NHS chiefs are facing landmark legal action after 26 female hospital nurses protested about being forced to share a women’s changing room with a transgender colleague who is biologically male. The Mail has more.
The women complained that the transgender nurse – who has not had gender reassignment surgery – had taken a “keen interest” in female staff when they were getting undressed.
They say they have found the situation “intimidating and upsetting”.
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.”
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