The United Kingdom is facing a national reckoning after the publication of a damning inquiry that warns the sexual abuse of corpses, as committed by hospital worker David Fuller, could happen again under the current system. The findings, described by the inquiry chair as unprecedented in their scope and seriousness, expose a deeply flawed and under-regulated framework governing the care of the dead—one so lacking in oversight that it allowed Fuller to violate over 100 bodies without detection for more than a decade.
Fuller, a maintenance technician, was sentenced in 2021 to a whole-life term for the 1987 murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells. But it was his systematic abuse of the dead—committed between 2005 and 2020 while employed at Kent and Sussex Hospital and later Tunbridge Wells Hospital—that horrified the country. During that time, Fuller used his unfettered access to hospital mortuaries to commit acts of necrophilia against at least 101 women and girls, aged between nine and 100.
An earlier phase of the inquiry revealed that Fuller entered one mortuary 444 times in a single year without being challenged once. The mortuary environment was marked by a shocking absence of basic protocols: bodies were left out of fridges overnight; access was entirely unsecured; and no meaningful monitoring of staff or visitors was in place.
Yet the most recent phase of the inquiry, led by Sir Jonathan Michael, expands the lens beyond the hospitals where Fuller worked. It concludes that the systemic failings which enabled his crimes are present across the country. In a statement that should rattle every institution involved in death care, Sir Jonathan stated, “Offences such as those committed by David Fuller could happen again.” He went on to describe the national framework for the management and security of the deceased as “partial, ineffective and, in significant areas, completely lacking.”
Crucially, this lack of oversight is not limited to NHS facilities. The report finds that mortuary services in care homes, private hospitals, and funeral providers operate with little or no regulation. In many cases, there is no clear line of accountability, no requirement for staff vetting, no consistent training, and no external inspections. The assumption that those working with the dead will behave with decency and professionalism is, the report shows, dangerously naïve.
Sir Jonathan stated plainly, “Inadequate management, governance and processes helped create the environment in which David Fuller was able to offend for so long… And these weaknesses are not confined to the hospitals where he worked. We have found examples of these failings across the country.” The inquiry marks the first time in UK history that the security and dignity of the deceased has been reviewed on a national scale. What it reveals is a sector governed more by hope than by enforceable standards.
Fuller’s abuse was not hidden behind sophisticated planning; it succeeded because the institutions he worked in simply were not looking. Doors were left open. Logs were not checked. Surveillance did not exist. The bodies of children, teenagers, mothers, and grandmothers were left exposed to a man who should never have been allowed near them. The emotional damage inflicted on the families of those victims is incalculable.
Yet the threat does not belong to the past. The inquiry makes clear that unless robust statutory regulation is introduced immediately, the country remains at risk of another Fuller. The government has so far failed to commit to such action. If this warning goes unheeded, the consequences are not theoretical. They are real, measurable, and already written in the testimony of a crime that stretched across 15 years and over a hundred bodies.
The public, having entrusted the care of their dead to a system built on assumption rather than accountability, now waits for an answer. Whether change comes before the next atrocity remains to be seen.
