If a six-foot-tall convicted paedophile racially abused a black female nurse, who would you expect the NHS to defend? Incredibly, the Epsom and St Helier University Hospital Trust has allegedly taken the side of the racist paedo. All because the criminal in question identifies as transgender and the nurse in question ‘misgendered’ him.
Last year, nurse Jennifer Melle was treating the man, referred to only as ‘Patient X’ in legal documents, at St Helier Hospital in Carshalton, Surrey. X had been brought in from a high-security men’s prison, physically restrained and accompanied by two security guards.
Melle left the room to speak with a doctor on the phone about removing X’s catheter – a medical procedure that, obviously, requires all parties to be crystal clear about the biological sex of the patient. During the conversation, Melle referred to X as ‘mister’ and ‘he’. She claims that he overheard this and became upset.
According to Melle, she explained to X that she wouldn’t use female pronouns to refer to him, because ‘it’s against my faith and Christian values, but I can call you by your name’. This apparently enraged him further. He began repeatedly racially abusing Melle, calling her the n-word three times. She said that he even tried to lunge at her at one point, but luckily he was still restrained.
Outrageously, it is Melle who is being punished after all this. In October, she was disciplined by the hospital after being deemed a potential risk to the public. She was given a ‘final warning’ and referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which will decide whether she can continue to practise. According to the council’s code of conduct, nurses must not express ‘personal beliefs (including political, religious or moral beliefs) in an inappropriate way’. Therefore, ‘although [Melle] felt unable to identify Patient X using the preferred pronouns due to her religion… it could be perceived that her actions could… be seen as a potential breach of the code’.
If Melle’s account of the incident is accurate, then this is all totally absurd. Of course, more details may yet emerge. Melle – whose 12-year career is on the line – is initiating legal proceedings against the Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals Trust for harassment and discrimination. But it is clearly not beyond the realms of possibility that the NHS would treat a trans-sceptical nurse in this way, given its intense fealty to gender ideology. After all, this is the same NHS that forces women to share changing rooms with men and then threatens their jobs when they complain.
That ideology is being prioritised over biological reality in healthcare is particularly shocking. Melle’s belief that X is a man may well be informed by her faith, but it is not fundamentally a ‘political, religious or moral belief’. It reflects biological reality. Something that is rather important to care and medicine. Nurses, of all people, should be allowed to acknowledge that a man’s sex does not change just because he requests that everyone call him ‘she / her’.
If the allegations are proven to be true, the NHS would, in effect, have taken the side of a racist paedophile over one of its own nurses, who he had racially abused. It’s despicable. But then again, these are the grotesque moral contortions that transgender ideology demands of its adherents. The NHS has long given up on defending reality. Now it may well be giving up on defending its own staff. Here’s hoping Jennifer Melle’s case draws a line in the sand.
Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.
