‘They did nothing’: Dozens of NHS mental health inpatients make fresh rape and sexual assault allegations
Dozens of new allegations of abuse – including claims of multiple rapes of one patient and another with a mental disorder who fell pregnant after sex with a staff member – have emerged against NHS trusts following an investigation by Sky News and The Independent.
The fresh cases came to light as NHS England says it doesn’t enforce “vital” government-backed guidelines around sexual safety on mental health inpatient wards.
As part of a joint Patient 11 podcast investigation, Sky News and The Independent, last week revealed 20,000 new complaints of sexual abuse, harassment and rape, involving patients and staff, across more than 30 NHS England mental health trusts since 2019.
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Significantly, the investigation also revealed that out of more than 50 contacted, only six trusts demonstrated that they’re applying 2020 government-backed protections – The Sexual Safety Collaborative – developed with and described as “vital” by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
But this week – after more than 40 former patients, their families, and current patients contacted Sky News and The Independent with yet more claims of sexual assault and rape in psychiatric care facilities – NHS England said these protection guidelines, which it cites as key in terms of patient safety, are not mandated or enforced.
The admission comes during a week-long national awareness campaign around sexual abuse and sexual violence.
Among the 40-plus cases brought to the attention of Sky News is a former taxi driver who alleges that she was raped by two staff members at the same time while she was a psychiatric patient in Doncaster in 2017.
Another is the mother of a current mental health inpatient who fell pregnant as a result of sexual intercourse with a staff member when an inpatient at the Priory Hospital in Surrey.
And a teaching student alleges that after complaining to staff that she’d been sexually assaulted in a mixed-care setting, she found herself returned to the same mixed environment as the male patient she’d complained against.
Following the findings of the Patient 11 podcast investigation – sparked by the witness testimony and escape from psychiatric care of Alexis Quinn after two complaints of sexual assault – the health secretary said claims of sexual assault and rape would be part of a national review of care on mental health wards.
The government move was immediately branded as “insufficient” by Ms Quinn.
Now former patients have come forward with fresh claims and calls for a national inquiry.
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‘There needs to be an inquiry’
Jacqueline Dean, a mother and former taxi driver, alleges that she was drugged and raped by two male staff members at the same time when she was a sectioned mental health inpatient at Tickhill Road Hospital in Doncaster in 2017.
“I wasn’t even able to move, I was paralysed,” she claims. “I could see everything. I could feel everything, [but] I couldn’t do anything. Not anything at all.”
“There needs to be an inquiry,” she added. “People need to know what’s gone on.”
Responding to her allegations, Rotherham, Humber and Doncaster NHS Foundation Trust – which previously failed to reply to a Sky News freedom of information request asking for data on sexual abuse complaints – said: “We can confirm that six years ago, the organisation received a complaint, which was investigated at the time.
“Ourselves and the police concluded that we should not proceed further, as they did not believe that a crime had been committed.
“If new information is now available, we would welcome contact from the complainant which we will consider.”
Patient fell pregnant after ‘sex with staff member’
Ms Dean has now called for an inquiry, a sentiment echoed by one mother from the New Forest, whose mentally ill daughter fell pregnant after having sex with a staff member while an inpatient at the Priory in Surrey in 2019.
Subsequently, the male staff member at the centre of the incident was charged by police.
A spokesperson for the Priory in Surrey said: “As soon as we became aware of this incident in 2019, we made the necessary safeguarding referrals, and informed the police and the employment agency concerned.
“The agency staff member was immediately excluded from working within our services and subsequently convicted.”
The Priory said it has since enhanced its reporting processes and training.
As part of the Sky News/The Independent Patient 11 investigation, 500 allegations of rape or sexual assault in mixed wards or care spaces were identified across more than 20 trusts.
‘They did nothing’
In 2022, Serena – not her real name – was being treated as a mental health inpatient in Langley Green Hospital under the care of Sussex Partnership NHS Trust.
Serena entered care with complex post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of abuse suffered as a child.
