Mental health patients have alleged they were raped and sexually assaulted while being treated by the NHS, in what has been described as a “national scandal”.
An investigation by Sky News and The Independent has uncovered nearly 20,000 complaints of sexual assault, abuse and harassment, involving both patients and staff, across more than 30 mental health trusts in England since 2019.
The investigation was sparked by the testimony of Alexis Quinn – a former British youth swimmer whose story is told in the new Sky News podcast Patient 11 – after she escaped from psychiatric care following complaints of sexual assault by male patients.
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In both instances, Alexis’s alleged attackers faced no criminal action.
Multiple patients and their families have come forward to tell their stories.
They include a law graduate who described how she was sexually assaulted by a male staff member before being moved on to a mixed-gender psychiatric unit.
Meanwhile, a mother-of-two said she was subjected to five months of “horrific” sexual abuse at the hands of a male staff member.
“I thought it was just me,” Alexis told Sky News.
“But it’s not just me – there are thousands of people [like me].”
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‘I’m just being traumatised’
In 2011, the Department of Health committed to eradicating mixed-sex care across all its inpatient services.
Despite this, more than 12 years on, Sky News and The Independent has identified hundreds of allegations of rape and sexual assault in mixed-sex wards and shared spaces in NHS England psychiatric care.
Following more than 50 freedom of information requests to NHS England mental health trusts, with 38 responses, we can reveal:
• Nearly 20,000 “sexual safety incidents” were reported on inpatient mental health wards between 2019 and 2023 – with the annual figure rising each year
A sexual safety incident is defined as any unwanted sexual behaviour that makes a person feel uncomfortable or unsafe. This includes rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, comments of a sexual nature or observing sexual behaviour, including exposure to nakedness.
• Nearly 4,000 sexual safety incidents were reported between January and August 2023 – higher than the annual total for both 2019 and 2020
• That trusts are largely failing to apply 2020 government-backed sexual safeguarding protections, with only six authorities demonstrating that they are doing so
A separate FOI request conducted by The Independent revealed:
• More than 800 allegations of sexual assault and rape involving female patients across more than 20 trusts between 2019 and 2023 – only 95 of which were reported to the police
• More than 500 allegations of sexual assault and rape in mixed male and female NHS England psychiatric inpatient settings, across more than 20 trusts
The findings have been described as a “national scandal” by former Victim’s Commissioner Dame Vera Baird.
Meanwhile, Dr Lade Smith, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “The horrendous findings show that there is still much to do to make sure that patients and staff in mental health trusts are protected from sexual harms at all times.
“It is deeply troubling to see that so few incidents in mental health settings go unreported.”
Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said it was “chilling” that these “horrific” alleged crimes were reported to have taken place in the NHS.
“Very serious questions must urgently be asked of hospital leaders, who have to explain why the vast majority of these incidents were kept from the police,” he added.
“NHS England must explain why so few trusts have implemented sexual safeguarding protections designed to keep patients safe.
“The government must treat this investigation as a wake-up call and act against the soaring number of mixed-sex wards in the NHS today.”
‘He started to touch me on my breasts’
In 2012, Alexis – a mother who worked as a teacher – entered care following the death of her brother.
Undiagnosed with autism, she complained of a sexual assault by a male patient at Kent’s Littlebrook hospital on Christmas Day in 2013 after she was placed on an all-male ward.
“I was in such a bad way… it was Christmas Day and I wasn’t with my little girl,” she said.
“He pressed me up against the door and lifted my top up. And he started to touch me on my breasts and then pulled my trousers down.
“All I could hear was his breathing and everything was slow and really loud and [I remember] not being able to move and being stuck.”
In a letter to her family in early 2014, Kent and Medway NHS Trust said Alexis “should not have been admitted as the sole female patient on a ward with other male patients” and committed to her safeguarding.
But just months later in 2014, Alexis made a second complaint after being moved to yet another mixed-gender care setting at St Martin’s Hospital in Kent.
The University of Edinburgh graduate said: “I was getting some treatment in a treatment room with a female nurse.
“I’d just come in from a run so I was wearing running shorts and a running vest top and a male patient came into the treatment room and started groping me on my breasts and on my bum.”
Addressing the second complaint, Kent and Medway NHS Trust said it was “unfortunate that incidents like these occur due to the acute nature of the patients admitted” to the ward.
