Mixed changing areas ‘a sex pest risk for women’
THE vast majority of alleged sex pest incidents in council-run leisure centre changing rooms occur in gender-neutral facilities, it was reported yesterday.
Unisex areas are becoming increasingly popular with local authorities seeking to cut staff costs and cater for transgender people.
But they have become havens for sex offenders, with almost 90 per cent of all reported sex assaults, harassment and voyeurism happening in genderneutral changing rooms.
Feminists have accused councils of prioritising political correctness over the need to protect women and girls from sex attackers and voyeurs.
An investigation by The Sunday
Times used freedom of information laws to show how only a handful of sex incidents occur in single-sex changing rooms.
Of 134 complaints about sexual misconduct in leisure centre changing rooms last year, 120 took place in unisex changing areas and just 14 in single-sex areas.
The figures are particularly astonishing because the number of single-sex changing rooms far outnumbers the number of unisex ones. Offences ranged from voyeurism to harassment, sexual assault and rape.
A further 46 cases occurred outside changing rooms, such as beside the pool or in corridors.
Campaigners in Cardiff have called on the city’s new Star Hub leisure centre to do away
with gender-neutral facilities. Protester Bernie Breen said the facilities ‘need to be separate because there isn’t enough staff to keep an eye on everybody’.
And Nicola Williams, for Fair Play for Women, said: ‘Spaces where women are undressed should be single-sex as a matter of course. This is obvious, elementary safeguarding.’
Meanwhile David Davies, Conservative MP for Monmouth, said: ‘These figures show that women and girls are more vulnerable in mixed changing rooms and there is a danger these places are becoming a magnet for sexual offenders.
‘It simply doesn’t make sense to enable men to have greater access to women’s spaces.
‘The reforms to gender recognition will grant that access.’