Are Women Safe in Hospitals? Inside the NHS Sexual Assault Crisis No One Is Talking About.
- Dec 22, 2025
- 8 min read
TL;DR: Over 20,000 mental health patients have been sexually assaulted in NHS care. Women like Michelle were gang-raped and silenced. A 75-year-old stroke victim was assaulted and died. Maternity wards are crime scenes. The healthcare system has become a hunting ground for predators. This is not a glitch. This is a pattern. And we refuse to look away. Sign the petition demanding an official inquiry before another woman becomes a statistic. The question remains: are women safe in hospitals?
The Question No One Wants You to Ask:
Are women safe in hospitals?
Not "should they be safe." Not "we hope they are safe." Are they actually safe?
The answer is carving itself into hospital records, police reports, and the bodies of women who went to heal and left violated.
The NHS, once a symbol of cradle-to-grave care, has become something else entirely. A place where vulnerability is exploited. Where predators wear scrubs. Where seeking healing can mean suffering new trauma.
And the silence around it is suffocating.
This is not an article. This is a war cry.
How Common Is Sexual Assault in Hospitals? The Numbers That Should Terrify You.
Let's talk data, because data doesn't lie even when systems do.
In Scotland alone: 276 sexual assaults and 12 rapes reported at NHS sites between 2019 and July 2024. That is 288 incidents. In one region. In five years.
Across mental health facilities: Over 20,000 patients have been sexually assaulted and raped while under NHS care. Some were left pregnant. All were left broken.
In maternity wards: Police were called to a Glasgow maternity hospital after a rape in the children's area. Read that again. The children's area.
And these are only the reported cases. How many women stayed silent because they were too sick, too vulnerable, too terrified that no one would believe them? How many assaults happened in the dark corners of operating rooms, isolation wards, and psychiatric units where screams are expected?
How common is sexual assault in hospitals? Common enough that it has stopped being newsworthy. Common enough that a 75-year-old stroke victim named Valerie was sexually assaulted and died, and no one noticed until the post-mortem.
What Is Sexual Misconduct in Healthcare? When Predators Wear Scrubs.
Sexual misconduct in healthcare is not just about inappropriate comments or boundary violations, though those matter too. It is about systematic predation in spaces designed for healing.
It includes:
Rape and sexual assault of patients too ill, sedated, or incapacitated to defend themselves.
Targeting of vulnerable populations, especially mental health patients, elderly patients, and women in labor.
Institutional cover-ups where perpetrators are protected, transferred, or allowed to resign quietly while victims are silenced.
Repeat offenders who work across multiple facilities because no registry tracks their crimes.
One NHS employee murdered two women and went on to rape over 100 deceased women. He worked on hospital grounds. This is not misconduct. This is industrial-scale sexual violence enabled by systemic failure.
Michelle's story exemplifies this horror. She was gang-raped in NHS care. When she tried to name her rapists publicly, she was arrested, her pet was taken, and she was banned from social media. Her rapists? Still free.
This is what sexual misconduct in healthcare looks like when institutions prioritize reputation over justice.
Which Patients Are at Highest Risk for Sexual Assault?
Predators are strategic. They hunt where resistance is lowest and accountability is weakest. In hospitals, that means targeting:
1. Mental Health Patients
Over 20,000 assaults prove this population is catastrophically vulnerable. Patients in psychiatric care are often:
Heavily medicated or sedated
Disbelieved when they report abuse
Trapped in locked wards with limited access to advocates
Dismissed as "unreliable witnesses" due to their diagnoses
2. Elderly Patients
Valerie was 75 years old and recovering from a stroke when she was sexually assaulted. She died shortly after. Elderly patients are targeted because they:
Often have limited mobility
May have cognitive impairments
Are less likely to report abuse due to shame or confusion
Are dismissed as "confused" when they try to speak up
3. Surgical and Sedated Patients
Women under anesthesia or heavy sedation cannot consent, resist, or remember. They are completely at the mercy of whoever is in the room.
4. Maternity Patients
Women in labor are in extreme pain, exposed, and focused on their babies. The Glasgow maternity ward rape proves that even obstetric units are not safe. Neither are the children born there.
5. Deceased Patients
Yes. Even the dead are not safe. One NHS employee raped over 100 deceased women. The profound violation of this cannot be overstated.
