Six care workers at the Winterbourne View care home were given prison terms on Friday for “cruel, callous and degrading” abuse of disabled patients.
The judge at Bristol crown court also condemned five other staff members at the private home in Hambrook, South Gloucestershire, who received suspended sentences. Judge Neil Ford told the defendants their behaviour triggered “widespread feelings of revulsion”.
The 11 defendants – nine support workers and two nurses – admitted 38 charges of either neglect or ill-treatment of five people with severe learning difficulties after being secretly recorded by a reporter for the BBC’s Panorama programme.
They were filmed slapping extremely vulnerable residents, soaking them in water, trapping them under chairs, taunting and swearing at them, pulling their hair and poking their eyes. Whistleblower Terry Bryan, a former nurse at the home, contacted the BBC after his warnings were ignored by Castlebeck Ltd, which owned the hospital, and care watchdogs.
Hours of graphic footage recorded during a five-week, undercover BBC investigation in February and March last year, showed one support worker, Wayne Rogers, telling a resident: “Do you want me to get a cheese grater and grate your face off? Do you want me to turn you into a giant pepperoni?”
Rogers slapped another resident across the cheek, saying: “Do you want a scrap? Do you want a fight? Go on and I will bite your bloody face off.”
His colleague Alison Dove was recorded saying a resident “loved pain”, then saying to the resident: “Simone, come here and I’ll punch your face.”
Dove threatened another resident when she broke a window in the lounge with a chair. She was recorded snarling: “Listen, in future I’m going to let you sit on the fucking floor, ‘cos you don’t deserve a chair.”
On another occasion, Dove, Graham Doyle and Holly Draper restrained a female resident as a fourth member of staff, Sookalingum Appoo, forced a paracetamol tablet into her mouth.
Later, during the same incident, Doyle put on a mock-German accent and, mimicking a Nazi guard, slapped the resident over the head with his gloves shouting: “Nein, nein, nein, nein.”
The Panorama investigation, which was screened in May 2011, led to a serious case review two months later, which criticised Darlington-based Castlebeck Ltd for “putting profits before humanity”.
The 26-bed hospital opened in 2006 and by 2010 had a turnover of £3.7m. The average weekly fee for a patient was £3,500.
Prosecutor Kerry Barker said care watchdogs failed to act on repeated warnings of “inhumane, cruel and hate-fuelled treatment of patients. So-called restraint techniques were used to inflict pain, humiliate patients and bully them into compliance with the demands of their carers,” he said. “It is the crown’s case that generally the offences were motivated by hostility towards victims based on their disabilities. The offenders were operating in groups; the offences involved an abuse of power; an abuse of trust; the victims were particularly vulnerable and on occasion the ill-treatment of a patient was sustained, with the consequences of serious psychological effects,” he added.
Barristers representing the 11 defendants apologised on behalf of their clients but blamed the culture of Castlebeck, calling it a “disease”, a “cancer” and a “fog” that had engulfed Winterbourne View.
The judge said: “Your victims were particularly vulnerable and have been significantly affected by your acts of abuse in the context of a regime of continuing abuse and on occasions you offended as part of a group.”
The judge condemned Castlebeck for the way Winterbourne View was run. “It is common ground in this case that the hospital was run with a view to profit and with a scandalous lack of regard to the interests of its residents and staff,” he said. “A culture of ill-treatment developed and as is often the case, cruelty bred cruelty. This culture corrupted and debased, to varying degrees, these defendants, all of whom are of previous good character,” he added.
Ford, who praised Panorama its revelations, praised the Panorama journalist, Joseph Casey, for the “unpleasant task” of collecting evidence of the ill-treatment of the residents. “His footage has provoked widespread and understandable feelings of revulsion,” he said. “It has also led to the closure of an institution in which systematic abuse of vulnerable people would otherwise have continued.”
Ford said one particularly nasty incident involved Doyle and Rogers restraining a female resident while taunting her with sweets. “The image of you both enjoying sweets while that young woman was being treated in the manner I have described is truly disturbing in its callous disregard for her comfort and wellbeing,” he said.
Addressing Rogers, a senior support worker, the judge said: “Your overall conduct amounted to physical and mental ill-treatment, often of a particularly cruel nature, to extremely vulnerable people who were in your care. In the face of behaviour that was not particularly challenging, your first resort was to use wholly inappropriate methods of restraint, often coupled with taunting and assault.”
Judge Ford told Dove, a support worker: “I have read the pre-sentence report in which you say you were originally shocked by the ill-treatment of residents at the hospital but that you became desensitised to it over time. You consider that you were completely out of your depth. For a considerable time you minimised your responsibility for your conduct but now accept that your behaviour was wholly inappropriate.
“You suggested it was born of boredom during long shifts and that you had viewed patients as playthings.”
Addressing Doyle, who had started at Winterbourne View as a kitchen pot washer before becoming a support worker, the judge said: “In a letter to me you have described your conduct as disgusting, vile and inexcusable. You express strong feelings of remorse and guilt and express the hope that the families of the victims in the case may achieve closure and peace as a result of these proceedings. But your treatment of Simone Blake was often cruel, callous and degrading. It was always wholly unjustified.”
The former staff admitted 38 charges of either neglect or ill-treatment of people with severe learning difficulties. They were: Rogers, 32, pleaded guilty to nine charges of ill-treating three patients. Jailed for two years; Dove, 25, pleaded guilty to seven charges of ill-treating three patients. Jailed for 20 months; Doyle, 26, pleaded guilty to seven charges of ill-treating a patient. Jailed for 20 months; Jason Gardiner, 43, who admitted two charges of ill-treating two patients. Four-month suspended sentence plus 200 hours of unpaid work; Michael Ezenagu, 29, pleaded guilty to two counts of ill-treating a patient. Six month suspended sentence plus 200 hours of unpaid work; Danny Brake, 27, pleaded guilty to two charges of ill-treating two patients. Four month suspended sentence plus 200 hours of unpaid work; Charlotte Cotterell, 22, pleaded guilty to one charge of ill-treating a patient. Four-month suspended sentence plus 150 hours of unpaid work; Holly Draper, 24, pleaded guilty to two charges of ill-treating a patient. Jailed for 12 months; Neil Ferguson, 28, pleaded guilty to one count of ill-treating a patient. Six month suspended sentence plus 200 hours of unpaid work; Appoo, 59, admitted three charges of willfully neglecting a patient. Jailed for six months; Kelvin Fore, 33, pleaded guilty to one charge of willfully neglecting a patient. Jailed for six months.
