MPs are urging major high street stores to scrap unisex changing rooms following a surge in women suffering traumatic encounters with men. The Mail on Sunday has more.
Last week Charlotte Kirby, 25, posted a video tearfully revealing how two men had walked in on her while she tried on outfits at a unisex changing room at Primark in Cambridge.
Now a Mail on Sunday investigation has found that her ordeal is common, unearthing repeated distress at M&S and rival chains with no sex-segregated spaces.
One mother said that while taking her teenage girl to M&S for her first bras, they encountered a man emerging from a cubicle with his testicles exposed.
Another mother tweeted how at another M&S store, in Exeter, a man left open the door of his cubicle in the ‘gender-neutral’ changing rooms, exposing himself as he tried on trousers without any underwear.
A woman complained and the man was then escorted out, while protesting.
Another mother said she had banned her 13-year-old daughter from going clothes shopping alone after discovering her local H&M provides only unisex changing rooms.
On Mumsnet, a woman recounted how she had been secretly filmed in a unisex changing room.
Our investigation has uncovered many criminal cases involving sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment in unisex changing rooms.
This year a Met Police officer was given a suspended prison sentence for covertly filming a woman in a Primark dressing room.
H&M, John Lewis, M&S, Monsoon and Primark no longer offer female only spaces after transgender activists called for unisex changing rooms – despite a survey showing that 98% of the public wanted single-sex spaces.
Tory MP Miriam Cates said: “Nobody is saying all men are a risk but if you are a predatory man you now have an open door – literally – to vulnerable women in a state of undress. I really hope these big companies wake up to what they are doing because it is not safe.”
