case, the clinic filed a criminal complaint. The NPM is giving this topic great importance, because the protection of women and girls against exploitation, violence and abuse in psychiatric facilities must be ensured in accordance with international and national human rights regulations. As the anonymous letter makes clear, psychiatric wards must be safe places in order to be able to get back on a steady footing by means of medical and therapeutic assistance after acute crises. In all areas of life, women and girls are vulnerable to sexual violations of their personal boundaries and are disproportionately impacted by such occurrences. In the context of an enforced treatment in hospital, they are more or less defenceless against the staff that works there due to their (chronic) illnesses. The majority of the allegations refer to a severe inability to keep the distance, which has no place in the daily routine of a hospital and which possibly violates the boundaries drawn by criminal law. When someone progresses to the use of the informal form of address (and this is not welcome), wishes to create pseudo-intimacies, makes salacious remarks about intimacy, stares at female patients (“undresses them with his eyes”), shifts therapy sessions in order to be able to persuade them more easily after the end of working hours to accept private invitations, the NPM considers this to be sexual harassment (violence against women). In this context, questions arise regarding the responsibility of the organisation and the protection of the victims. Violence against women The definition of Article 1 of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) includes genderbased violence. According to CEDAW gender-based violence is defined as violence that is directed against a woman because of the fact that she is a woman or as violence that affects women disproportionately. The obligation of the state Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) also stipulates the right to freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse taking gender-specific aspects into consideration. The Istanbul Convention recognises the “structural character” of violence against women as sex-specific violence, as well as the fact that violence against women is one of the most significant social mechanisms through which women are forced into a subordinate position vis-à-vis men. According to Article 40 of the Istanbul Convention, Austria is obligated to punish with criminal or other legal sanctions any form of unwelcome verbal, non-verbal or physical behaviour of a sexual nature that has the purpose or consequence of violating a person’s dignity. 50