When Irish republicans in the Maze prison began organising hunger strikes in 1980 to secure political status for inmates, one of the first experts called in by the Northern Ireland Prison Service was the psychiatrist Dr Ian Bownes.
Though he was then only a trainee, it was his role to assess the mental state of those threatening to starve themselves to death – checking whether they had the capacity to understand that their lives could end and had effectively given their consent freely.
That Bownes, who has died aged 69 after a short illness, should have been chosen for such a delicate mission at the very start of his career demonstrates how under-resourced psychiatry services were in Northern Ireland at the time, but also points to his determination and bravery.
Prison officials were then regularly being murdered by the Provisional IRA and other paramilitary groups when off-duty and vulnerable, accused of being part of a repressive state or of having mistreated inmates.
The hunger strikes ended in October 1981 after 10 republicans – including Bobby Sands, the IRA leader in the Maze prison – had died. Sands, who was elected as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone during his protest, refused food for 66 days.
Bownes, a distinctive, brawny figure with a walrus-moustache, spent years of his professional life going in and out of the Maze and Maghaberry prisons, carrying out assessments of those charged with or convicted of terror offences. As a consultant forensic psychiatrist (which he later became), it was his role to write court reports dealing with the law’s interface with mental health and devise medical treatments.
Like police officers and other officials, he checked under his car every morning for booby-trap devices. His dedication to his profession, scrupulous protection of patient confidentiality and even-handed compassion ensured, however, that he was widely respected.
Bownes was born in Portadown and brought up in nearby Armagh, where his father, Noel, was a civil servant working on procurement and his mother, Margaret (nee Armstrong), a speech therapist. Ian was an only child. The background to his teenage years was the escalating violence of the Troubles. He loved photography and recalled being told off by soldiers for taking pictures of military vehicles – but persuaded them to let him keep his camera.
Bownes attended the Royal school, Armagh, and arrived in 1974 at Queen’s University, Belfast, to study medicine. The following year he met Sharon Geddis, a fellow medical student. They married in 1978 and subsequently had six children.
His time as a trainee doctor in A&E at the Mater hospital in Belfast involved treating victims of explosions and paramilitary punishment kneecappings. One night Bownes attended to Phil Taylor, drummer with the band Motörhead, who had been accidentally dropped down a staircase in a drunken lifting competition after a concert; Taylor survived with a neck-brace.
Bownes began specialising in psychiatry in 1980, studied at the Maudsley hospital in London, and served as a locum GP in West Belfast. He helped those suffering trauma after witnessing – or sometimes carrying out – shootings and bombings. He was well regarded in the community: arriving at an IRA street barricade once, he was recognised and waved through to carry on his medical work.
In 1991, he became only the second consultant forensic psychiatrist in Northern Ireland. His view, derived from years interviewing those convicted of terrorist offences, was that many who committed such crimes had personality disorders and were exploited by paramilitary organisations.
“Ian had no fear at all about whom he should meet,” Geraldine O’Hare, a forensic psychologist and long-term colleague, said. “He had a role to fulfil and that was his job. He was always great fun and very cheerful.” He was nonetheless modest and supportive of colleagues. He enjoyed solving the puzzle of finding the root cause of a problem and devising a treatment to resolve it.
His expertise was highly valued. MI5 asked him to assess the mental state of the IRA informer Freddie Scappaticci. Bownes was hooded by intelligence agents and driven to a secret building to meet the man known by his codename – Stakeknife. When the hood was removed, the doctor recognised the location anyway.
For a period he worked for the Tyrone & Fermanagh hospital trust in Omagh, and he met the US president Bill Clinton in the wake of the Real IRA bombing of the town in 1998 – the worst single atrocity of the Troubles.
In hundreds of criminal trials, Bownes appeared as an expert witness. Among the more notorious was the case of the serial killer Robert Howard, nicknamed the Wolfman, who was jailed for life in 2003 for raping and murdering 14-year-old Hannah Williams in Kent. Bownes’ critical assessment, that Howard targeted victims using a “sophisticated grooming process” and his pattern of behaviour would be difficult to change, had unfortunately been overlooked in an earlier trial.
Bownes wrote for medical publications about why suspects confess, abusive sexual behaviour, post-traumatic stress and other conditions. He was awarded the John Dunne medal for excellence and originality in psychiatric research in 1991.
He also gave evidence to select committees of both the House of Commons and the Assembly at Stormont, stressing the need for a high security hospital in Northern Ireland to treat potentially dangerous patients. They still have to be sent to Carstairs in Lanarkshire, Scotland.
Bownes retired in 2023 but continued consulting part-time. Away from hospital, he took pleasure in gardening, collecting antiques and geology.
He is survived by Sharon, their children, Gareth, David, Philip, Felicity, Amy and Robert, and nine grandchildren, and his mother.
• Ian Thomas Bownes, consultant psychiatrist, born 6 January 1956; died 7 January 2025
