Oh that rape.

A hospital has finally admitted a woman may have been raped by a transgender patient after denying the possibility of an attack for almost a year, the House of Lords has heard. 

When police were called to the unnamed hospital in England, they were allegedly told by staff that ‘there was no male’ on the single-sex ward, ‘therefore the rape could not have happened’. 

And that was a lie.

Now they’re admitting one of the patients was trans, i.e. a man.

The details of the case were shared by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne during a debate on single-sex wards in the Upper Chamber yesterday. 

She claimed: ‘They forgot that there was CCTV, nurses and observers.

‘None the less, it has taken nearly a year for the hospital to agree that there was a male on the ward and, yes, this rape happened.

‘During that year she has almost come to the edge of a nervous breakdown, because being disbelieved about being raped in hospital has been such an appalling shock. 

Disbelieved and lied to. That would push me to the edge too, I must say.

Lady Nicholson believes the incident stemmed directly from the NHS’s Annex B policy, which allows patients to be placed on single-sex wards depending on the gender they identify with. 

The policy states that trans people should be accommodated ‘according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns they currently use’, rather than their biological sex at birth.

…

Lady Nicholson added: ‘The result of Annex B is that hospital trusts inform ward sisters and nurses that if there is a male, as a trans person, in a female ward, and a female patient or anyone complains, they must be told that it is not true – there is no male there.

‘I think it is completely wrong that the National Health Service should be instructing or allowing staff to mislead patients -to tell a straightforward lie. It is not acceptable.’

It’s gaslighting. It’s outrageous.