A NURSE has been suspended by an NHS Trust and banned from her hospital after she spoke out about how she was investigated and disciplined for refusing to refer to an adult male patient, a child sex offender, as a woman. The nurse, Jennifer Melle, was racially abused and physically threatened by the convicted paedophile (‘Mr X’) after refusing to refer to him as a ‘she’. Her NHS Trust referred her to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) for this ‘offence’. It responded that 40-year-old Ms Melle was ‘a potential risk’ for not using Mr X’s preferred ‘gender identity’.
After her story was reported here and in newspapers, Ms Melle was told last week to see the chief nurse at 9am. Accompanied by a union representative, Ms Melle had a meeting lasting only five minutes with the chief nurse and another member of staff in a portacabin at the back of St Helier Hospital in Carshalton, Surrey. Ms Melle was told there had been a ‘potential data breach’, after her story appeared in the media, which could amount to ‘gross misconduct’.She was told she would be suspended on full pay and banned from the hospital. When questioned on how a nurse with an unblemished record could be suspended for this, the chief nurse refused to elaborate pending a full investigation. Told to collect her belongings, Ms Melle was escorted from the building in tears.
Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, Ms Melle has filed a legal claim against the Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals Trust on the grounds of harassment, discrimination and human rights breaches.
The initial incident happened on the night of May 22, 2024. Ms Melle, who came to the UK from Uganda as a child, was told that Mr X had been brought in for treatment from a high-security men’s prison and was a sex offender. More than 6ft tall and powerfully built, he arrived chained to two guards.
At 10pm, a distressed junior colleague told Ms Melle that Mr X, who was upsetting elderly and vulnerable patients, wanted to discharge himself. As a doctor had not yet responded, Ms Melle, the senior nurse on the ward, took charge. The patient’s medical records recorded him as male, not female or transgender; on the name board next to the bed, it simply gave a feminine name. With her colleague finally getting through to the doctor on the phone, Ms Melle told him that ‘Mr X would like to self-discharge’.
Mr X overheard the call, at which point it is reported that he shouted, ‘Do not call me Mr! I am a woman!’ Pacing up and down, he yelled: ‘Imagine if I called you n*****’. ‘How about I call you n*****? Yes, black n*****!’
Ms Melle responded: ‘I cannot refer to you as her or she, as it’s against my faith and Christian values, but I can call you by your name.’ The prisoner lunged towards her and had to be held back by the guards.
On Ms Melle’s next night shift, she was pulled aside by a ward manager and asked to make a statement. Still distressed over the incident, she was told that she still had to respect ‘equality and diversity’ in accordance with the NMC code of conduct. She said she had no issues with people’s sexuality but also asked where the respect was for her Christian beliefs and said that she ‘could not deny biological reality’. She was told to attend a meeting with HR, or else be sent home until an investigation was completed. She was later redeployed to another unit, which she said felt ‘hurtful’ and ‘demeaning’, and impeded her ability to apply for extra shifts, financially affecting her family.
The hospital has done nothing to address how she was treated by the patient, who has multiple convictions for luring boys into sex acts while pretending to be a teenage girl on social media, and has continued to treat her like the criminal.
After the story broke last month, Ms Melle received widespread support from nursing colleagues, J K Rowling and Kemi Badenoch, who said: ‘It’s time the Government pulls its finger out and intervenes to make it clear no one should be punished at work for stating biological reality to paedophiles.’
Ms Melle’s action says the NHS has unlawfully interfered with her human rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, especially with her right to manifest her religion by seeking to compel her to use preferred pronouns. In a statement after her suspension, she said: ‘I am devastated to have been suspended simply for whistleblowing. To this day, I have not even been told what I have supposedly done wrong.
‘As a dedicated Christian nurse, I am experiencing relentless institutional abuse, harassment, bullying and racial discrimination. Ever since I expressed my Christian beliefs under extreme pressure, I have been a marked woman. Despite being the one placed at risk, I am the one being punished. I have been made to feel like a criminal.
‘The message I have received throughout this investigation is clear: I am expected to tolerate extreme racism, deny biological reality, and suppress my deeply held Christian beliefs – all in the name of “inclusivity” and protecting falsehoods.
‘I am trusting in Jesus to guide me through this. I must take a stand. I genuinely worry about how many other NHS workers are silently enduring similar injustices.’
Jennifer Melle, however, is not the first person to victimised for telling the truth. Nurses in Darlington were told they needed to ‘broaden their mindset’ and be more ‘inclusive’, because they did not want to share a changing room with a biological male identifying as a woman. They have taken their case to court but their tribunal has just been postponed again until October.
A British teacher was reported, and subsequently banned from teaching, for ‘misgendering’ a student, whilst a college at the University of Oxford threatened students with expulsion should they ‘misidentify’ fellow students.
With the tide of public opinion turning against trans ‘rights’ recognition, as a recent poll shows, a government which allows a senior nurse to be treated like a criminal, while the actual criminal, a convicted paedophile who racially abused her goes unpunished, will surely start to haemorrhage support.
