Shocking number of sexual assaults and rapes in Scotland's hospitals is an urgent crisis for SNP
A woman is at her most vulnerable when she is in hospital. Frail, physically or mentally – often both. Dependent on nursing and ancillary staff for basic human needs, from food to bathroom access. Isolated from friends and family for hours, sometimes days on end.
Watching my elderly mother recently as she lay in a hospital bed, confused and in pain, I was reminded of just how helpless even the strongest amongst us can be when illness strikes, or as in my mother’s case, ageing takes its inevitable toll.
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Hide AdShe was lucky. She spent only a few days in the small rural hospital, 20 miles from her home. Her care was more perfunctory than angelic and the vegetarian meals she was offered when her appetite picked up were nigh on inedible, but she was safe. Not so the women who, in the last five years, have been raped or sexually assaulted in Scottish hospitals.


‘Cannot be tolerated’
Freedom of Information research by a grassroots group, the Women’s Rights Network Scotland, so far reveals that nearly 250 sexual assaults and 15 rapes have taken place in Scottish hospitals in the last five years.
Greater Glasgow and Clyde, the country’s largest health board, logged 64 sexual assaults and six rapes – the highest in Scotland. When asked by Labour’s Clare Baker on Thursday about the devasting revelations, the First Minister read out a prepared response: “Assaults on patients or staff are absolutely abhorrent and cannot be tolerated. Everyone has the right to access healthcare or their place of work without fear of verbal or physical abuse. All instances of violent behaviour, including sexual assaults, are against the law and should be immediately reported to the police and dealt with by the justice system appropriately.”
He went on to quote NHS Scotland’s charter of patient’s rights and responsibilities, which makes it clear that patients may face legal action if they are “abusive, violent or aggressive towards NHS staff” or members of the public. Well, that is a relief. There is a charter.
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Hide AdThere is also an NHS Scotland bullying and harassment workforce policy, which according to the First Minister “provides a means of addressing unresolved, significant or persistent sexual harassment and misconduct”. But it doesn’t stop vulnerable women being raped in their hospital bed, does it Mr Swinney?
Half of attacks in wards
One sexual assault or rape in a hospital over a five-year period is a scandal; the numbers currently being discussed are unspeakable. And according to the Women’s Rights Network Scotland, the figures they obtained through Freedom of Information requests may not show the whole picture, as not every case of sexual assault is reported, and even when it is, not every case is pursued by the police. Instead it is filed under “undetected”.
The group’s lead researcher, Mary Howden, said last week that the data shows that more than half the attacks take place on hospital wards. “When patients, particularly those who are older and most vulnerable, are being treated in hospital, the very least they should expect is that they will be safe,” she said, pointing out that the FoI responses received so far reveal that Dumfries and Galloway is the only health board to provide solely single-sex wards.
This point was picked up at First Minister’s questions by Conservative MSP Tess White, who asked John Swinney about the Carseview psychiatric unit in Dundee, where seven sexual assaults and two rapes have taken place in the last five years. The unit has mixed-sex wards.
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Hide Ad“Will the First Minister instruct his government to stop the use of such wards in NHS hospitals and secure psychiatric settings, starting with those at Carseview?” she asked, to which Swinney gave a politician’s non-response. “In relation to the question of single-sex wards, the NHS estate has to be managed carefully to make sure that appropriate safety is in place for individuals at all times,” he said.
‘Devastating collapse in care standards’
Hours before the First Minister got to his feet for his weekly interrogation, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) released a report that shows there has been a “devastating collapse in care standards” across Scotland’s hospitals. Patients are treated in corridors, with no access to basic medical equipment such as oxygen and cardiac monitors. They have no buzzers or access to bathroom facilities, forced to use bedpans or soil themselves.
RCN Scotland director Colin Poolman said the report made for distressing reading and should be a wake-up call for the Scottish Government, describing ‘corridor care’ as “completely unacceptable for patient safety and staff well-being”. He said: “No patient should ever have to suffer the risk or indignity of being cared for in such a way – yet it has been allowed to become normal practice.”
Mixed-sex wards have also become, if not normal practice, an accepted way for hospitals to manage patient care, despite guidelines that emphasise the need for single-sex accommodation in hospitals and the 2010 Equality Act that makes provision for single-sex spaces.
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Hide AdToo dangerous for women?
The truth is the government has no real idea of how many mixed-sex wards there are in Scotland’s hospitals. Just as it had no knowledge of the number of rapes and sexual assaults that take place each year, until a group of women volunteers undertook the research. The Women’s Rights Network Scotland will publish its final report in March. The First Minister must read it and act.
Since its inception in 1948, the NHS has been a symbol of all that is great about our country. As its founder, the Labour politician Nye Bevan, wrote in his 1952 book In Place of Fear, the health service has become “a part of the texture of our national life”. He warned that no political party “would survive that tried to destroy it”.
But surely no political party can survive in power if it presides over a health service where patients are dying in corridors and hospital wards have become too dangerous for women?