Alexis’s alleged attackers faced no criminal action because they were deemed “not to have the capacity to go through a police investigation,” according to her mother Linda.
Kent and Medway NHS Trust told Sky News it has eradicated mixed wards, adding: “We continue to offer out sincerest apologies to Alexis for the unacceptable behaviour she experienced when she was in our care.”
Sectioned under the Mental Health Act and legally detained, Alexis spent almost four years in largely locked-in care environments, including the now-closed Milton Park Therapeutic Campus in Bedfordshire, where she said she had to shower in front of male staff members.
‘I felt sick… and I just cried’
Like Alexis, autism patient Rivkah Grant said she found herself exposed to mixed-gender NHS mental health inpatient settings when battling depression.
The 34-year-old law graduate, originally from Enfield, north London, said she was sexually assaulted by a male healthcare worker while on a female ward at Chase Farm Hospital in 2016.
“There was one staff member and he seemed really nice and supportive,” she told Sky News and The Independent.
“I didn’t realise at the time that this was a bad thing – that he was in my room when I was by myself in the night with the door shut.”
She described being sexually assaulted by the staff member, saying: “He said to me that I must promise not to tell anyone, [or] he’d lose his job.
“I felt sick and I suddenly felt it all – what has happened? And I just cried.”
Following the incident, Rivkah said she was moved to a mixed-sex ward, despite having told staff she’d been sexually assaulted.
Her attacker was convicted in June 2017 following a police investigation.
‘There is no safety in mental health hospitals’
North London Mental Health Partnership, which now runs Chase Farm Hospital, said the safety of its users is the top priority and that it is “deeply sorry” for what happened to Rivkah.
It said it has since strengthened its safeguarding process.
“I thought I was in a safe place,” Rivkah said. “And you believe you when you’re in a hospital, you should be safe. You’re in a place where there’s 24/7 care.
“And unfortunately, obviously, I’ve learned that there is no safety in mental health hospitals.
“I know I’m not the only person who has been through it.”
In 2020, after the Care Quality Commission raised national concerns over sexual abuse in mental health services, the NHS set up new guidelines under its “sexual safety collaboratives”.
Just six trusts have provided evidence they have met the collaboratives’ guidelines, in response to Sky News’ FOI requests.
‘He’s a sexual predator’
In 2015, Stephanie Tutty sought help from Essex mental health services while dealing with the trauma of a rape she suffered in her youth.
While under the care of Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, the 28-year old mother-of-two said she suffered repeated sexual abuse by a male staff member over a five-month period.
After a two-year investigation, she said she was told by police in 2017 that her case could not proceed due to the low likelihood of conviction.
She said: “What happened with [the alleged abuser] will always have a lasting impact on me, even more so than the first rape that made me unwell in the first place.
“He is a predator, with no other words for him – he’s a sexual predator.”
Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust told Sky News and The Independent that reports like Stephanie’s are immediately referred to the safeguarding team and fully investigated.
Charlie Brooker, honorary professor of criminology and mental health at London’s Royal Holloway University, has examined the relationship between sexual assault and mental illness.
He told Sky News and The Independent there should now be an inquiry into sexual safety in mental health wards.
He said: “If an inquiry was set up to look at sexual safety in mental health inpatient wards – because in my opinion, it should be – it would be fascinating to see how many people came forward and wanted to give evidence.
“I won’t be at all surprised if it wasn’t several thousand.”
What has the NHS and the government said?
In a statement, NHS England said: “We are taking action to ensure the safety of patients and staff, including rolling out better reporting mechanisms, training and support as part of the NHS’s new Sexual Safety Charter.
“NHS England has advised all Trusts and local health systems to appoint a domestic abuse and sexual violence lead to support patients and staff to report incidents and access support, with more than 300 now in place.”
NHS England went on to cite its commitment to the 2020 government-backed sexual safety protections, despite only six trusts demonstrating their application.
A Department of Health spokesperson said: “Sexual violence or misconduct of any kind is unacceptable and has no place in the NHS, and NHS organisations have a responsibility to protect both staff and patients.
“We are working closely with the NHS to ensure anyone receiving treatment in a mental health facility receives safe, high-quality care, and is looked after with dignity and respect.”
