More than 40 NHS mental health patients make fresh rape and sexual assault allegations
Dozens of new allegations of sexual assault and abuse, including claims of rape and of patients being made pregnant, have emerged following an investigation into Britain’s mental health wards.
One patient with a mental health disorder became pregnant by a member of staff. Allegations of rape, and of children being groomed by healthcare assistants, were among the 40 horrifying new reports of abuse made against rogue NHS Trusts.
The investigation, conducted by The Independent, alongside Sky News, revealed more than 20,000 allegations of sexual assault and harassment across more than 30 NHS England mental health trusts since 2019.
Several patients, who have come forward with their own harrowing stories, had allegedly been harmed by healthcare assistants, who currently are not regulated.
Natalie, whose name has been changed, was one of several patients groomed and asked to share sexually explicit photos by a healthcare assistant working at a children’s mental health ward in 2020.
Natalie, who was 16 at the time, told The Independent: “The first few conversations [after I was discharged] were very innocent. However after weeks and months, he started speaking in a sexual nature, asking me to send explicit photos of myself, posting explicit photos of himself and asking to meet up for sexual advances, I didn’t realise it at the time, but he was grooming me; this was all over Snapchat.
“I feel and still feel very small, and that I wasn’t looked at as a person [by the hospital], and they only saw me as a patient with no feelings that mattered. It felt like another incident at ... that just got swept under the rug.”
Source: The Independent, 10 February 2024