www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/cwj-manifesto
or
https://theotherhalf.uk/we-cant-keep-doing-nothing

theres also Hourglass- a national Uk charity who have commissioned research on sexual abuse of older people in hospitals in 2021 updated 2024 https://www.wearehourglass.org/who-we-are

https://www.wearehourglass.org/sexual-abuse-older-people-hospitals-interview

the report looks very important (and I’m sure it is very distressing to read, so warning on that) here:
https://www.wearehourglass.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Sexual%20Assaults%20of%20Older%20People%20in%20Hospitals%20in%20England%2004.09.24_0.pdf

Also Rape Crisis offers support & campaigning on all sexual violence, including healthcare so they should have something on this but it didn’t come up in my googling.

There are existing very big well funded patient charities and campaign groups in the UK, including in patient safety, but perhaps they don’t have an awareness or a focus (much of an interest?) in patient safety or patient experience when it comes to women specifically. And the abuse women uniquely receive in these settings. But these groups would need to be got on board too to gain traction for legal change with Parliamentarians. Which is normally what’s needed for sustained change. What is Wes Streeting saying about this?

It’s a massive job for a campaign coalition to do but so vital. If someone like Queen Camilla could take this on it would become rocket powered and might get somewhere in the next few years.

I’ve had a quick skim and feel grateful to the researcher writing this report for Hourglass. The report has recommendations at the end which look great but I can’t cut and paste them for some reason (and MN is still glitching and reloading with copying so I haven’t got time to work it out this morning..)

This makes me so worried for any future hospital stays. I wonder what the ward would do if you brought your own CCTV / security cam?

Back in the 80’s when I worked on a&e there was funding for two age concern employees to sit in a&e and deal with anyone coming in who needed assistance.

they did everything from sort emergency care for their pets out, advocate for their medical needs, put care plans in place so they could be discharged instead of sitting in a hospital bed unecessarily. Visit them on wards to make sure they were ok.

they must have saved the nhs and social services a fortune. But funding is only measured by expenditure, so they were ditched.

it was almost exclusively staffed by women with school aged children as it could be fit around school runs. So win win there as well. The reception staff would pitch in and I regularly found to a dog behind the counter or a cat in the staff room.

we need more services like that. The nhs doesn’t appreciate that more staff actually equals greater efficiency, and greater safety with dedicated care

we also regularly had the police and csi’s in to go through the process if we had concerns, how and when to report, and how to preserve evidence. They did it informally on their own time. Doesn’t happen any more.

This should surely be considered as a murder? The woman would not have died, except as a result of her injuries ( and added neglect admittedly)

Yes, there was also a police murder enquiry, but it has been closed due to a lack of evidence.

Very good points. But the NHS tends to run in a reactive rather than a proactive way.