What you need to know is this. The budget has not gone down well in financial markets. Indeed, it’s gone down about as badly as any budget in recent years, save for Liz Truss’s mini-budget.
The pound is weaker. Government bond yields (essentially, the interest rate the exchequer pays on its debt) have gone up.
That’s precisely the opposite market reaction to the one chancellors like to see after they commend their fiscal statements to the house.
In hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.
After all, the new government just committed itself to considerably more borrowing than its predecessors – about £140bn more borrowing in the coming years. And that money has to be borrowed from someone – namely, financial markets.
But those financial markets are now reassessing how keen they are to lend to the UK.
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The upshot is that the pound has fallen quite sharply (the biggest two-day fall in trade-weighted sterling in 18 months) and gilt yields – the interest rate paid by the government – have risen quite sharply.
This was all beginning to crystallise shortly after the budget speech, with yields beginning to rise and the pound beginning to weaken, the moment investors and economists got their hands on the budget documentation.
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Chancellor challenged over gilt yield spike
But the falls in the pound and the rises in the bond yields accelerated today.
This is not, to be absolutely clear, the kind of response any chancellor wants to see after a budget – let alone their first budget in office.
Indeed, I can’t remember another budget which saw as hostile a market response as this one in many years – save for one.
That exception is, of course, the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini-budget of 2022. And here is where you’ll find the silver lining for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.
The rises in gilt yields and falls in sterling in recent hours and days are still far shy of what took place in the run up and aftermath of the mini-budget. This does not yet feel like a crisis moment for UK markets.
But nor is it anything like good news for the government. In fact, it’s pretty awful. Because higher borrowing rates for UK debt mean it (well, us) will end up paying considerably more to service our debt in the coming years.
And that debt is about to balloon dramatically because of the plans laid down by the chancellor this week.
And this is where things get particularly sticky for Ms Reeves.
In that budget documentation, the Office for Budget Responsibility said the chancellor could afford to see those gilt yields rise by about 1.3 percentage points, but then when they exceeded this level, the so-called “headroom” she had against her fiscal rules would evaporate.
In other words, she’d break those rules – which, recall, are considerably less strict than the ones she inherited from Jeremy Hunt.
Which raises the question: where are those gilt yields right now? How close are they to the danger zone where the chancellor ends up breaking her rules?
Short answer: worryingly close. Because, right now, the yield on five-year government debt (which is the maturity the OBR focuses on most) is more than halfway towards that danger zone – only 56 basis points away from hitting the point where debt interest costs eat up any leeway the chancellor has to avoid breaking her rules.
Now, we are not in crisis territory yet. Nor can every move in currencies and bonds be attributed to this budget.
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Markets are volatile right now. There’s lots going on: a US election next week and a Bank of England decision on interest rates next week.
The chancellor could get lucky. Gilt yields could settle in the coming days. But, right now, the UK, with its high level of public and private debt, with its new government which has just pledged to borrow many billions more in the coming years, is being closely scrutinised by the “bond vigilantes”.
Sara Sharif’s stepmother sent her sister some pictures of the 10-year-old looking bruised and miserable – and told her to “delete” them, a court has heard.
“Look what he’s doing,” Beinash Batool told Qandeela Saboohi, referring to the beatings Sara was allegedly getting from her father, Urfan Sharif.
“Delete the pictures.”
A series of WhatsApp messages exchanged between 2020 and 2023, in which Batool told her sister about the physical attacks Sharif was allegedly inflicting on his daughter, were read out to a jury at the Old Bailey.
Batool repeatedly told her sister that Sharif was hitting Sara for being “naughty”, “rude and rebellious”, and because she had cut up his clothes, hidden keys and torn up documents.
Batool, 30, Urfan Sharif, 42, and Sara’s uncle, 29-year-old Faisal Malik, are accused of carrying out a campaign of abuse culminating in Sara’s murder on 8 August last year.
As early as February 2020, Batool described Sharif as going on a “rampage” after spilling hot tea, saying he was “possessed”.
Writing about 10 photographs of Sara, she wrote: “This is how bad he is beating her… I feel really sorry for her. He beat the crap out of her.”
On another occasion, Batool said Sharif “went ballistic” and “beat Sara up like crazy”. She expressed fears he could break an arm or leg.
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In May 2021, Batool told Ms Saboohi: “Not great in our house, it’s all a bit manic. Urfan beat the crap out of Sara and my mind is all in bits. I really want to report him.
