U.K. Nurse Cleared of “Misgendering” Charges After Two Years of Investigations

After more than two years in which she was suspended from her job and subjected to multiple investigations, a U.K. nurse has been completely exonerated of charges that she “misgendered” a patient.

On July 1, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) informed registered nurse Jennifer Melle, 41, that she had “no case … to answer” and would not be disciplined for her alleged offense.

This followed investigations by the Epsom and St. Helier University Hospitals NHS (National Health Service) Trust and an employment-tribunal case brought by Melle.

“I am relieved and grateful that the NMC has finally recognized that there is no case for me to answer,” Melle said in a statement. “But I should never have been put through this in the first place.”

Pedophile Protests Pronouns

Melle’s ordeal began the night of May 22, 2024, when a “transgender” inmate that Melle claims was a convicted pedophile was brought to St. Helier Hospital for treatment. According to Christian Concern, whose legal arm represented Melle, “The patient, who was catheterized with a male catheter, furiously objected to Ms. Melle using male pronouns during a clinical discussion with a doctor about the patient’s discharge.”

Melle did so partly because she is a Christian and does not subscribe to “trans” ideology. Moreover, she told the NMC, her use of male pronouns was “not about equality, diversity or inclusion” but “about a real life medical scenario that required accurate terminology to avoid any doubt between medical professionals.”

Melle, who is black, offered to use the patient’s name instead of pronouns, but the prisoner would have none of it. He hurled racial epithets at her and had to be restrained from physically attacking her.

After calming down and spending the night in the hospital, the patient then had the nerve to file a complaint against Melle for “misgendering” him. The ideologically captured NHS — which also persecuted female nurses from Darlington Memorial Hospital for objecting to the presence of a “transgender” nurse in their changing room — proceeded to issue a warning to Melle and refer her to the NMC as a “potential risk.”

Politicians Protest Persecution

Sensing she wasn’t going to get a fair hearing from the Trust, Melle decided to try her case in the court of public opinion. After her story began making the rounds in the media, Melle was suspended and escorted out of the hospital.

The stated reason for Melle’s suspension — and the Trust’s decision to refer her to the NMC a second time — was not “misgendering” a patient but engaging in an alleged “data breach” by describing the patient to the media in enough detail that others could identify him. Observed The New American:

That may be, however, because Trust policy at the time did not deem “misgendering” an offense worthy of discipline. Indeed, considering the powers-that-be felt the need to make it an official offense while Melle was being investigated, it is hard to view the “data breach” charge as anything other than a pretext to punish her for violating the Trust’s pro-trans religion — and for embarrassing the Trust publicly.

Melle’s decision to go public with her story, like that of the Darlington nurses, may well have been what kept her from suffering the wrath of the NHS and NMC. Once the public learned of her plight, Melle received an enormous outpouring of support, including from author J.K. Rowling and, more importantly, from numerous elected officials of all political persuasions.

It is, after all, difficult to believe that the Trust would have abruptly dropped its disciplinary case against Melle in January — a case “her legal team believed had seemed certain to end in her dismissal,” noted Christian Concern — in the absence of a multiparty parliamentary petition in support of Melle. On top of that, the Trust chose to settle Melle’s employment-tribunal case just days before the hearing was scheduled.

Parliamentarian Praises and Pans

Nevertheless, the NMC’s investigation dragged on, with the organization telling Melle she was “a possible risk to the public — or to the public’s confidence in nurses” because she had “referred to a patient in a manner inconsistent with their gender identity.”

After continued political pressure, the NMC ultimately reached the same conclusion as the Trust. The 2024 incident was “isolated” and “driven by your own protected characteristic of religious belief rather than a desire to harass or bully” the patient, the regulator wrote Melle. There was no “data breach” because no one has ever identified the patient. “We therefore conclude that there is no realistic possibility that your fitness to practice would be found currently impaired.” Furthermore, “we have determined there is no case for you to answer.”

Conservative MP Claire Coutinho, who led the petition to the Trust, offered only mild praise for the NMC.

“Jennifer has been put through two years of witch hunts by the institutions that were meant to protect her,” Coutinho said. “This decision by the NMC is welcome, but it should never have been allowed to get to this point.”

“The NMC and all the other organizations that let her down need to learn serious lessons from the ordeal that Jennifer and other nurses like her have been put through,” she warned. “We need to know how many more hardworking nurses are still waiting for justice.”

Four of the Darlington nurses are “still waiting for justice.” Despite a January employment-tribunal ruling in their favor, the NMC continues to investigate them.