I begged my bosses not to let the trans nurse who invaded our changing room take part in my intimate operation. They refused – as they didn’t want to hurt HIS feelings

Karen Danson’s father started to sexually abuse her when she was six. It could have been yesterday, so vivid are the memories.

‘The first time, I was dragged downstairs at 1am,’ says Karen, 45. He would watch porn and make me sit on his lap, but on this night, he pushed me to the floor, pulled off my nightie and made me rotate, saying he wanted to have a good look at me.

‘I wanted to be a ballet dancer back then and I closed my eyes and imagined myself dancing. He didn’t like that. He punched me and spat at me. I picked up my nightie and ran back to bed, and cried myself to sleep. After that it happened a minimum of three times a week for six years.’

It is impossible to convey the horror of that abuse in a family newspaper, but Karen’s account is detailed and devastating and led her to ‘not want to be alive’. She is waiving her legal right to anonymity here to tell her story, ‘because I have finally found my voice’.

She recalls one attack, when she was about ten. Her father had climbed into the top bunk with her. She thinks she had passed out because of the ‘pressure of his hand, which was over my face’. 

Another time, around two years later, she specifies that it was in the bottom bunk. ‘I remember shouting “Daddy, don’t do this. This is what Mummy is for”.’

Mostly, she remembers the look on her father’s face both before and during the attacks, notably ‘his smirk, because he enjoyed it’. Also, his sense of entitlement about entering her bedroom, and her body.

Her nursing colleagues at Darlington Memorial Hospital (pictured with Karen) did not know until she was left traumatised after being forced to share a changing room with a male nurse who identifies as a woman, despite still outwardly presenting as a man

‘My dad would come in and say “are you not getting ready for bed yet?”. Even after the worst of it ended when I was about 12, after I’d kicked him hard between the legs, I’d still have to Jimmy-rig the bathroom door shut because he’d always be trying to come in when I was in here.’

She stayed silent about the abuse all through her childhood, and beyond, because children do that, even when they are no longer children.

‘I was ashamed. It was my dirty little secret.’

Until recently, very few people knew apart from her husband and the trained counsellors who had taught the adult Karen trauma management techniques, ‘to cope with the nightmares and the panic attacks’.

Her children – now in their 20s – didn’t have any inkling. Nor did her work colleagues at Darlington Memorial Hospital, where she has worked as a nurse for six years.

Until one day, almost two years ago, when something happened in the changing room at the end of a busy shift, something that opened a Pandora’s box – not just for Karen but for every NHS employee in the country, for every public body, and certainly for the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who last October sat opposite Karen, much as I am doing today, and listened to her story.

Karen has become one of the Darlington nurses at the heart of a fight to protect women’s safe spaces

Four of the Darlington Nurses taking legal action against their employers, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, from left, Tracey Hooper, Bethany Hutchison, Lisa Lockey and Annice Grundy

‘I didn’t go into the detail I have today, but he knew I’d been abused as a child. He listened and I trusted him. But how much can you trust any politician?’ she says. ‘Since this is still going on.’

You will have heard of the Darlington Nurses, the eight nurses who are taking legal action against their employers, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, because they claim they were forced to share a changing room with a male nurse who identifies as a woman, despite still outwardly presenting as a man.

Twenty-six women in total signed a letter of complaint – and in return were told by their own HR department that they were transphobic and in need of ‘re-education’. Their union also abandoned them, openly calling them bigoted.

Their case, a pivotal one in the toxic gender war, is still proceeding to tribunal, even though the Supreme Court has since clarified that, by law, a trans woman is a biological male – and does not have the right to access a women’s changing room.

The Darlington nurses who have been publicly identified so far have always said that they took the unprecedented legal action partly on behalf of more vulnerable colleagues who didn’t feel they could speak out – including one victim of childhood abuse who had felt intimidated and terrified by the behaviour of the trans nurse, Rose Henderson, in that changing room.

The Darlington nurses arrive at court to attend an employment tribunal hearing over a trans colleague’s use of changing rooms at work in April 2025

The Darlington nurses speak to media outside the Civil and Family Courts and Tribunals Centre in Newcastle

Karen was that terrified colleague. This is her first interview. It was her distress that set the ball rolling in this extraordinary debacle. She broke down sobbing to colleagues after being repeatedly asked by Rose (who was ‘wearing boxer shorts with holes in them, which meant I could see his male anatomy’) why she wasn’t getting changed.

They were alone in that changing room, and she – a sex abuse survivor; the sort of woman single-sex spaces were enshrined in law to protect – was paralysed by fear.

There is absolutely no suggestion that Rose – who has a female partner, with whom he was trying to start a family – intended to cause her physical harm on that day, in 2023, but she insists Rose’s (half-dressed) presence, and behaviour, felt menacing.