While there, the now university student claims she was sexually assaulted in a shared male and female common area.
“I was assaulted by another patient,” she explained. “It was touching the leg going up to, you know, where you don’t ever need to go.
“Because of my history, I went to the nurses’ station to tell them what happened, that I was upset and didn’t feel comfortable [but] they did nothing apart from to tell him [the male patient] not to talk to me.”
Serena claims that despite her complaint, she was left exposed to the male patient she’d complained about after being returned to a mixed-gender care environment.
“It was [like] just another day at the office,” she said.
A spokesperson for Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said: “With this alleged incident, we urge the person affected to get in touch with us or report it to the police.
“In circumstances where there are allegations of this nature, our priority is to ensure the safety of the patient – offering support and putting appropriate safeguarding measures in place.
“We are committed to learning from any incidents, especially if someone feels they have not received the appropriate support.”
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‘I’m just being traumatised’
‘Sexual violence is unacceptable’
In response to our latest findings, NHS England said it has asked trusts to appoint domestic abuse and sexual violence leads as part of a zero-tolerance approach to keep patients and staff safe from sexual misconduct and violence.
NHS England also said that it is a mandatory requirement for trusts to share all the information they receive with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) on a weekly basis.
Last week, when Sky News first revealed the findings of its investigation, 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.”
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.”
If you have a story about a similar experience in NHS psychiatric care contact StoryCast@sky.uk
Merseyside Police knows – better than any force, perhaps – that in a social media age, an information vacuum can become a misinformation cauldron.
They have learnt from the aftermath of the Southport stabbing attack, where the force was criticised for being too slow to release information that could have calmed the riots that followed.
So, it feels like things have been done differently this time.
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Police tents surrounded by debris at the scene in Water Street. Pic: PA
The incident happened just after 6pm on Monday.
Videos – captured by fans on their phones – were online within moments. Shared and speculated upon, with guesses as to the attacker’s identity and motive.
But alongside the huge and immediate police investigation, the communication machine moved equally fast.
Within a few hours, police released a description of the man they had arrested – a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area.
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Moment car drives into crowds in Liverpool
A few hours after that, we had an extensive press conference during which police ruled out terrorism as a motive.
Again, they appealed for videos not to be shared online and for people not to speculate.
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram said Merseyside Police “handled the situation fantastically” given how quickly footage of the incident was shared online.
He told Sky News that online misinformation can set “a lot of false narrative”.
The mayor added: “And we all know that speculation and social media are a wildfire of different vantages, and some of it is for nefarious reasons.
“So, it was right, of course, that the police reacted as quickly as they did to dampen down some of the types of posts that we were witnessing, you know, saying that there were other things happening throughout the city.”
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‘These were utterly tragic scenes’
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Police commentator Graham Wettone also told Sky News the force had done well to quickly combat misinformation spreading online.
He said: “That’s always a problem in today’s day and age, social media taking over so much news reporting, with so many people as well present at the scene where that awful incident took place, mobile phones out, people recording it, and then posting it almost straight away.”
Dal Babu, a former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent, also highlighted it was “unprecedented” that the force “very quickly” gave the ethnicity and race of the suspect.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: “I think that was to dampen down some of the speculation from the far-right that sort of continues on X even as we speak that this was a Muslim extremist and there’s a conspiracy theory.”
Mr Babu agreed that Merseyside Police appears to have learned lessons from what happened after the Southport stabbings.
He added: “The difficulty we have is in the olden days, when I was policing, you would have a conversation with trusty journalists, print journalists, radio journalists, broadcasting journalists, you’d have a conversation and say look can you please hold fire on sharing this information and people would listen.
“We don’t have that with social media, it’s like the Wild West and anything goes and so puts the police in a very, very difficult position.”
Meanwhile, the police investigation continues.
In central Liverpool, Water Street is cordoned off with police officers and vehicles in place.
