Posted by In just one year there were 16 rapes, 80 sexual assaults and 65 acts of voyeurism across 257 leisure centres in England and Wales. The majority of ‘non-contact’ sexual crimes such voyeurism and taking illicit photographs are in swimming pool mixed-sex changing rooms. There are 880 leisure centres in England and Wales so the true scale of these crimes is likely to be very much higher. ‘It is not good enough for local authorities to ignore the biggest risk to any woman or girl when she goes swimming – the predatory male in the cubicle next door,’ says Heather Binning, executive director of Women’s Rights Network. ‘The scale of sexual crimes in leisure centres is simply shocking. Mixed-sex changing rooms are a magnet for sexual predators and yet local councils continue to build and refurbish leisure centres with only mixed-sex changing for their swimming pool users. Our previous leisure centre report discovered that one-third of local authority swimming pool only have mixed-sex changing in their swimming pools. They have designed-in harm.
leisure centre operators and architects must take this issue seriously. We are calling for Sport England to withdraw its promotion of mixed-sex changing as the default option for leisure centre design. New facilities must be built with single-sex changing rooms and current facilities must be risk-assessed as a matter of urgency and steps put in place to protect females from harm.’ Link to ‘How Leisure Centres Enable Sexual Predators’ report in the next post. 1/2
Who Watches the Watchers? 