She calls Rose ‘he’ through this interview, stressing that ‘everything about Rose is male, apart from the name’.

‘I know that if it had happened to another woman, she might not have reacted in the way I did, but I couldn’t help my reaction. At first, when I saw Rose in there, in these boxers with holes that you could see through, I thought I was in the wrong changing room or mistaken. I was concentrating on getting something out of my locker when I heard this male voice behind me saying, “Are you not getting changed yet?”.

‘I looked over my shoulder and he was looking over his, just staring. I felt uncomfortable. I could feel the hair standing up on my arm. I just kept looking for my lip cream or whatever, but all I could think was “there is a man in the changing room”.

‘We were in a locked room – there’s a PIN entry – and sort of around a corner, so no one else was near. He asked again. I was thinking, “Why does he want to know if I’m getting changed? Does he want to provoke a reaction? Watch me get changed?”.

‘Inside I was thinking, “I am not getting changed in front of you, no”, but I couldn’t say anything. Then he gave this smirk, this expression, which was the same one my dad had when he was doing the abuse. He could see I was uncomfortable, and he didn’t seem to care.’

She claims that Rose’s question about whether she was going to get changed was repeated three times. There is a sense of incredulity at her own reaction, now, in the cold light of day. This is a very strong and sensible woman, trained to be assertive when required, yet she went to pieces.

Thousands of people signed a petition in support of the nurses from Darlington Memorial Hospital. Nurse Annice Grundy is pictured delivering the petition to Downing Street

Darlington Nurses who are protesting over the shared changing room facilities at their hospital

‘Honestly, I panicked. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to pass out, that my legs were going to give way and I’d fall to the floor.

‘I just wanted to cry but I couldn’t cry. I felt silly. I didn’t feel like an adult, a nurse who had spent all day looking after patients. I felt like a six-year-old girl again. That’s how he made me feel. I was so vulnerable. I was scared. I wanted to walk away, but I couldn’t.

‘I tried to use this grounding technique I’d learned [to stop panic attacks], where you focus on specific sights, sounds and smells to bring you back from the darkness – but this was the present day and I didn’t want to be here.’

She told no one that day but at home her husband could tell she was upset. ‘When I did tell him, he said I needed to say something at work but I thought I could brush it off. I didn’t want to be thought of as bigoted.’

She couldn’t brush it off. The nightmares started. ‘For 30 years, I’d had the same nightmare. Even if I was scared about something else completely, like a film, my father would be in the nightmare. But now Rose was in my nightmare. Sometimes it was Rose’s body and my dad’s face.’

None of this was Rose’s fault, of course, but the sleepless nights and panic attacks – and pounding heart when she went into the changing room – were affecting Karen’s work. She confided in a colleague – her ‘wellbeing’ representative – at work.

From there, she had a conversation with Beth Hutchison, who would emerge as the nurses’ leader. Beth had heard from other nurses that they had been concerned about Rose’s presence and behaviour. Another nurse believed Rose had been staring at their breasts. ‘When Beth saw how upset I was about even the thought of going in the changing room, she said, “No, this isn’t right”.’

Beth had a word with her superior, but when word of the nurses quiet concerns reached the HR department, they were, they claim, smacked down. The women were told it was Rose’s right to be in that changing room, and they could change elsewhere (‘they basically gave us a glorified cupboard,’ says Karen) if it was a problem.

‘Being told we needed to be “re-educated” was devastating,’ says Karen. ‘To make it worse they suggested that Rose should be the one re-educating us. Rose would be happy to do it, they said.’

The women – all mothers, all furious – effectively declared war on their own bosses, engaging support from the legal charity Christian Concern

The women – all mothers, all furious – effectively declared war on their own bosses, engaging support from the legal charity Christian Concern. Some of them spoke out in the Press, but not Karen, not then. ‘My children didn’t know anything about the abuse. I hid behind the anonymity. Those girls had my back, and I will never be able to thank them enough.’

Why go public now? ‘They’ve made me realise I am strong enough to do it,’ she says.

As it stands, the tribunal is still due to be held in October – unless there is some settlement. Karen isn’t holding her breath that a change in the Trust policy will be forthcoming.

‘We don’t know how far they will dig in, but the policy change is what we want. Also a public apology. And, yes, some compensation for what we have been through. To have had to fight for this is wrong.’

The tribunal will examine the Trust’s responsibilities as an employer, but there is another almost unbelievable twist to this story, which suggests the Trust also has questions to answer about its duty to Karen as a patient.

She tells me that last summer, after legal papers had been served and after The Mail on Sunday had broken the story of the Darlington nurses, Karen needed an urgent hysterectomy, after years of problems with endometriosis. It was to be carried out at the Darlington Memorial – where everyone involved worked – but just a few weeks before the procedure she discovered, to her horror, that Rose was scheduled to be on duty in the operating theatre on that day, and would be part of the surgical team.