Flags, sprays of paint flares and empty bottles still cover the road. Whereas they have been cleared elsewhere along the parade route, here they remain. Chilling symbols of the party, that within moments became a scene of utter horror.
King Charles and Queen Camilla are being urged to use their visit to Canada to seek an apology for the abuse of British children.
Campaigners have called on them to pursue an apology for the “dire circumstances” suffered by so-called “Home Children” over decades.
More than 100,000 were shipped from orphan homes in the UK to Canada between 1869 and 1948 with many used as cheap labour, typically as farm workers and domestic servants. Many were subject to mistreatment and abuse.
Canada has resisted calls to follow the UK and Australia in apologising for its involvement in child migrant schemes.
King Charles and Mark Carney on Monday. Pic: PA
Campaigners for the Home Children say the royal visit presents a “great opportunity” for a change of heart.
“I would ask that King Charles uses his trip to request an apology,” John Jefkins told Sky News.
John’s father Bert was one of 115,000 British Home Children transported to Canada, arriving in 1914 with his brother Reggie.
“It’s really important for the Home Children themselves and for their descendants,” John said.
“It’s something we deserve and it’s really important for the healing process, as well as building awareness of the experience of the Home Children.
“They were treated very, very badly by the Canadian government at the time. A lot of them were abused, they were treated horribly. They were second-class citizens, lepers in a way.”
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John Jefkins
John added: “I think the King’s visit provides a great opportunity to reinforce our campaign and to pursue an apology because we’re part of the Commonwealth and King Charles is a new Head of the Commonwealth meeting a new Canadian prime minister. It’s a chance, for both, to look at the situation with a fresh eye.
“There’s much about this visit that looks on our sovereignty and who we are as Canadians, rightly so.
“I think it’s also right that in contemplating the country we built, we focus on the people who built it, many in the most trying of circumstances.”
The issue was addressed by the then Prince of Wales during a tour of Canada in May 2022. He said at the time: “We must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past.”
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King Charles and Queen Camilla are on a two-day visit to Canada.
On Tuesday, the King will deliver the Speech from the Throne to open the 45th session of Canada’s parliament.
Camilla was made Patron of Barnardo’s in 2016. The organisation sent tens of thousands of Home Children to Canada. She took on the role, having served as president since 2007.
Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.
A spokesperson for the Canadian government said: “The government of Canada is committed to keeping the memory of the British Home Children alive.
“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada deeply regrets this unjust and discriminatory policy, which was in place from 1869 to 1948. Such an approach would have no place in modern Canada, and we must learn from past mistakes.”
Ministers are considering scrapping the two-child benefit cap, the education secretary told Sky News.
Bridget Phillipson, asked by Wilfred Frost on Sky News Breakfast if the cap should be lifted, said: “It’s not off the table.
“It’s certainly something that we’re considering.”
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The policy means most families cannot claim means-tested benefits for more than their first two children born after April 2017.
Ms Phillipson’s comments are the strongest a minister has made about the policy potentially being scrapped.
Analysis by The Resolution Foundation thinktank over the weekend found 470,000 children would be lifted out of poverty if parents could claim benefits for more than two children.
However, Ms Phillipson said the government inherited a “really difficult situation” with public finances from the Conservative government.
“These are not easy or straightforward choices in terms of how we stack it up, but we know the damage child poverty causes,” she added.
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Why did Labour delay their child poverty strategy?
The education secretary, who is also head of the government’s child poverty taskforce, said ministers are trying to help in other ways, such as expanding funded childcare hours and opening free breakfast clubs.
She said it is “the moral purpose of Labour governments to ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can get on in life”.
Her “personal mission” is to tackle child poverty, she said.
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Sir Keir Starmer is said to have privately backed abolishing the two-child limit and requested the Treasury find the £3.5bn to do so, The Observer reported on Sunday.
The government’s child poverty strategy, which the taskforce is working on, has been delayed from its original publication date in the spring.
Whether to scrap the two-child benefit cap is one of the main issues it is looking at.
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