If you are sick, you are prey. That is the current state of patient safety.
Michelle Once More: When Victims Are Punished and Rapists Walk Free.
Michelle's name needs to be everywhere.
She was gang-raped in NHS care. When she demanded justice and named her attackers, the system turned on her. She was arrested. Her emotional support animal, a pet fox, was seized. She was silenced.
Her rapists? Never charged. Never punished. Walking free.
This is not justice. This is a protection racket for predators.
Michelle's case reveals the ugly truth: institutions protect themselves, not patients. Speaking out makes you the problem. Silence is rewarded. Compliance is survival.
We refuse to comply.
The NHS Has Become a Hunting Ground: Why This Is Happening.
Let's be blunt about why sexual assault in hospitals is epidemic:
Lack of oversight. Who watches the watchers? In hospitals, predators work alone with vulnerable patients behind closed doors.
Institutional protection. Hospitals prioritize reputation over accountability. Scandals are buried, not prosecuted.
Vulnerable victims. Patients cannot fight back, run away, or always remember what happened.
Dismissive responses. When victims report, they are often disbelieved, sedated, or told they were confused.
No national registry. Predatory healthcare workers can move between facilities. No system tracks their history.
The result? The NHS has become what one advocate called "a hunting ground for predators." Women and children are targeted at their most vulnerable, and the system protects their abusers.
This Is Not Just About the UK: Hospital Assault Is a Global Crisis.
While this petition focuses on the NHS, make no mistake: this is not uniquely British. Sexual assault in healthcare settings is a global pandemic no one is treating.
Women in hospitals across the world face the same predators, the same silencing, the same institutional betrayal. But right now, the UK has a chance to lead. To demand accountability. To force an inquiry that could ripple across borders.
100,000 signatures will force Parliament to debate this. Right now, we are not even close. And every day that passes, another woman walks into a hospital thinking she will be safe.
What You Can Do Right Now: Sign, Share, Scream
This is where you come in.
Not "someone."
You.
Step 1: Sign the Petition
Demand an official inquiry into sexual assaults within the NHS. This is not symbolic. 100,000 signatures force a parliamentary debate. That means politicians on record. That means pressure. That means change.
Step 2: Share This Article
Post it everywhere. Tag healthcare advocates, journalists, politicians, anyone with a platform. Use the hashtag #NHSAssaultInquiry. Make noise.
Step 3: Talk About It
In your book club. At the dinner table. With your GP. Break the silence that protects predators.
Step 4: Support Survivors
If you know someone who was assaulted in a healthcare setting, believe them. Amplify them. Stand with them.
Step 5: Demand Accountability from Your Representatives
Write to your MP. Demand they support the inquiry. Do not let them look away.
For Michelle. For Valerie. For the 20,000.
This article is for every woman who entered a hospital seeking care and left with trauma. For every mother who gave birth while predators lurked in maternity wards. For every mental health patient who was assaulted and then told they were too "unreliable" to be believed.
For Michelle, whose courage cost her everything and gained her nothing. Whose rapists still walk free while she cannot even speak their names without facing arrest.
For Valerie, who survived 75 years only to be violated as she lay dying from a stroke.
For the 20,000 mental health patients whose assaults were so routine they barely made headlines.
And for every woman reading this who now knows: hospitals are not safe. Not yet. Not until we force them to be.
The Bare Minimum Is 100,000 Signatures. We Are Not Even Close.
Here is what haunts those of us pushing this petition: we cannot understand why we cannot get 100,000 signatures. The bare minimum to force an inquiry.
20,000 victims. 288 incidents in Scotland alone. A woman gang-raped and then arrested for naming her attackers. A grandmother sexually assaulted and left to die. A maternity ward crime scene.
And we cannot get 100,000 people to click a button.
What does that say about how little we value women's safety? How normalized this violence has become? How exhausted we are by the relentless brutality?
We refuse to accept that exhaustion as an excuse.
Every signature is an act of defiance. Every share is a crack in the wall of silence. Every conversation is a refusal to look away.
So we ask again: Sign the petition.
Not because it is easy. Not because it will fix everything. But because Michelle and Valerie and the 20,000 deserve more than our collective shrug.
They deserve an inquiry. They deserve justice. They deserve a healthcare system where "do no harm" actually means something.
And that starts with you. Right now.
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