The NHS Is facing landmark legal action as female nurses protest at being forced to share the women’s changing room with a biological male olleague.
26 female hospital nurses have complained that their colleague, a transgender nurse had not had reassignment surgery and appeared to be taking a “keen interest” in female staff, They said they found the situation ‘intimidating and upsetting”
The Mail Online reports: In a formal complaint, the nurses say they were stunned after the ‘sexually active’ trans nurse admitted to trying for a baby with a female partner and had stopped taking female hormones.
But a human resources manager at the hospital trust allegedly said that the female nurses need to ‘be more inclusive’, ‘broaden their mindset’ and ‘be educated and attend training’.
Six of the nurses are taking legal action at an employment tribunal against the NHS trust in the North East for alleged sexual harassment and sexual discrimination in what is thought to be the first case of its kind.
One of the nurses told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We don’t feel safe because we strip down to our underwear and [the individual] doesn’t just stay by his locker. ‘He walks around the changing room in his boxer shorts.’
Another nurse said she was ‘close to tears’ during one incident in the changing room.
She said: ‘I was rummaging in my bag trying to find my lanyard and keys for the locker when a man’s voice behind me said, ‘Are you not getting changed yet?’ ‘I found my keys and opened my locker and I was asked again, ‘Are you not getting changed yet?’.’
The woman, who was sexually abused as a child, has posttraumatic stress disorder and struggles to be alone around men. She said: ‘He stood there, two metres away from me, with a scrub top on and with tight black boxer shorts with holes in them and asked a third time whether I was getting changed yet.
‘Flight or fight mode kicked in but I felt glued to my seat, I could not move. ‘My hands started to sweat. I was petrified and felt sick and began hyperventilating.’
In March, 26 nurses wrote to management saying that the transgender nurse ‘has made no secret’ of the fact that ‘he has stopped taking female hormones and is trying to inseminate his female partner’.
They added: ‘We do not consider it appropriate to have a sexually active biological male sharing our changing facilities.’