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Sexual Safety

Your safety matters and we treat sexual safety with care and respect. Violence or abuse of any kind is never acceptable.

‘Staff and patient safety include sexual safety’

At Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trsut, we want everyone to feel using our services. Sexual safety is a difficult subject to talk about, but we will always approach it with sensitivity and respect your dignity.

Any form of violence or abuse is completely unacceptable. 

Watch EPUT​ Colleague Safety Consultant Elliot Judge and Detective Inspector James Gray discuss ways you can report a sexual safety incident to the police, and what to expect after making a report. 

Understanding the different sexual safety definitions

Sexual safety refers to the recognition, maintenance and mutual respect of the physical (including sexual), psychological, emotional and spiritual boundaries between people.

Feeling safe from sexual harm means feeling free from being made to feel uncomfortable, frightened or intimidated in a sexual way by service users or staff.

Experiencing any of what we have defined here means not being safe from sexual harm.

Sexual harassment includes any behaviour that is characterised by inappropriate sexual remarks, gestures or physical advances which are unwanted and make a person feel uncomfortable, intimidated or degrade their dignity. Verbal and non-verbal sexual gestures or behaviours are categorised as sexual harassment.

These unwanted behaviours may only happen once or be an ongoing series of events.

Sexual harassment also includes exposure to body parts and/or self-stimulation and exposure to unwanted online sexual activity (use of the internet, text, audio, video, and graphic files, for any activity that involves human sexuality).

Sexual assault is when a person is coerced or physically forced to engage in sexual activity against their will, or when a person (of any gender) touches another person sexually without their consent. Touching can be done with any part of the body or with an object’ – definition adapted from The Crown Prosecution Service.

Sexual assault does not always involve physical violence, so physical injuries or visible marks may not be seen.

The other sexual incident category is for incidents where an individual may have witnessed or experienced something of a sexual nature that does not fit in to the categories of sexual harassment or assault, and which made the person feel uncomfortable and/or sexually unsafe.