“Why the hell doesn’t Urfan learn – she’s covered in bruises, literally beaten black.”
Afterwards, Sharif sat “on his fat bum” and played the board game Ludo, she said.
She went on: “Why the hell I’m even letting him in the house. I’m sorry for Sara, poor girl cannot walk. She literally fainted in the kitchen in the morning. He made her do sit-ups all night.”
Asked what Sara had done, Batool said: “Because she hid the keys.”
By 2022, Batool said she was planning to get some “legal advice” but was advised by her sister to give it time and not to rush.
In an update later that year, Batool said she was thinking about taking Sara out of school, saying: “I don’t want to but kinda don’t have a choice.
“I’m just fed up of her behaviour and Urfan’s. Sara’s body is literally bruised because Urfan beat her up. I cannot even cover it up.
“He beat Sara up yesterday and I can’t send her to school on Monday looking like that.
“She ripped Urfan’s documents in front of him and was being rude and rebellious.”
Referring to an image of Sara in a hijab, Batool wrote: “You haven’t even seen her body, it’s a whole lot worse.”
Days later, she said Sara’s school was worried about her and Sharif was “stressed” about it.
In an apparent reference to Sara’s injuries, she wrote: “Urfan told me to cover it up with makeup and she’s going to wear sunglasses.”
Two months before Sara died, Batool referred to “Sara’s antics”, telling her sister: “Urfan beat the crap out of Sara… Yeah, he beat her up like crazy.
“Her oxygen level dropped really low, she’s finding it hard to stay awake.”
Asked if Sharif had hit her on the head, Batool said: “Nah, but she’s breathing really rapidly.”
The day before Sara died, Ms Saboohi tried to make contact but Batool told her she was “not in the mood to speak”.
Two days later, the defendants were captured on CCTV as they prepared to board a flight to Pakistan from Heathrow Airport.
That CCTV has now been shown to the jury.
On 10 August last year, police found Sara’s body in a bunkbed after Sharif called from Pakistan to say he had beaten her up “too much” for “being naughty”.
William Emlyn Jones KC, the prosecutor, has previously told jurors it was disputed whether messages Batool sent to two of her sisters were accurate or gave a full picture.
All three defendants, formerly of Hammond Road in Woking in Berkshire, have denied murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023.
Company bosses said the firm had lost clothbound Cheddar worth more than £300,000 after it was conned by a fraudulent buyer posing as a legitimate wholesale distributor for a major French retailer.
Neal’s Yard Dairy added it only discovered the person’s identity was fake after a total of 950 cheeses were delivered.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said on Thursday that investigating officers arrested a man on suspicion of fraud by false representation and handling stolen goods.
It said the 63-year-old was then “taken to a south London police station where he was questioned”.
The force added the man “has since been bailed pending further inquiries”.
Neal’s Yard Dairy said the three types of artisan cheeses stolen were Hafod Welsh Organic Cheddar, Westcombe Cheddar, and Pitchfork Cheddar.
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It added the cheeses “have won numerous awards and are amongst the most sought-after artisan cheeses in the UK”, and suggested their “high monetary value” made them “a particular target for the thieves”.
Despite what it described as a “significant financial blow”, Neal’s Yard Dairy said it had honoured its commitment to its small-scale suppliers and had already paid the three artisan cheesemakers in full.
Two days after the theft became public, the firm thanked supporters for their messages and visits to its stores, and said: “We are truly touched that so many people in the artisan cheese community and beyond are standing with us.”
He noted on Instagram that the amount of Cheddar stolen equaled the entire annual production of Hafod cheese, “potentially creating a significant gap in the artisanal cheese market”.
Westcombe Dairy’s Tom Calver also shared a video showing the inside of the dairy, pointing to the empty shelves behind him to show how much cheese had been stolen.
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“I feel a bit strange about it, actually,” Mr Calver said on Instagram. “Out of all the stuff to steal. Cheddar.
“It almost feels like an honour that it has got such value.”
He said Westcombe Cheddar was aged for 12 to 18 months, and that the stolen cheese was produced 15 months ago.
“What worries me is the trust element in things,” he said. “At the end of the day, what we need to have is more trust in the food supply system, rather than less of it.
“I hope more people will want to know where their food comes from.”