Bethany Hutchison and Andrea Williams at Capitol Hill (Photo: Christian Legal Centre)
Bethany Hutchison, one of the ‘Darlington Nurses’, has spoken about the ordeal she and her colleagues endured after refusing to share changing room with a transgender colleague. She also praised the work of the Christian Legal Centre for helping them finally receive justice.
Hutchison, who heads the Darlington Nursing Union, was speaking at the She Leads the Nations Global Summit, taking place on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, this week. During the event, she also met US politicians to discuss the nurses’ case and the current state of freedom in the UK.
She opened her speech by saying that she “never imagined I would be standing on a stage like this, speaking to women from across the world about something as basic, yet now as controversial, as the reality that men and women are different.”
Hutchison described the NHS as “ideologically captured”, adding that “biological reality, women’s dignity, and basic workplace safety” were sacrificed to trans ideology.
“Everything began when a biological male employee, identifying as a woman, was, without warning or consultation, granted access to the female changing room … the private place where women undress, store their belongings, and prepare for long shifts.”
She added that for some of her colleagues the experience was particularly traumatising: “A colleague told me that after encountering the semi‑naked male in the changing rooms, she had suffered a panic attack that triggered memories of childhood abuse.”
When the nurses expressed their unease to the management they were told they needed to “broaden [their] mindset” and “be more inclusive”, even perhaps to be educated in why they should accept changing in front of a transgender colleague.
The management gave the nurses an alternate location but they deemed it unsafe as it opened straight out into a public corridor.
In January however, the nurses won their legal fight, which was supported from beginning to end by the Christian Legal Centre.
Hutchison said, “The tribunal ruled in our favour … They confirmed that the NHS Trust had broken UK law by forcing women to share a changing room with a male colleague.”
This, she said, represented “a win for every girl and woman in Britain … a win for truth … a win for common sense.”
Concluding her speech, she said, “This is not a British problem. It is a Western problem. It is a cultural problem. It is a truth problem.”
Accompanying her at the event was Andrea Williams, CEO of the Christian Legal Centre, who warned that the Christian foundations of law, policy and freedom of speech in Britain were being increasingly eroded, with Christians increasingly being sanctioned for expressing their views.
