Solely 4% of reported assaults resulted in somebody being charged, girls’s rights activists stated
Regardless of the prevalence of CCTV and safety guards, greater than 6,500 rapes and sexual assaults – some towards kids underneath 13 – have been dedicated in hospitals in England and Wales since 2019, in line with a report by the Girls’s Rights Community (WRN) revealed on Monday.
A least 2,088 rapes and 4,451 sexual assaults in hospitals have been recorded by police forces within the UK between January 2019 and October 2022, the group stated, citing Freedom of Info requests to 43 police forces. One in seven of those assaults occurred inside hospital wards, the report acknowledged.
Among the many crimes reported have been the rape of a feminine baby underneath 13 and the gang rape of a feminine over 16 in two West Midlands hospitals. Three rapes of a feminine underneath 16 have been reported in Cambridgeshire, whereas six women underneath the age of 13 have been raped in Lancashire, the report alleges.
The data obtained didn’t record victims’ gender, which was decided by means of additional investigation by the WRN. At the very least 14 assaults concerned a male sufferer, one in all whom was underneath the age of 13, the report acknowledged.
“These statistics are jaw-dropping,” WRN founder Heather Binning stated in an announcement. “The quantity of sexual assaults and rapes is much more horrific when you think about that this information covers the pandemic, when a lot of the nation was in lockdown and hospitals have been supposedly much more vigilant.”
Out of 6,539 instances reported to police, solely 265, or 4%, resulted in felony costs towards a suspect. The WRN famous that in its investigation, seven police forces supplied incomplete data, 5 refused to reveal what number of assaults occurred in hospital wards, and three declined to provide data on the variety of suspects charged. Scottish police supplied no data in any respect, attributable to alleged “price constraints.”
The WRN advisable that hospitals assessment their safety plans and set up extra CCTV cameras if essential, and that the UK Dwelling Workplace power police to document extra information on sexual assaults in hospitals. Moreover, the group known as on the Nationwide Well being Service to repeal its 2019 tips underneath which transgender girls – who’re biologically male – are allowed in girls’s wards.
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