‘It was a gynaecological procedure, and his role would have been down at that end, passing the consultant the tools,’ she says, incredulous. She immediately pointed out the obvious (as she thought) issue here. ‘I told them that because there was a legal dispute under way, involving Rose, it was a conflict of interest, and entirely inappropriate that he should be involved in my surgery, especially intimate surgery like that.

‘Separately, there was the issue of my childhood abuse. I made it clear that I wanted as few men in that room as possible. I was told, “Well, Rose is a woman so Rose has a right to be there”.

‘The theatre manager also said, “How would Rose feel if she was asked not to come to theatre?”.’

Karen was dumbstruck. ‘I said, “Frankly, and sorry to be blunt, but I don’t care how Rose feels”. It made no sense. Shifts are changed all the time. They didn’t even have to tell Rose a reason, if they were worried about that.’

Karen escalated her complaint, putting her concerns in writing. ‘And I got an email back saying that they could not accommodate my request [for Rose to be replaced]. They said they would cancel the operation, and I could go elsewhere. I couldn’t believe it. I needed that operation, and I’d been with my consultant for years. After everything, I felt I was being punished. I said, “I am asking this as a patient”, but they didn’t care.’

Last October, Health Secretary West Streeting did sit down with the nurses – Karen included. ‘He did listen,’ she says. ‘He told me that he wasn’t going to sit in front of me and tell me I needed to broaden my views, and we left that meeting feeling positive because he promised to do something’

It was only when Karen got lawyers involved that the Trust backed down, and when the operation did go ahead, Rose was not in the room. ‘But the very fact it went as far as it did shows how this gender ideology they have been clinging to trumps everything – even patient care.’

Her fury, and sense of being ‘utterly abandoned’ is palpable. ‘There’s a thing we have in nursing called the 6Cs – values you live by. They are care, compassion, competence, courage, communication and commitment. The Trust have shown none. They haven’t cared about my dignity, my privacy, my rights.’

She gets tearful as she remembers how she told her children – her daughter is 22, her son 20 – that she was even involved in the Darlington Nurses’ fight. They had watched news reports, aware their mother worked there, but knew no more.

‘And then I told them, “You know there is one nurse who suffered childhood abuse? Well, that was me”.’ Her daughter was upset, ‘and asked me why I hadn’t told her about the abuse earlier’. 

Her son wasn’t quite sure what to say. ‘He said, “Oh”. You could hear the emotion in his voice. Then he said, “Mum… are you OK?”. That is not a question her employers have ever asked, she claims. ‘They’ve known, from the off, that one of the nurses had been abused. They’ve never said, “Who is it? Does she want to speak to us? Does she need help?”.’ 

Last October, the Health Secretary did sit down with the nurses – Karen included – and she came out of that meeting with hope. ‘He did listen, and he told me that he wasn’t going to sit in front of me and tell me I needed to broaden my views, and we left that meeting feeling positive because he promised to do something. 

Then he said he was waiting for the Supreme Court ruling. Well, he’s had that now, and he needs to act. It’s his job to fix the NHS – well, come and fix it for the women. A hospital policy can be changed in a day. The law is with us; it’s the hospital policy that is not.’

What would you say to Wes Streeting now? ‘I’d say, in the nicest possible way, “Do your job”.’

Last night, the Health Secretary told the MoS: ‘I am determined to ensure the rights, voices and spaces of women who use the NHS – for work or as patients – are protected. I expect NHS trusts to uphold the law and follow the clarity that the Supreme Court ruling provides.’

Yet it seems County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is still pondering a way forward. 

‘The Trust acknowledges the recent Supreme Court judgment,’ a spokesman said, ‘and is taking time to carefully understand and consider its implications. At present, individual changing facilities are available and we continue to review what provision is possible within the constraints of our hospital estate.’ 

The Trust added: ‘We want all our colleagues and patients to feel safe, respected and supported at work and in our care, [so] we are very sorry when this is not the experience. We are committed to providing a safe, compassionate environment for all patients and staff.’

Those words will ring hollow to Karen.

A few weeks ago – almost two years since this whole shambolic mess kicked off – she got a colourful tattoo on her arm, ‘representing my way out of the darkness back into the light’. Karen cannot say she is comfortable being in the spotlight now, but she is clear it is ‘necessary, to show other women that they can speak out, when they have done nothing wrong’.

Her father, she tells me, was never held to account for the abuse he inflicted on her. In 2002, he took his own life. Nothing to do with any guilt about what he had done to her.

‘He was found with a 15-year-old girl. He knew the police were going to put him on the sex offenders register. He phoned a family member and said, “I’ve done something bad. There is no coming back from it.”

‘He left his belongings on the top of a cliff and he jumped. A dog walker found him the next day. I felt terrible for that woman.’