Soldier abuse claims are 'urban myths'

Jun 22 2007

THE head of Selly Oak Hospital, which cares for injured military personnel, has described tales of Muslims abusing wounded soldiers as "urban myths".

Julie Moore told a meeting of the Commons defence committee that a sustained negative press campaign has had a demoralising effect on medical staff.

Selly Oak, which is home to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, is currently setting up a 12-bed military-managed ward following newspaper criticism surrounding the treatment of soldiers alongside civilian patients.

Ms Moore, the chief executive of the NHS trust which runs Selly Oak, told the committee the site provides excellent clinical care for often severely injured members of the armed services.

Addressing media reports concerning Selly Oak's facilities for soldiers, Ms Moore informed the committee that many staff had been left puzzled by much of the coverage.

Ms Moore said inquiries had found no evidence to substantiate claims in national newspapers that an injured paratrooper had been "accosted" by a Muslim and another soldier ordered to remove his "offensive" uniform.

"The feedback staff were getting from soldiers wasn't reflected in the articles they were reading," she said.

Suggesting that reporters may have posed as relatives of soldiers to gain access to Selly Oak, Ms Moore went on: "We have had to become extra vigilant to watch out for this. The small stories and the urban myths have spread while the good stories that have been well reported have not."

Ms Moore, who said no Muslim nurse was known to work on a ward which was the subject of one of the reports, continued: "We have done some world-first surgery at the hospital and we worked very hard to publicise that but it wasn't picked up as much as some of the stories that did the rounds."