The data show that 193 of the 212 trusts reported 10 or fewer staff-on-staff incidents between 20, but doctors describe this as "implausible" given their numbers of employees, and say that staff are reluctant to report sexual assault. Latifa Patel, BMA workforce and equalities lead, says she assumes that trusts without dedicated sexual safety policies are "sitting on huge numbers of unreported incidents," which she describes as "a truly disturbing implication." Yet the investigation found that fewer than one in 10 trusts has a dedicated policy to deal with sexual assault and harassment, and are no longer obliged to report abuse of staff to a central database. These include 180 cases of rape of children under 16, with four children under 16 being gang raped. Police recorded nearly 12,000 alleged sexual crimes on NHS premises in the same time period. Most incidents (58%) involved patients abusing staff, with patients abusing other patients the next most common type of incident (20%). The data also show that patients are the main perpetrators of abuse in hospitals. The other cases included sexual harassment, stalking, and abusive or degrading remarks. The data, based on responses to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from 212 NHS trusts and 37 police forces in England, show that a total of 35,606 sexual safety incidents were recorded on NHS premises over this five year period.Īt least 20% of incidents involved rape, sexual assault, or kissing or touching that a person did not consent to, although not all trusts provided a breakdown of the type of incidents recorded.
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