How did the North’s main hospital for adults with severe learning disabilities end up at the centre of a public inquiry?
Horrendous abuse allegations at Muckamore Abbey Hospital in Co Antrim first surfaced in July 2018 when a NHS whistleblower contacted The Irish News and revealed health service management were privately viewing CCTV footage of nursing staff assaulting vulnerable patients.
Those linked to the abuse on a psychiatric intensive care ward were unaware CCTV cameras were recording.
Footage showed patients being struck by staff and pulled to the floor by their hair – the whistleblower described it as “public inquiry territory”.
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Health authorities went into defence mode and refused to comment on the images but admitted 13 staff were suspended. (There are now 83 suspensions and seven workers sacked).
Further leaks emerged and, within months, families of patients mounted a campaign for an inquiry.
Leading the charge was Glynn Brown, a parent who felt “fobbed off” after failing to get information about an assault on his non-verbal son. Brown would become key to exposing wrongdoing.
In September 2020, Northern Ireland’s Minister for Health Robin Swann ordered a “public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005″ into Muckamore abuse allegations.
Last Monday, the first public hearings opened in Belfast into what is has been described as the worst adult safeguarding scandal since the formation of the NHS.
What is the scale of the police investigation?
A handful of detectives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) were initially assigned to the case.
When a “deluge” of incidents emerged in 2018, a specialist police team was set up to view 300,000 hours of CCTV footage.
Giving evidence to the inquiry on Wednesday, the PSNI confirmed it is now “the largest criminal safeguarding investigation of its kind in the UK”.
Lead detective Jill Duffie confirmed in 2019 that 1,500 suspected crimes were uncovered in one ward alone over a six-month period.
Painstaking “minute by minute” viewing of images resulted in police officers being referred for occupational health support, such was the distressing nature of the material. Many patients were non-verbal and unable to communicate what happened.
Police say they expect viewing to continue into next year.
To date, there have been 34 arrests. Eight people have been charged with a litany of offences including ill treatment and wilful neglect of patients. They are also face false imprisonment and common assault charges.
How long will the inquiry last and what is its scope?
There’s a two-year contract for the specially designed inquiry room in the heart of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter with an option to renew it – as hearings may go on for much longer.
Addressing a packed room of relatives and lawyers last Monday morning, inquiry chair Tom Kark QC said his team has the remit to “scrutinise what happened over many decades” and “ensure it does not happen again”.
Counsellors will be on standby throughout the public sessions.
Kark, an English barrister with almost 40 years’ experience, has insisted that patients will be “front and centre” of the proceedings. His team has the legal powers to examine “events” between December 2nd, 1999, and June 14th, 2021.
The role of NHS bodies and those with “professional oversight” will be under the spotlight as well as the response of police and the North’s health watchdog.
Is the hospital still open and how many patients remain in its care?
Once the “jewel in the crown” of mental health facilities in the North, the hospital now has only 37 patients in its care.
Muckamore opened in 1949 on a rural site close to Antrim town.
By the 1960s, it was regarded as a model community “in which people with learning disabilities could live happy, fulfilled lives”.
It had a farm, workshops, staff chalets and even its own cinema.
An overhaul of care in the early 1990s led to the discharge of many patients into the community to live supported, independent lives, though some remained there for decades.
Delivering an apology to those caught up in the abuse scandal shortly before Christmas 2018, a senior civil servant at the Department of Health set a 2019 target to resettle patients in the community, saying “no one should have to call Muckamore their home”, while adding that the facility would remain as an acute hospital.
